Chrome: Mute audio in Tab

I wanted to mute sounds from some websites that are open in tabs. Some are irritating ads, some are help avatars that have a default 'hello how can I help'.

Listed below are the steps to how I configured the mute on the Chrome browser tabs

1. Open Chrome
2. Type the following in the address bar and press enter
3. chrome://flags/#enable-tab-audio-muting



4. Click on the Enable link



5. After enabling it will be highlighted as shown below



6. Restart the browser
7. Mute option appears on the browser tab

Microsoft Phasing out Internet Explorer - Chrome is successor

I was not too excited about the phasing out of Internet Explorer brand by Microsoft. The main reason is it is going to be the same browser going to be pushed on to the laptops with Microsoft Windows installed, but with a different name.

The reason I thought I would write about Internet Explorer brand is not completely because of the re-branding of Internet Explorer, but with a question that got answered within me that who is going to be the successor of Internet Explorer.

I bet it is going to be Google Chrome. Google Chromes performance lives up to the brand name - Internet Explorer. It is as slow as a dead snail nowadays. I wonder how Google have let its browser to degrade to this level.

Finally I installed Firefox which is still doing better.

[Solved] Firefox asks intranet password

I have installed firefox and set it as my default browser. When my laptop is connected to my company LAN and when I happen to open an internal URL, firefox always prompts for password.

I did the following and now firefox does not ask for password.

1. Open the firefox tab and type in the address bar - about:config
   
2. Click on I'll be careful, I promise! button.
   
3. Find network.automatic-ntlm-auth.trusted-uris in the list
   
4. Type the internal website URLs as a comma separated string and click OK
   

Open Mozilla Firefox 'Private Mode' permanently

I wanted to setup Mozilla Firefox to open in 'Private' mode always. It was a simple process to setup in Windows 8.0.

1. Open the properties of Mozilla Firefox from the task bar

2. In the 'Target' box, include an option -private

[Solved] An unexpected error occured in com.google.gapps - Android error pop-up

The pop-up appeared on my Android phone multiple times whenever I connect to internet. I did not have any clue why this happened. I finally tried the below to fix the issue, and it fixed the issue.

Note: This works only on a rooted Android device.

1. Open Terminal Emulator app
2. In the emulator type the following command

bugreport > /mnt/sdcard/bugreport.log

I open the file bugreport.log and looked for the exception message related to gapps. From the logs, I realized that while calendar sync starts, somehow the account name is set as blank, which was causing the issue. To double-check whether this is the issue, I opened the Calendar app in my mobile and navigated to Menu > More > Calendars. When I opened this menu item, the application force closed with unexpected error. This confirmed that the issue is with the Calendar app in my mobile. To fix this, I did the following:

1. From the home screen, I opened Settings > Applications > Manage applications > All > Calendar.
2. Clicked on 'Clear data'
3. Also opened the Settings > Applications > Manage applications > All > Calendar Storage.
4. Clicked on 'Clear data'

The issue is fixed!

In pursuit of fixing the issue, I found some useful information to troubleshoot issues in Android. I am listing them below:

Get Device information
The below commands can be used in a Terminal Emulator app.

dumpstate
dumpsys

Use Logcat
The below command can be used in a Terminal Emulator app:

logcat -b events

Get Kernel log information
The below command can be used in a Terminal Emulator app:

dmesg

Log file locations in the device

• /data/anr
  anr stands for 'Application Not Respoding'. So we can expect to see such information in this location.
  
• /data/dontpanic
  this location can contain crash logs.
  
• /data/kernelpanics
• /data/panic/panic_deamon.config
  this config file has the configuration to point to crash log output location.
  
• /data/panicreports
• /data/tombstones
  this location can have logs related to application crash.

[Solved] Chrome waits for a few seconds for new tabs

My chrome started waiting for a few seconds before the url typed was fetched. I disabled a feature in chrome settings which solved the issue.

Go to Settings > Show advanced settings > Privacy
In this section uncheck the option that reads 'Predict network actions to improve page load performance'

I hope this will be helpful to you too.