Hows123-Internet How-Tos

Third-party browser tracking — and how to give users more control over it — is a hot topic right now.Microsoft and the FCC have similar plans, one former Google employee recently took the wraps off his take, and now there’s another Chrome extension which turns the tracking blocker knob up to eleven.

It’s called ChromeBlock, and it gives you an easy way to shut down around 90 different Web tracking networks. Just about every well-known harvester is listed: Google, MSN, Alexa, Doubleclick, Omniture, Quantcast, Tynt and Cleeki, to name a few. You can choose to block networks as DNT detects their presence on a page, or you can opt out in advance by clicking the show global settings link. The overlay on DNT’s browser action button tells you how many networks are detected and how many you’ve chosen to block.

ChromeBlock works nicely in tandem with Disconnect, so those of you looking for as much tracking protection as possible can go ahead and install both extensions. Even if you’re not concerned with blocking the connections, it’s very interesting to see which sites you browse are sending data to different providers.

Install ChromeBlock for Google Chrome

via:Download Squad

Google Chrome update very frequently, maybe that’s why Google Chrome is so powerful and fast. But if you ‘re running Google Dev channel version of Chrome, you may notice the latest update really broke. The Dev version is usually unstable and easy to crash. The problem is the GPU accelerated canvas option. So, let’s fix it.

A: Disable GPU

Since the crash is caused by GPU accelerated canvas, you can just disable GPU accelerated temporarily.  Simply tack this on to the end of the command, either through the command prompt, or in the shortcut.

--disable-accelerated-compositing

You’d want to head into about:flags, remove the experiment, and then you won’t need the command line anymore.

B: Delete Your Preferences File

Now head to the following folder to delete your preferences file, which contains all the settings, including the option to have GPU acceleration enabled or disabled.

%localappdata%\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\

Once you’re there, find the Preferences file, and kill it.

Update: alternatively, as tahlyn points out in the comments, you can open up the Preferences file in Notepad and remove this bit of text:

“gpu-canvas-2d”

If you were using Google Sync, you’ll need to enter those details again, along with any other settings.

Solution 3: Replace Chrome Dev with an Older Build Version

Head into the following folder by pasting this into an open Explorer window—of course, if you’ve installed Chrome elsewhere, you’ll need to head there instead.

%localappdata%\Google\Chrome\Application

Once you’re there, you should see two folders with numeric names, like this:

Rename the newer one with something else (or move it out of the directory), and then rename the older one to match the version number of the newer one.

Open up chrome, head to about:flags and then turn off GPU Accelerated Canvas.

Close Chrome, then head back into the folder, rename them back to normal, and Chrome should be working fine again.

Solution 1:  Uninstall Dev Channel, Install Beta Instead

Yeah, this solution is pretty obvious, but it’s also the best one. Any time the Dev channel is acting too unstable, you should simply uninstall it, and then head over to the channel releases page and install the Beta version instead.

Or you could always install the stable release if you really wanted to.

via:howtogeek