How To Repair a Misbehaving Browser

Internet connection is affected by many factors, from the hardware itself and it's settings and from the obvious internet company and the router. Lately, I have my head scratching again because of  my browser, google chrome, can not connect to the internet. The error "timed out loading session" or " it takes too long to load the page" keep on flashing on the the screen.

Is the internet really not working? I tried to use another browser, firefox,  to connect and it does this without any problem. I was a bit skeptic that it could just be using the page cache,  so I flushed all the cached pages and typed a google search. But yes it did connected without any problem. The antivirus was also updating without a problem. So my doubt was set aside, I do have a working internet and there is a problem with the browser. So this needs to be fixed.

You do not need to uninstall it. If you still have the installation file, ChromeSetup.exe, on your system which is most probably at your download folder, just click on it to reinstall, otherwise you need to download it from this link.

The installer will again download the necessary file and overwrite the corrupted component that rendered the program not to work. 

Last Words.

This is another lesson for me, because sometimes I uninstall programs I no longer need. But having two browsers does not hurt at all and could be a life saver when a problem like this  happens. Softwares can misbehave from time to time and browsers are not an exemption.

Make Chrome Work Faster

It is quite disappointing sometimes when you experience a slowdown in using chrome on some websites specially those that contain HD photos,  other web components like GIF animations and automatically playing background videos all at once.

Some sites are not so well designed or  the webmaster of that particular site neglected to consider the fact that not all internet users have the much needed bandwidth to accommodate enormous data to be shown in their browsers. In other instances, the adverts being hosted cause the same bandwidth consuming items which the webmasters do not have control of.

What to do

As this is more of a bandwidth issue (internet connection amount and speed), there's nothing much for internet users to play with. It is either to choose between showing the image but with delay or to not to show it at all.

• Disabling images in chrome is easy. Just head to customize and control button(top rightmost icon)>settings>scroll down and hit show advance settings>under Privacy hit content settings>under  images tick 'do not show any images'.(1)

• This solution may not besuitable for all and could only be for those rushing to load the text contents quickly. If you require to see the graphical contents then head to chrome's experimental browser tools (flags), and scroll down to GPU rasterization menu. This is a fast processing usually for 3D image to output into 2D such as computer monitors and usually used by developers. But with chrome's experimental lab, regular users like us can test this easily.

To make things easier, type in your browser the exact path chrome://flags/#enable-gpu-rasterization. Click the drop down menu and choose enabled.

Now try loading graphics and image rich sites like http://www.theverge.com/ or http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html

Last Words :

As the items from chrome flags are all experimental, they might disappear at anytime, rendering the function disabled. If GPU-rasterization does not improve the way you browse with rich graphics contents, disabling is easy by doing the reverse!

Stalled Chrome Easy Fix

From time to time, chrome browser crashes on my computer. I experience it at random, sometimes when I have just started the computer or when I resume from sleep mode. Clicking the chrome icon does not do anything, initially it seems like it is launching, the whirling animation is on going but it just stops midway and stalls without opening the usual chrome window.

My usual response is to reinstall it by going to my download folder (I usually save installation files) and run the  saved installation file. Or download it again from the web.

But there is a quicker way of sorting this out, by using a free utility, the CCleaner!  This is intended to clean junks and make your computer run smoother and safer, but there is more to just the tidying, it also helps to restore malfunctioning browsers. If you have the same problem with chrome like me, try this steps below.   If you do not have it yet, you can download it from here.

The Ccleaner

Open ccleaner and click applications(1) tab. The application does its job from the first browser on top to the bottom. Depending on the number of browsers you use,  you just need at least 3 minutes of your time. When it reaches google chrome, it will detect that it is running but has stalled. This is the reason that the window is not showing.  The cleaner will ask you to close it(2).

Clicking yes will detect that it is not responding and will ask you to forcefully close it. Click yes(3), relaunch chrome and it will run smoothly!

Last Words.

