Lacisoft's » chrome

Google Chrome bookmark synchronization just landed on dev channel

lacisoft — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 03:41:47 +0000

The Chrome development team just pushed live to the dev channel the new Google Chrome with version number 4.0.201.1. This contains a lots of bug fixes but one major new feature too – bookmark synchronization.

Now you can synchronize your bookmarks across multiple Chrome installations (multiple computers). To activate bookmark synchronization, start Chrome with the “–enable-sync” flag. After you fill in your Google Account data, Chrome will upload and store your bookmarks. Now when you add or modify a bookmark, the changes will be sent to the cloud and immediately broadcast to all other computers for which you’ve activated bookmark sync (using the same XMPP technology as Google Talk).

Read the announcement and enjoy this new feature from Google Chrome.

Popup management in the new Google Chrome

lacisoft — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 14:29:09 +0000

I’ve upgraded today to the latest version of Google Chrome available on the dev channel and finally popup management is available in Google’s browser. I’ve been waiting for this for a long time. I even made a post about how much i hate the lack of popup management in Chrome.

Theme support also has been added but the link for downloading themes for Google Chrome does not work yet.

Romanian browser usage trends

lacisoft — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 07:16:04 +0000

I’ve recently made a study about the browsers preferred by romanians. I don’t claim this study to be 100% accurate but it can be useful in some situations.

The methodology was simple. I took the browser data for a few of the largest romanian sites listed in Trafic.ro (a web statistics system which provides browser usage data) and i made from those numbers the following chart which covers the period between November 2007 and June 2009

What is clear from this chart is that:

the days of IE6 as the leading browser are numbered. It may take approximatively 2 months and Firefox 3 market share will pass beyond that of IE6
IE7 would have been the leading browser but as we see around April 2009 when IE8 appeared IE7′s market share started to fell. IE8 is cannibalizing her older sister.
Google Chrome is steadily climbing. Now it is around 2% and it gains market share month by month very rapidly (2% is very fast if we take into consideration that Opera is at 4% for about 4 years)
Opera is stuck at 4% and it does not seem to grow beyond this number in the near future.
Safari is growing but at a very very small pace
There are still about a combined 4% of Firefox 1 and Firefox 2 users

One thing is sure. Internet Explorer’s domination is coming to an end. The browser market is very competitive and there are quite a few options to choose from.

What the study doesn’t show but i’m predicting now is that by the end of the year Google Chrome will pass 10% and it will take market share both from IE and Firefox.

Chrome Experiments and Extensions

lacisoft — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 08:27:24 +0000

Or could i call this post just Javascript is the future ?

It seems that Google indeed has big plans with Chrome. That’s why they built in a very advanced and fast Javascript engine called V8. This Javascript engine will allow developers to create highly advanced applications that run directly in the browser without any other plugins, giving Chrome a huge advantage over Internet Explorer and Firefox.

To demonstrate Chrome’s abilites Google announced the so called Chrome Experiments, a handful of applications designed for Chrome. For example there is a Tetris game made entirely with the use of Javascript and CSS, without any other plugin. But the DOM Tetris is just one of many experiments.

Experiments that work very well on Chrome. Google advises us that they may work on other browsers too, but much slower. And i tried to run them on Firefox, some of them worked, some of them not.

Back to Chrome. My opinion is that this is the future, this is how applications will be done. I think that as soon as Chrome is mature enough, even more desktop software will move online so users will just need an operating systems and a browser.

Chrome’s abilities are powerful indeed, most of those who didn’t adopt Chrome yet, did this because of the lack of extensions (Firebug is a killer, you can’t live whitout it). But Google is working on this too, the proof is that there is alredy an extension howto page and i think extensions will land for regular users (easy setup and so on) not later then the middle of this year. Matt Cutts posted already a an example and a short description on howto setup your first Chrome extension if you can’t wait till then.

But when extensions will become something usual for Chrome, the speed and the abilities of the browser will make very hard for the competition, especially for Microsoft to catch up with Google.

New Google Chrome Beta

lacisoft — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:15:52 +0000

Google is just rolling out a new beta of the increasingly popular Google Chrome browser, with many improved features. This update comes just a few months after they took off the beta label from Google Chrome in last December.

From the new features:

improved speed (about 25% to 35%)
form autofill
full page zoom
autoscroll
a new way to drag tabs in side by side view

More details on the new Google Chrome blog.

Google Chrome’s popup blocker sucks!

lacisoft — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 17:09:22 +0000

I’m having difficulties working on Chrome lately. I’m using a webpage that constatly spawns popups for reminders and my problem is that Chrome blocks these popups. And it shows the notice that a popup has been blocked only for a few seconds. If you are not quick enough you have no way to see the popup.

The annoying thing is that there is no way to enable popups for a certain site. At least not from Google Chrome interface. I found a startup parameter “-disable-popup-blocking” that should do that but i want to enable popup blocking only for certain sites. Not all of them! Maybe Google should have waited with the launch of Chrome until some basic features like popup blocking are finished.

