Halo,
You may already know this but I discovered this useful technequie to use your regular english keyboad to type German words.
The way it works is, hold on to Alt button on your keyboard while typing corresponding numbers. Release your alt button and wow! you see these German special characters.
small sharp s ("s-zet") ß alt + 225
small a umlaut ä alt + 132
small o umlaut ö alt + 148
small u umlaut ü alt + 129
capital A umlaut Ä alt + 142
capital O umlaut Ö alt + 153
capital U umlaut Ü alt + 154
For examples
to type Später,, type "Sp(Hold Alt, then type 148 for lower ä, release alt)ter"
Hope its helpful.
Tschüs
:)
...easier to use an App.
For Chrome there is ¡ÅççéñţšPłüş!
Just press Ctrl after the letter you you get äöüß
http://www.chromeextensions.org/other/accents-plus/
For Firefox abcTajpu works fine.
Works similar but uses Alt+F2
https://addons.mozilla.org/En-us/firefox/addon/abctajpu/