The latest releases of my favourite browser Maxthon, tend to freeze far too often for professional use in terms of web development. After several freezes in one hour I finally got fed up and decided to migrate to Google’s Chrome.
Some of the main functions that made me like Maxthon so much were the favourite synchronization service, facebook and twitter sidebar and the mouse gestures. I already installed Chrome before for testing websites and always liked the performance of the browsing engine and the leightweight look of the browser itself, so I decided to fully switch over to it.
Right after the update to the current version, the hunt for plugins had to begin to get all the features I liked using Maxthon. The synchronization tool integrated to sync the browser setup and favourites are a good replacement for the Maxthon Favourite Service, so this one was easy to replace. The most important plugins I found to rebuild my needs are:
- Chrome Gestures (Replacement for Maxthon’s mouse gestures)
- Chromed Bird (Replacement for the Twitter Sidebar Plugin in Maxthon)
- Facebook for Chrome (Replacement for the Facebook integration in Maxthon)
- Web Developer (Replacement for the IE Developer Toolbar)
I even found some nice plugins that are a bonus or switching over to Chrome:
- Facebook Disconnect (Stop FB from tracking the website you surf to)
- Facebook Photo Zoom (Autozoom thumbnailed photos on FB)
I’m still searching for more stuff to customize Chrome the way I want and need it, but it’s on a good way and definitely recommendable for everyday browsing and web development. Give it a shot.