Here is the rest of the startup parameters (maybe they help someone):

-disable-hang-monitor
-disable-metrics
-disable-metrics-reporting
-assert-test
-renderer-assert-test
-crash-test
-renderer-crash-test
-renderer-startup-dialog
-plugin-startup-dialog
-testshell-startup-dialog
-plugin-launcher
-channeltesting-channel
-homepagestart-renderers-manuallyrendere…
-renderer-pathplugin
-single-process
-process-per-tab
-process-per-site
-in-process-plugins
-no-sandbox
-safe-plugins
-trusted-plugins
-test-sandbox
-user-data-dir
-appupload-file
-dom-automation
-plugin-pathjs-flags
-geoidlangdebug-children
-wait-for-debugger-children
-log-filter-prefix
-enable-logging
-dump-histograms-on-exit
-disable-logging
-remote-shell-port
-uninstallomnibox-popup-count
-automation-channel
-restore-last-session
-record-mode
-playback-mode
-no-events
-hide-icons
-show-icons
-make-default-browser
-proxy-server
-dns-log-details
-dns-prefetch-disable
-debug-print
-allow-all-activex
-disable-dev-tools
-always-enable-dev-tools
-memory-model
-tab-count-to-load-on-session-restore…
-memory-profile
-enable-file-cookies
-start-maximized
-enable-watchdogfirst-run
-message-loop-strategy
-message-loop-histogrammer
-importsilent-dump-on-dcheck
-disable-prompt-on-repost
-disable-popup-blocking
-disable-javascript
-disable-java
-disable-plugins
-disable-images
-use-lf-heap
-new-http

Upgrade your browser!

lacisoft — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 07:05:29 +0000

Often i found myself wondering about why people use some antique and insecure software. For example Internet Explorer 6. This browser was launched back in 2001 and many many people still use it. Now when Internet Explorer 8 is about to be launched. In fact if you look in the statistics of any high trafic website you can see that Internet Explorer 6 is the most used browser. After that comes other variants of Internet Explorer or Firefox.

Also there is a high number of people still using Firefox 2. If in IE6 case we can understand to some point that people found it difficult to upgrade, in Firefox’s case we cannot. Because Firefox has built in updating mechanisms which deliver users a new version right as it is available. I must assume that people deliberately opt not to upgrade. And i cannot understand why!

Why is wrong to use old and in most cases unsupported software ?

1. Because these software products (IE6 and/or Firefox 2) have some serious security vulnerabilities which are very much known to hackers. If you wondering why you are full of viruses and trojans, why your personal information is being stolen, you can blame those old and insecure browser you are using.

2. Because some of the sites you’re visiting won’t display properly in them. Many of the newer sites were designed for modern browsers and probably use features that you’re browser isn’t capable to understand.

3. Because older browser in some cases tend to use more computing resources (memory and processor). For example Firefox 3 has been optimized to consume less memory then Firefox 2.

4. Because it lacks many features that could increase your browsing experience. Modern browsers have tabbed browsing, included phishing filter, private navigation and much more.

Yeah but i heard one must pay for Internet Explorer 7 ?

Wrong!

At first people had to validate their Windows to be able to install Internet Explorer 7, but later Microsoft realized that doing this will just help hackers to exploit Internet Explorer’s vulnerabilities. So they removed the need for validation. You can check out news about this here, here and here.

You can just download and install Internet Explorer 7 even if you have a pirated Windows. In fact if you turn on your Automatic Updates feature you will be upgraded for free and you also receive some security patches in order to secure your computer.

Why you shouldn’t disable Automatic Updates

Microsoft Windows has a built in feature called Automatic Updates. What this does ? When certain bugs or security vulnerabilities are discovered in Windows or other Microsoft products like Internet Explorer, Microsoft issues a patch to fix these problems. With Automatic Updates enabled these fixes are downloaded to your computer and applied to your operating system and affected programs.

So what is your problem with Firefox 2, i have been told its safe!

It was safe a year ago. Now it isn’t. The Mozilla foundation stopped supporting Firefox 2. You can read about this here. It states clearly:

“Please note: If you’re still using Firefox 2.0.0.x, this version is no longer supported and contains known security vulnerabilities. Please upgrade to Firefox 3 by downloading Firefox 3.0.6 from getfirefox.com.”

Ok, you convinced me. What options i have ?

If you like Internet Explorer you can stick to it. Just upgrade to a newer version like Internet Explorer 7 or Internet Explorer 8.

Download Internet Explorer

If you like Firefox you should use the latest version and if not you should still use some variant of Firefox 3.

Download Firefox 3

You can try some other browsers like:

Google Chrome

Opera

Safari

No matter which of these you use, upgrade to the latest version if you want a safer web and a better browsing experience.

Opera 10 looks good aka browser wars are back on

lacisoft — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 12:53:59 +0000

I’ve just tested Opera 10 with its new Presto 2.2 rendering engine and it seems that Google Chrome has some competition on the speed factor. Opera 10 loads somewhat slower then Google Chrome but much faster as Firefox. It renders pages faster then Firefox but i couldn’t decide wich one is faster Chrome or Opera 10 (need some benchmarks on this). Opera 10 also has an Acid 3 score of 100/100!

Still neither Opera neither Chrome will take Firefox’s place in my navigational behavior. That is because neither of them has something like Firebug. I’ve just come to the conclusion that i cannot use a browser without a good inspecting tool like Firebug. Sure you could argue that they have something like that. Yes, but it is far behind Firebug!

Opera 10, Chrome 1, Firefox 3.1, IE 8 and Safari. So who said that browser wars ended ? They just starting.

The origins of the Google Chrome logo

lacisoft — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 14:47:00 +0000

Source: http://thenextweb.org/2008/10/28/origins-of-the-google-chrome-logo/

Two annoying Chrome issues

lacisoft — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 11:42:03 +0000

I’m using Chrome heavily lately for work and for regular browsing. I’ve come accross two annoying issues that just ruin my Chrome experience.

1) When i type a domain name without “www” and the particular domain is not configured correctly it will give me an error. Firefox just ignores this and tries the domain with “www” too. I have to type always with www in front of the domain name to get the correct domain.

2) The lack of the RSS icon from the navbar, so i am forced to find the rss icon on the page or to scavenger hunt for it in the source code to be able to subscribe to the RSS feed with Google Reader.

I’m wondering if these things are as annoying to other people as they are for me. Hope they fix them soon enough.