Ccleaner is one of the best free computer maintenance application I have tried. Aside from the excellent junk wiping function, it also have uninstaller, duplicate finder and the intuitive startup(4) tweaker for applications so that they can launch faster by disabling(6) additional extensions(5).

In fact, it remedies other well known browser like internet explorer,  firefox,  safari and opera. So if any of these browsers do not launch, ccleaner is the cure!

Two Ways to Watch Movies From Laptop to TV

If you've been successful from downloading movies from sources that do not show the download links( read previous post...../how-to-download-movies-without-download...), you might want to play this in a bigger screen like your television. Here's how you can do it, the equipments you will need and  free softwares to install.

Play your contents to TV.

Wired.

1. The easiest way to do this is with wires. If both your computer (3) and TV(1) has HDMI(1&3) ports then all you need is HDMI connector(5). With this, both video and audio signals are carried by the connector.

If you have an older laptop with VGA(4) connection, make sure your TV has this input(2) port as well and purchase a male make VGA or SVGA(6) connector. And if this is the case, you also need a 3.5mm male male (7)connector for the audio.

Adverts:

• See HDMI's
•  Cheap VGA's
• More 3.5mm connections

Wireless.

2. The easiest may not be the most convenient solution. If your TV has HDMI input, then you can use wireless connection to view your laptop's content,  even if your laptop doesn't have one, as long as it can connect to a router. This is by means of a streaming device, the chromecast. You also need a router, and a video converter, in this case I used Freemake Video Converter. You also need to download and install from your computer chrome browser, and chromecast extension. 

If you do not have chrome browser yet, you need to download and install it first before chromecast.

• Buy chromecast here
• Download chrome here. https://www.google.com/chrome/browser/desktop/
•  chromecast at https://cast.google.com/chromecast/setup/
• Freemake  from http://www.freemake.com/free_video_converter/

Steps:

Ready
1. Download and install chrome browser then chromecast application.
Connect
2. Connect your chromecast device to your TV's HDMI port.
3. Power chromecast device by connecting the accompanying USB cable to chromecast device and the other end to the TV's USB port if it has one, or you can just use the supplied power adaptor.
4. Switch the TV's input to the HDMI port where the chromecast is connected.
5. Make sure your router is on.
Set up.
6. from your laptop, open up chromecast application and set up your chromecast by following the onscreen procedure, which is similar to the screenshoots below.

8. Once it is set up, open up chrome browser and you will see the screencast icon (8) at the upper right corner of the browser. Click it and click the name of the chromecast (9) to connect . The icon turns blue(10) when it is connected and the screen casted chrome tab will have the icon(11) at the right most part. The content of that tab will be shown to your TV.

Cast your movies.

9. Whilst at the active tab, press simultaneously ctrl + o(letter) and a navigation window will open. Go to the movies you have downloaded and select the one with mp4 extension.

10. The selected movie will appear at the active tab window(12) and this content will be shown on your TV. You will also notice that the address bar is replaced with the file path(13) of the selected movie.

11. Other file extensions like flv, avi and so on doesn't stream with chromecast. But if you would like to play movies with extensions other than mp4, you need to convert them into mp4 first. Freemake is very good at this. See similar post on how to do the conversion at

http://prakticality.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/how-can-i-stream-downloaded-movies.html

Last Words.

Either way, you can enjoy your movies on a bigger screen. Although wireless is more complicated, it is more convenient as you do not need to access the back of you tv to connect it. You can also control the movie from where you are seated as the laptop is doubled as the remote as well. In this mode, you can multitask, meaning whilst the movie is streaming on TV, you can work or access the internet using other tab of the chrome. As only the active tab is screen casted at the one time. Although there is a BETA version of full screen casting(mirroring), meaning what you can see in your computer screen is what you see in your TV, I personally prefer one tab casting.

The downside is the wireless traffic, when many devices are connected to the router, which might affect the streaming speed and hence, wired connection is more suitable.  And if you require to output your movies in an instant and do not have the time to convert it to a suitable format(mp4), then wired solution has the advantage.

