10 Google Features for Slow Internet Connections

It's not easy using Google services when your Internet connection is very slow. Here are some helpful features:

1. Gmail's basic HTML mode - https://mail.google.com/mail/h/. It doesn't have all the features of the regular Gmail interface, but it lets you read messages and compose mail. This interface uses JavaScript sparingly and every click means a new page request. The good news is that there isn't much too load, so the basic HTML interface is better suited for slow connections. You can even set it as the default interface.

2. Disable Google Instant from the search preferences page. Just enable "never show Instant results" and click "Save" so that Google never tries to load search results as you type the query. Google will still show suggestions, but you can disable this feature by using this URL.

3. YouTube Feather is an experimental interface that's intended to "serve YouTube video watch pages with the lowest latency possible". You can still play videos, check related videos, subscribe to channels and read a few comments, but these are all the features that are available. Since your connection is slow, it's a good idea to select "240p" from the list of resolutions.

4. The old Google image search interface is better for slow connections, but you should bookmark this URL to use it. Unfortunately, you can't switch to the old interface and the "switch to basic version" is placed at the bottom of the page in the standard version.

5. Chrome's click-to-play feature is great because it loads content that requires plug-ins on demand. That means you have to click a gray box to load Flash content, Java applets etc. It's an excellent alternative to extensions like FlashBlock and it's built into Chrome. How to enable click-to-play in Chrome? Type chrome://chrome/settings/content in a new tab, press Enter, enable "click to play" in the "plug-ins" section and click "OK".

6. Google's transcoder available at http://google.com/gwt/n is optimized for mobile devices, but it also works on a computer. Just type the URL of a page and Google will display a compressed version of the page with smaller images, simplified layout and no JavaScript.

7. The text-only Google Cache lets you load a simplified version of the page directly from Google Cache. Sometimes it's an old version of the page, but at least it loads fast. You can get this version by clicking "text-only" in the header of the regular cached page, but that's not efficient. There's also this URL you can use:

www.google.com/search?strip=1&q=cache:www.domain.com
(replace www.domain.com with the URL of the page)

8. Chrome's custom user agent feature is great if you want to pretend you're using a different browser. If your connection is really slow, pretending that you're using a smartphone has an important advantage: many sites will load the mobile interfaces, which are lightweight. To change the user agent in Chrome, open the developer tools (Ctrl+Shift+I for Windows/Linux, Command-Option-I for Mac), click the "settings" button at the bottom of the window, click "user agent", enable "override user agent", select "Android 4.0.2 - Google Nexus" or "iPhone - iOS 5.0" from the list and disable "override device metrics".

9. Google Public DNS is a simple way to speed up your browsing experience if the DNS service you're using is slow. "The DNS protocol is an important part of the web's infrastructure, serving as the Internet's phone book: every time you visit a website, your computer performs a DNS lookup. Complex pages often require multiple DNS lookups before they start loading, so your computer may be performing hundreds of lookups a day," explains Google.

10. Use a browser that supports SPDY, a new protocol "designed for low-latency transport of content over the World Wide Web." Right now, SPDY is supported by Chrome and Firefox, while many Google sites use it.

If Chrome or Firefox aren't good enough, use a browser optimized for slow connections: Opera and enable Opera Turbo, a feature that uses Opera's servers to compress pages and their resources. Opera uses Google's WebP image format to save even more data and show crisper images. The average compression ratio for Opera Turbo is about 60%. Turbo is also available in the Opera Mobile app for Android, Symbian, Windows Mobile and you can use the Opera Mini app for a higher compression ratio (up to 90%). Opera Mini can be installed on most phones, including feature phones and the iPhone.

Find Public Google Docs

Google Docs and Google Drive don't offer the option to find public files, but you can do that using Google search. Now that the Google Docs robots.txt file allows search engines to index most of the public files, you should be able to find them, assuming that there are some links that point to them.

Search engines only index the files that are "public on the Web". By default, files are private, but you can change the visibility from the "Share" box.

Here are some useful queries that let you find public Google Drive/Docs files (you can append some keywords to the queries):

* [site:docs.google.com/document/d] - find text documents

* [site:docs.google.com/presentation/d] - find presentations

* [site:docs.google.com/drawings/d] - find drawings

* [site:docs.google.com/file/d] - find files: images, videos, PDF files, Microsoft Office documents and more (you should click "repeat the search with the omitted results included" since there are many files with similar titles)

* [site:docs.google.com/folder/d] - find folders (collections of files and other folders)

* [site:docs.google.com/open] - find other documents, folders and files (the links redirect to other URLs)

Public spreadsheets and forms can't be indexed by search engines.

