When Google Chrome came out, there was much rejoicing. It was supposed to be the IE-Killer. Well, it's a great browser and all, but not really good enough to replace Opera (more on that later). But there is one particular feature which is particularly useful and convenient - "Application shortcuts". Its functionality is similar to Mozilla Prism, but much more robust.

What it does is allow you to create standalone browser windows sans any of the browser bars - navigation-bar, status-bar, menu-bar etc. which are quite useless anyways for sites like Gmail, Yahoo! mail ; and it allows launching of these from shortcuts directly from the desktop, start menu and quicklaunch.

So all you have to do is double-click an icon on the desktop, and lo and behold Gmail or Yahoo! mail opens. With a lot more screen space, and with fewer clicks. And without the overhead of other unnecessary browser UI elements. Lesser memory, lesser CPU usage.