Quick Fix For A Sluggish Chrome Browser

No doubt chrome is one of the fastest browser available. Backed up by google, it's reliability to open up web pages easily is one of it's selling factors. As an internet user, I do not care much of the add-ons available until I need them. The most important is for me is it brings me to a web page I want to go, pronto!

But like windows computers, I noticed that as days passes by, it somewhat losses some of it's speed. Sometimes it is sluggish to start up. Like a diesel car in a cold weather. So I do not have any choice but to click another alternative browser to do the job. But once it is up and running, I switch again to my favourite browser. The question is, why it is behaving like that and what should I do to stop this annoying behaviour.

Before installing and reinstalling chrome, here are the causes that might contribute to this and their simple solutions.

1. Too much applications running in the background

Programs like antivirus run in the background. This is essential specially when you are connected to the internet. Other programs like VOIP, instant messengers, and other programs updating can use up computer resources (CPU and RAM) specially when they are active at the same time. And also those application that are opened and remained active because they are not terminated properly. This leads to the delay of executing a command from a click of a mouse.

What to do?

• Terminating the activity of these non essential programs would free up CPU activity and RAM, and thereby reserves more power to execute a  command. To do this, press the 3 key combination ctrl-alt-del> then windows task manager>processess.  The running applications will be listed and sorted according to memory usage. Right click the applications that use the most RAM(1) and end the process(2) quit. 

•  Still at the task manager, click applications(4),  right click the application(4) you want to quit, then end the task(5). If  there is an applications that has a "not responding" status, end it as well.

2. Chrome is busy syncing.

Not just the other running applications is causing the problem. Even chrome itself.

When you have more than one google account or your laptop is used by other google account holders, everytime a new account is logged in, the browser attempts to synchronize the data of the logged in account. The sychronisation time depends on the number of elements and the overall size of the data. This causes chrome to become unresponsive. Usually, all elements of google account is synchronised by default but the good news is you can choose which element to update or not to update at all by just ticking a box. 

How to do  it?

Type chrome://settings (6) at the address bar then click advanced sync settings(7). Click the dropdown menu and choose what to sync(8) by ticking or un ticking the elements you do not want to sync.

Beyond Firefox Setting 1

Speeding up Firefox is not only limited to tweaking computer setting and using programs within firefox. We can also tweak it's native settings to make browsing speedier. All we need is info, and reliable source on how to do it, and to undo it if something goes wrong. 

This tutorial is going beyond Firefox setting to get the most of internet speed. Recommended for broadband users only.

Enable Pipelining

In normal browsing,  HTTP requests are issued sequentially, with the next request being issued only after the response to the current request has been completely received. Depending on network latencies and bandwidth limitations, this can result in a significant delay before the next request is seen by the server.

Just like in a single line traffic, whilst the first car in the queue is going left and it's exit way is blocked, there is no chance for the next on the queue to move forward as the first car is blocking the way. Solution? Create a second, third or fourth lane! In Firefox, enable pipelining.

"A technique used in advanced microprocessors where the microprocessor begins executing a second instruction before the first has been completed. That is, several instructions are in the pipeline simultaneously, each at a different processing stage.

The pipeline is divided into segments and each segment can execute its operation concurrently with the other segments. When a segment completes an operation, it passes the result to the next segment in the pipeline and fetches the next operation from the preceding segment. The final results of each instruction emerge at the end of the pipeline in rapid succession."

Again, like in a a traffic situation, single file traffic can only do one instruction at a time, causing congestion and heavy traffic, whilst multiple lane can carry out multiple instructions at a time, causing the traffic moving faster.

 1. Open up firefox  and  type about:config in the address barthen press enter

* You will notice a warning sign, click "I'll be careful" to proceed.

