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Chrome 2 Adds Some Serious Speed and a lot of New Features

May 22, 2009 By James View Comments

I’ve had Google Chrome installed since it was still in beta way back in November (it rolled out of Beta in November as well).

From the beginning I’ve said that my two favorite things about Chrome are it’s speed and it’s clean, friendly interface. Even in beta Chrome was by far one of the fastest browsers I had ever used and now, with the release of Chrome 2, it’s even faster and more stable.

One of my early complaints with Chrome was its weak contextual menu. If you’re a blogger and you use Firefox, you’re probably very familiar with the shortcuts your contextual menu provides you. While Chrome is still not quite up to FF standards their new contextual menu is beefed up quite a bit and definitely has many more of the basic necessities.

Surprisingly, one of the most requested changes that Google received about Chrome, and which has actually been addressed in Chrome 2, is the ability to hide the thumbnails on your tabs page. Now you can have all the joy of being able to quickly navigate to some of your most visited sites without all the embarrassment of friends coworkers being able to see that said site is The Hills Gossip Fan Club Blog.

Chrome 2 also features form autofill. This one is pretty much self-explanatory.

Chrome 2 may well work its way up to becoming my default surfing/blogging browser of choice but when it comes to taking care of business, Chrome can’t hold a candle to FF with Web Developer Toolbar and Firebug. Those are pretty much essential tools when I’m working on a project, which is practically daily. It’ll be interesting to see if Google even tries to make any headway in that area of FF.

All in all, if you’re not dependent on a lot of Firefox add-ons for your job, Chrome may well be a light, fast and intuitive option for your browsing needs.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: browsers, firefox, google, google chrome, Web Apps

Google Chrome is Out of Beta

December 11, 2008 By James View Comments

chromeThis has to be some sort of record for Google which usually keeps their products in a perpetual state of beta.  Gmail was released over four years ago and it still has the beta tag attached to it.  There may, however have been very good reason why Google decided to rush Chrome out of Beta.

Here’s the announcement put on the Google Chrome help blog:

We’ve heard a lot of feedback about product bugs and feature requests and have worked hard to prioritize work on them. We’re excited to announce that with today’s fifteenth release we are taking off the “beta” label! 

But why Google, why have you rushed Chrome out of beta?

Google Chrome is not out of beta because it’s ready, but because Google wants to sign some deals with computer manufacturers like Dell that will preinstall the browser. ” The Google’s open source browser has a number of eager customers, including OEMs who can’t offer the browser until it is in full release,” mentions TechCrunch. Even German’s Federal Office for Information Security said that Google’s browser is not for general use because it’s still in beta. If that’s price to increase the adoption, then Google didn’t have to do much: just pretend that Chrome is ready for prime-time.

That’s probably a pretty good assessment of why Chrome got pushed to 1.0 so fast.  Still, I’ve been using Chrome for a while and it’s lightening fast with a super clean interface and I’m definitely looking forward to see what improvements Google make to the browser now that it’s officially out of beta and into production.

Filed Under: Tech Tagged With: browsers, google, google chrome

Firefox Browser Takes 20% Market Share

November 5, 2008 By James View Comments

I’ve been using Firefox since 1.0 was released in 2004.  Once I got used to tabbed browsing I never looked back.  

For me, Firefox blew IE out of the water.  By the time IE finally caught up with the release of IE6 it was too late, I was already hooked.

In 2004 it seemed like IE was going to be the default web browser forever.  Netscape was, for all intents and purposes, already dead at that point and the thought of an open source browser was unheard of.

It’s hard to imagine that almost exactly four years after it’s initial release 1 in 5 people are now using Firefox.  

I have no doubt that number will continue to grow thanks to Firefox’s excellent open source community and the phenomenal number of plugins available to customize FF to fit your needs.  

If you haven’t already, you should really do yourself a favor and get Firefox.

Filed Under: Tech Tagged With: browsers, firefox, mozilla

Note to Firefox: Please Put “Add Tab” Option Back in the Toolbar

October 16, 2008 By James View Comments

After using Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 for a couple of days I have one request.  Please, for the love of god, add the option back to have an “Add Tab” button next to the other toolbar buttons.  I mentioned earlier that in this version they have removed this option and relocated it to actual tab bar.  It sucks.  I’m sure that left there I would eventually get used to it but why shouldn’t I at least have the option?

It’s like when IE6 came out and completely redid their design and moved the refresh button over to the right side of the address bar.  I rarely use IE and still haven’t gotten used to it’s new location.

The first thing I always do after downloading a new version of Firefox is edit the toolbar and put the “Add Tab” button in the exact same position every time.  Having it gone is just a pain and it seems silly to not give users the option to have it there if they choose.

Filed Under: Tech Tagged With: beta, browsers, firefox, functionality, Web Apps