MELANCHOLY404 TECHNOLOGY

Have you ever created an online account using a mobile browser? Well, if you have, you must be well aware of the issues one can face while filling all the fields of a web form on a mere 4” display and an even smaller keyboard. I often used to skip the task on my phone and waited to be in front of a computer. It’s just easier to fill in all the information, including address and organization and create an account on a PC.

But no matter how far you try to run, these things always catch up to you one day. And when they do, it can be a real pain. So to ease the work load while filling these web forms online, you can take the help from your browsers, and Android apps where you can save all your different identities and then fill the info on any web page with a single tap.

You can save an average of 130 key-strokes and 4 minutes while filling these forms automatically on Android, but the peace of mind you get when everything is error-free and automated is priceless.

Let’s have a look at how we can get these features on Chrome and Firefox.

Chrome comes with an auto-fill feature on both Android and desktop browsers, and if you have them in sync, you are in for a treat. You can open the Chrome browser on your desktop and create a personal identity. These personal identities are later used to fill the web forms. To create a new personal identity, open the Chrome settings and look for the option Passwords and Forms. Here, click on the option that says, Manage Auto Fill Settings. If you are on a Chrome browser, click this link to open the settings directly.

Here you can create new profiles and even save credit card information for shopping websites. Click on Add a New Street Address to enter the data. Every change you make on the desktop will be synced to the browser. However, if you wish to save the profile directly on the Android’s Chrome browser, open the browser settings and navigate to Auto Fill Forms.

That’s all, create your profile and save the settings. Next time you are on a web page that requires filling a form, the browser will recognize the moment you select the first field and give you the option to fill the form directly. You can create as many different profiles as you want and Chrome will show all of them while filling a form.

Firefox and Dolphin don’t come with this built-in feature like Chrome, and thus we have to use an app called RoboForm to fill online web forms. After you install RoboForm on your phone, create an account and head over to the Identity section to create a new profile. RoboForm is an app that is used to remember passwords and auto-fill them in the web page, but it can be used to fill forms as well.

After creating the profile, head over to the RoboForm settings page and install the add-on for Firefox and Dolphin depending upon the browser you are using. After the add-on in installed, you can access the settings directly and fill the web forms automatically.

Well, I just made filling out forms on Android easy for you. I am sure you will love the feature the next time you see a web page with dozens of fields to be filled. Chrome auto-fill settings are easy to maintain, but RoboFrom gives more detailed profile creation and provides robust form-filling options. Try them out and share your views with us.

Cloud services make our lives so easy these days. We can save our files on the cloud and then access them on any of our devices or even public computers to continue our work right where we left off. These services are not limited to only files – people who use online sync services on their browsers know what I’m talking about. Chrome, Firefox or any other modern day browser allows the user to sync their bookmarks, history, and even passwords to all connected devices, making our lives easier.

Your browser and history might be available on any of your connected devices so you can manually open up the tabs you need to work on. But why do the manual work of opening all the sessions again? You are a Guiding Tech reader, you can do better. Today we will check out a service called TabCloud which directly syncs the entire session of your browser (all the open tabs) so you can open it exactly the same way on any of your connected devices.

Let’s have a look at how we can use the service.

TabCloud apps are available for Chrome, Firefox, Android. I’ll be using Chrome’s app for the initial setup, but you are free to choose your own platform. After you install the app from the Web Store and click on the TabCloud icon for the first time, it will ask you to login using a Google account. The app will not ask for any special permissions from your account. It just uses it to remember what you’re syncing to its servers.

Once the authentication is complete, you can tap on the TabCloud icon on the browser and select the tabs you wish to save. If you have more than one window open, you will see them as separate sessions. Also, there will be some of the tabs from your browser history the last time you accessed it. Now all you need to do is give a name to these open sessions and click on the save button.

That’s it! You can now download and sign in to the app on another browser or Android app and open all the tabs in new windows. You can choose to open the tabs in the same window from the TabCloud settings. The app for Android can be used to open these sessions on any installed browser. If your sessions are not saved on the new browser, you might have to log in to the websites. But if you are working on your personal device, it will not be an issue.

So that was how you can use TabCloud to sync your tabs across devices easily. There’s no limit to the number of sessions you can save using TabCloud, at least not that I’m aware of. But don’t forget to delete the sessions once you have successfully opened them on another device.

Chrome’s Incognito Mode or Firefox Private Window, be it on the computer or on Android, is a great way to browse the web without piling up a browsing history and to prevent cookies from being stored on the device. Once you are done browsing, even the device doesn’t remember if you have ever visited the page in the past.

Whenever we have to open a link on the browser for desktops in an incognito window, one can simply right-click on the link and select the option Open link in incognito window. But when it comes to Android, there’s no built-in way to click on external links and open them directly in the incognito mode. The links open in the regular browser and by then the damage is already done.

So today I am going to show you how to open links directly into Chrome’s incognito window using a simple Xposed module called IncognitoTab. This trick will make Android think about Chrome’s incognito tab as a separate browser and will ask you to choose which way you would like to browse when you open an external link. We will also have a look at an easy shortcut to implement the same for Firefox users (Firefox for Android, of course).

In the Xposed framework, navigate to the Download section, look for IncognitoTab and install it. The build is stable and less than 100KBs. After the app is installed, navigate to the Modulesection and activate the IncognitoTab module. Finally you can reboot the device, but if you wish to soft reboot, which takes a lot less time than the hard reboot, you can choose the option from the Framework section in Xposed app.

After the phone reboots, you are all set. There are no additional settings required. Next time you open up a link on your droid, the phone will give you an additional option to open the link directly in Chrome’s incognito window. You can choose to make that a default option or just select Only Once to be able to choose each time.

There’s no direct way a Firefox user can open links in the Private Window, but you can choose to make your Firefox forget all the history when you exit the app. So the trick here is to install two versions of Firefox from the Play Store, one normal browser and one Firefox Beta. Once both versions of Firefox are installed, open the Beta version and navigate to the browser settings. Here, tap on the option Privacy > Clear on Exit and select everything you see here.

That’s all – now, one of your two installed Firefox browsers acts completely as a private browser and when you choose to open links in Firefox Beta, nothing will be stored.

So that was how you can always open external links on Android without including them in the device’s history. The Firefox trick is more of a workaround , but trust me, it works and without the need of root or Xposed module. If you have any better options you would like to share, please drop them in the comments.