Find More About a Google Image Search Result

Here's a simple way to learn more about a Google image search result without actually clicking it. Just drag the image to the search box and you'll be able to use "search by image" to find similar images and pages that include the image.



You can also mouse over the result and click "similar" or click the result and use the "search by image" feature, but drag-and-drop is faster. Another advantage is that you can edit the query and filter the results. For example, you can find pages that include the image and the word "hotel".

{ Thanks, Itamar. }

Gmail's Shortcut for Inserting Hyperlinks

Less than 2% of the Gmail users have enabled keyboard shortcuts and actually use them, but that doesn't mean Google shouldn't improve them. Many people complained that Gmail's rich text editor doesn't have a shortcut for inserting hyperlinks and now it's available: Ctrl+K (or Cmd-K if you use a Mac).


The same shortcut is also used in Outlook, Microsoft Word, Google Docs and other apps. "Just select any text, and then press the Ctrl and K keys at the same time. A dialogue box opens where you can type a link," informs the Microsoft Word blog.

I wonder why Google doesn't offer the option to use the top search result for the text you've selected or at least pick one of the top results from the "edit link" box.

{ Thanks, Cougar. }

Cached Pages in Google Mobile Search

Maybe it's not so obvious, but the link to the cached version of a search result is still available when you're using Google Search on a mobile phone. Just like in the desktop interface, you need to click the Instant Preview icon (a magnifier) and you'll find the "cached" link.

For some reason, the links to the mobile formatted version and to the list of similar pages are no longer displayed. To go back to the old interface that displayed all these links next to the search results, bookmark http://www.google.com/m or replace "google.com/search" with "google.com/m/search" in the URL (just add the two characters in bold).

Disable Blogger's Dynamic Views

If you don't like Blogger's Dynamic Views, but your favorite blog enabled one of them, there's a way to go back to the previous template: just add &v=0 to the URL. For example, here's the URL for Gmail's blog: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/?v=0.

Unfortunately, the change is not persistent and you need to add the parameter every time you visit the homepage or one of the posts. You can also bookmark the URL.

How to Try Google's Cleaner Interface

I mentioned in the previous post that Google tests a less cluttered interface and there's now a way to try it. Techno-Net noticed that you can change the NID value of a Google cookie and get the same interface.







Here's how to do this in Chrome:



1. Install "Edit this Cookie", a cookie manager for Chrome.



2. Go to Google's homepage and click the yellow cookie icon from Chrome's toolbar.



3. Find the line that starts with NID, click it, select the value (Ctrl-A or Command-A for Mac), delete it, paste the following value (use Ctrl-V or Command-V for Mac) and click "Submit cookie changes":



50=RbHwrmdgEAl6v3XPDKfJey5zpW7n84oRvsTZOK0LuYwW0m0UDFcPmts2HqKaZc2-Rdo7iLsrYKOUVKV4ztyb7JMDWavDVmvsyC2UldBcyFKsmyM_4Qhr761WpGHfoZPZ





Here are the instructions for Firefox:



1. Install Cookies Manager+ and restart the browser.



2. Go to Google's homepage.



3. Press Alt-T and select "Cookies Manager+". You'll also find the option in the "Web Developer" item of Firefox's unified menu.



4. Search for google.com and find the entry named "NID". If you're not in the US and you use a different Google domain, search for your domain (for example: google.co.uk in the UK).



5. Click "edit" and replace the content with:



50=RbHwrmdgEAl6v3XPDKfJey5zpW7n84oRvsTZOK0LuYwW0m0UDFcPmts2HqKaZc2-Rdo7iLsrYKOUVKV4ztyb7JMDWavDVmvsyC2UldBcyFKsmyM_4Qhr761WpGHfoZPZ





Opera already has a cookie manager that lets you edit cookie values. You only need to go to Google's homepage, right-click on the page, select "Edit site preferences", go to the "Cookies" tab and edit the item that starts with "NID".



I couldn't find some great cookie managers that worked in the latest versions of Internet Explorer and Safari, but the instructions should be similar.



Sharing the "NID" value allows other people to try an experimental Google interface. The next time when you find an interface that looks different and you send a tip to gostips@gmail.com, you can also include the NID value of your Google cookie.



