Chrome users are all a-twitter over Chromed Bird, the free Google Chrome extension that brings Twitter to your toolbar. It’s a safe bet that most people think mobile when they tweet–smartphones, PDAs and such–but most users also access and manage their Twitter accounts from their desktops or laptops. Chrome fans will find that Chromed Bird makes Twitter even easier to use.
We downloaded and installed Chromed Bird, which placed the small Twitter-like Chromed Bird icon on our Chrome toolbar and opened its setup interface in a new tab. We signed in to our Twitter account, and Chromed Bird authorized itself with the Web site. Next we clicked the Chromed Bird icon. A pop-up appeared in the corner with a compact Twitter interface already signed into our account and topped by an expandable panel with the familiar character-limited tweet-composing field, URL shortener, counter, and Tweet It! button. A small toolbar held entries labeled Log Out, Options, Refresh, and Suspend, with the larger tabbed Lists toolbar below. This gave us access to our tabs labeled Unified, Home, our personal page, DMs, and other lists, as well as drop-down tab labeled Select a List. We right-clicked the toolbar and selected Add Lists Tab and Add Search Tab and quickly added a search field and a new Lists tab. We right-clicked the DMs tab and selected Hide Tab, which removed the tab from view; right-clicking the toolbar and selecting Show DMs Tab brought it back. We were also able to completely remove any tab easily and restore it with a few clicks. Next we opened Chromed Bird’s options, which offered extensive choices for configuring how the pop-up looks and behaves as well as options for notifications, timelines, the URL shortener, image and microblogging services, and Advanced settings.
Chromed Bird makes Twitter easy in Chrome. It integrates well with Twitter and performs perfectly in sending and receiving tweets from the Chrome pop-up. Its many options let us customize the look and operation of our Twitter experience. If you tweet, try Chromed Bird.