How To Speed Up Your Android Chrome Browser [QuickTip]

When you’re using the Android version of Google Chrome, you probably have experienced the time when Chrome takes way too much time to load, or crashes frequently, or acts sluggish when scrolling.

If you are used to Chrome and don’t want to opt for another browser for all your online needs, here is a quicktip to speed up your Android Chrome browser. Using this tip will significantly improve your scrolling experience and it will reduce frame rate drops.

Recommended Reading: 10 Essential Tips To Increase Android’s Performance

Speed Up Your Chrome Browser

Start by opening the Chrome browser app on your Android. Go to the address bar. Type Chrome://Flagsin the address bar and then press Enter.

You will be redirected to the Chrome://Flags settings page. Next, look for the flag called “Maximum tiles for interest area Mac, Windows, Linux, Chrome OS, Android”.

Tap on default and choose 512 from the drop-down. If your device has less than 512 RAM, its best that you choose anything below that figure to prevent Chrome from taking over all of your device’s memory.

Tap on the relaunch button at the bottom and you’re done.

If you want to go back to the default settings, head back to the Chrome://flags page and “Maximum tiles for interest area Mac, Windows, Linux, Chrome OS, Android” then choose default. Relaunch your Chrome browser for the effect to take place.

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How to Enable Box Sizing in Internet Explorer 7 [Quicktip]

We have covered CSS3 Box Sizing in a previous article. Box Sizing, with the value of border-box, allows us to retain the element width and height, regardless of the additional padding and border it has.

This makes measuring and defining element size easier. However, CSS3 Box Sizing would not function in Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) and earlier versions, as you can see below.

Both of the columns that you see in the above screenshot have width, height, padding, and box-sizing specified. But as IE8 does not recognize the box-sizing property, the second column is pushed down when their total width exceed their parent container’s width.

You will have to adjust the size for each column accordingly to make them fit in it, which could be a very tedious task depending on the number of elements that you need to handle. If your website has to support IE7 (for whatever reason) while also preserving CSS3 Box Sizing, you can use the following trick.

Recommended Reading: A Look Into: HTML5 Shiv And Polyfills

Box Sizing Polyfill

To make IE8 (and below) acknowledge Box Sizing, we can use a polyfill. This polyfill comes in the form of an HTC file and is developed by Christian Schaefer. Download the file from the Github repository and put it in, for example, your CSS folder.

Create a CSS stylesheet, dedicated for Internet Explorer. Add the link in the HTML document this way so it will only be served in IE7.

<!--[if lte IE7]> <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/ie.css"><![endif]-->

Then put the following code in the ie.css. This CSS rule below will apply box-sizing for all elements.

* { behavior: url(css/boxsizing.htc);}

A few things to note when applying this trick:

The url path of boxsizing.htc must be relative to the HTML files location, otherwise it will fail to work.

Paul Irish also has a tip to apply box-sizing in pseudo-element with *:before, *:after. But, since IE7 as well as IE6 does not support pseudo-element, there is no reason to use pseudo-element selectors in this case. And as you can see above, we don’t include them in the code as well.

The Result

Here, we have two columns with the parent container’s width set to 500px. The column width are set to 50%, so each column should have 250px width, even though we also set padding for it. Let’s open Internet Explorer 7, and launch the Developer Tool (F12).

Go to the Layout tab of the Developer Tool to see the column size in detail. You should see that in IE7 the column now includes padding as well as borders as part of the total size. In our case, the box width remains at 250px.

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How To Remove Irrelevant Ads (Or Tailor Them To Your Liking) [Quicktip]

While the majority of us dislike being served ads (prompting the making of apps that help you block ads) there are some ads that inform users of great deals, new services or tools that can be helpful to them. If ads are better catered to our preferences, we probably won’t find them as annoying or interruptive.

Google serves ads based on preferences built upon your searches. Frequent searches of "computers" may cause Google to serve you more computer-related ads and deals. This however is not an exact science. If it helps, you can actually add or remove interests, essentially tailoring the type of ads you get served. Here’s how to pick your preferences.

Recommended Reading: How To Find Your Previous Google Search Queries [Quicktip]

Accessing Google Ad Settings

To access the information, you must first login to your Google account, and then go to the Google Ads Settings page.

From here, you can see what information Google has on you based on your previous searches and the websites you’ve visited. Provided you haven’t given the data, Google can also make guesses on what age and gender you are using your history.

In order to view the categories that are listed under your preferred ads, simply go to the Interests section and click on Edit.

You can add and remove interests from this panel, suiting it to your taste. Once done, Google will look into the list and show advertisements that are more relevant to your selected interests.

Opt-out Of Personalized Ads

Here you can also choose to opt out of personalized ads. Note that the ads will still keep coming, however, they won’t be tied to your browsing history or searches. To do this, go to the Opt-out Settings > click Opt out.

Note that this opt out applies only to the web browser and computer you are currently using. It must be redone if you would like this to take effect on another browser or computer.

Conclusion

Google Ad Settings is a useful tool to make sure that all advertisements that are served to you are relevant and useful. It’s also useful if you feel uncomfortable with your browsing habits and history being used as a marketing platform. You may not be able to get rid of advertisements completely, but you can control what types appear.

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