2. Scroll down to network.http.pipelining and you will notice it's default value is false

3. Double click at the value to turn it into true

4. Close your browser then open Firefox again to take effect.

Reduce Initial Page Delay

By default, Firefox waits 0.25 seconds (250ms) before beginning to draw web pages, which causes delays in displaying the visual content of  websites. It is like an automatic car that needs to rev up into a specific rotation before it automatically goes to the next gear. But good news, Firefox can be set into lower rev, before it goes into the next gear. Here's how.

1. Open up Firefox and type about:config at the address bar

 2. Right click any part of the window and select new then string

3. Enter the preference name as nglayout.initialpaint.delay  then press OK.

 4. Then set its value to 50,  that's in milliseconds, or you can set it lower if you want. Press OK.

5. The user set parameter will be added if you scroll down to nglayout.initialpaint.delay

6. Close Firefox and open it up again to take effect!

Browsing Tweaks 2: Speed Up Firefox

Did you noticed that firefox becomes sluggish the longer it is running? That's because the longer it is left on, the more memory it will consume and the slower your browsing will be.

Memory Restart

This is a firefox extension that you can download at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/memory-restart/ . This add-on keeps an eye on the amount of remaining memory and will warn you when it becomes too low. Restarting the browser will free up wasted resources and speed up your browser in effect. Do not worry as the websites opened during restart will be the same websites that will be shown after the browser restarts.

After download and installation, the active add-ons including memory restart should be included at the toolbar below your browser. If you can not see the add ons there, you can click VIEW, TOOLBARS, the tick ADD ON BAR, then right click on the bar that appears at the bottom of the browser window and choose CUSTOMIZE. If the icon does not appear in the selection, click RESTORE DEFAULT SET. Drag and drop the icon to the add-on tool bar. Below is what it looks like after adding memory restart.

Increase Firefox Cache Size

Local copy of websites visited are stored in a browser's cache and these can be retrieved easier. Adjusting it with more than the default allocation will give this container more space to store website's data. You can adjust this by going to TOOLS, OPTIONS, NETWORK, then tick OVERRIDE CACHE. You can then add more MB's to the cache by pressing the arrows.

Speed Up Download

DownThemAll at http://www.downthemall.net/ is an advanced download manager for Firefox that chops data traffic into multiple smaller segments and then fetches each part in at the same time. It is like grinding a coffee bean first before putting it through a tightly weaven strainer. It also let's you pause and resume your download!

Browsing Tweaks 1: Speed Up Chrome

Internet browsing is affected by many factors, from the hardware's capabilities, the ISP's bandwidth, the amount of internet traffic at a given time, the data components of the sites you are visiting, and the things you want to do while online. Watching videos and making online communication with video or audio seem the most frustrating part, as these requires large bandwidths.

Remedy to this includes hardware acceleration which includes overclocking the system, buying components such as bigger RAM, upgrading ISP's into better and bigger bandwidth and so on, and these costs really a price, time and effort.

The average internet user can  speed up our browsing speed by just doing some practical solutions which includes enabling or disabling features from the browser you are already using, or by using lower bandwidth version of the sites you are visiting.

How to Speed Up Chrome

Improve Search Speed

In CHROME browser, type about:flags in the search bar and enable Preload Instant Search. This make things  faster as the search function is already enabled before even typing a search word into the address bar. When you click the top result on that page, the site will appear almost immediately.

Disable plug-ins

You can speed up the time chrome takes to bring up web pages by disabling plug-ins and letting them on manually. Still at about:flags, enable click to play option.

Then click on the I. Tools icon, Options, II Under the Bonnet, Content Settings, III tick Click to play under plug ins. If click to play is not in the option, manually disable all by clicking disable individual plug-ins.

Turn On Hardware Acceleration

Turn on hardware acceleration by enabling GPU Composting and GPU accelerated canvas 2D. You can compare the before and after results by going to http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Performance/FishIETank/Default.html before and after enabling it, and see the difference at the frame rate speed.

See the frame rate difference between before on the left and after on the right.