If Google constantly changes the "NID" value and you can't use the experimental interface for too long, delete your Google cookies and start again. What if you don't like the interface and you want to go back to the regular UI? Just remove the "NID" key or delete its value using the cookie manager.

Gmail's Newest/Oldest Pagination Features

The latest Gmail design refresh replaced pagination links with arrow buttons. Even if it's not obvious, the navigation links that sent you to the newest/oldest messages are still available in the new interface. Just click the message similar to "11-20 of 3903" from the screenshot below and you'll see the two options that appeared to be missing.





This works for Gmail's search results and when you click one of the labels. For example, you can go to the "All Mail" system label, click the pagination message, select "Oldest" and find the first messages from your Gmail account.



For the search terms that return a lot of results, the only pagination feature that works is "newest" because Gmail shows vague estimations for the number of results like "1-20 of hundreds" or "1-20 of thousands" and it can't determine the last page of results.



{ Thanks, jpp. }

Undocumented Shortcut for Caps Lock in Chrome OS

One of the most important changes Google made when designing the keyboard for Chrome OS notebooks was replacing the Caps Lock key with a search key. While the search key is not very useful since it only opens a new tab, the Caps Lock key made a lot of comments, forum threads and emails unreadable.





If you really need to use the Caps Lock key, there's a way to change the search key into a Caps Lock key in the settings. Unfortunately, this is time consuming, especially if you constantly switch between the search key and the Caps Lock key. There's a better way: press both Shift keys at the same time to enable or disable Caps Lock. It's an undocumented shortcut that works in the latest versions of Chrome OS.



{ Thanks, Cougar. }

Change Google's Search Domain in Google Chrome

If you don't live in the US, Google likes to think that the localized version of the search engine for your country is the most useful. That's the reason why it redirects you from google.com to google.tld (google.co.uk, google.fr, google.co.jp etc.).



I prefer the google.com version because it has the latest features and search results are a lot better. To switch to google.com and bypass the redirect, you can click "Google.com in English" at the bottom of the homepage or just go to google.com/ncr. The early versions of Google Chrome used to respect my choice and adjusted the search domain after a restart. Now Google Chrome no longer checks the Google cookie to see if I changed the domain and only determines the right domain based on my IP.



One way to solve this issue is to create a custom search engine for google.com, but the downside is that you lose the search suggestions. A better way is to edit a settings file. Here's how to do that:



1. Close all Chrome windows.



2. Go to Chrome's user profile directory (for example, in Windows Vista and Windows 7 the path is: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Google\Chrome\User Data\).



3. Open the file Local State in a text editor like Notepad, TextEdit or gedit.



4. Find the two lines that include "last_known_google_url" and "last_prompted_google_url" and change the Google URL from "http://www.google.tld/" (.tld=.co.uk, .fr, .co.jp etc.) to "http://www.google.com/" or any other Google domain.





5. Save the text file and restart Chrome.



6. If you see an infobar that asks if you want to switch to your local domain or keep google.com, choose the second option.



This should works even if you want to change Google's domain from google.es to google.pt, from google.be to google.fr or any other combination. If you live in Portugal, but you'd like to use Google Spain and don't know how to change the country in Google Chrome, this trick should be helpful.

Show Fewer Gmail Conversations

If you've ever wanted to see less than 25 conversations on a page in Gmail, you'll be glad to know that it's now possible to do that. Just go to Gmail's settings page and select 10, 15 or 20 from the drop-down "Show [x] conversations per page". Until now, the only options were 25, 50 and 100.





The new options are useful if you don't receive too many messages or if you want to improve Gmail's performance. Gmail loads a lot faster if it only has to fetch 10 conversations instead of 25.





{ Thanks, Herin. }

How to Use Google Music on an iPad or iPhone

I mentioned in a previous post that you can use Google Music Beta on an iPad and even on an iPhone or iPod Touch, but some users complained that it didn't work for them. Google Music loads well, but after clicking the "play" button nothing happens.

Here's a trick to make Google Music work every time: start playing a song, pause and play again. It's unfortunate that you have to use a workaround, but Google Music doesn't officially support Safari for iOS. The system requirements page says that it only supports "Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer 7 and above" and that you need Adobe Flash.


It's interesting that this trick lets you play music on more than one device simultaneously. For example, I was able to play music on my iPad and iPhone at the same time, even if Google says that "music from your library cannot be played simultaneously on more than one device". The unofficial non-Flash interface is an unexpected loophole.