Chromery

[kingandy]

I am now heartily using Google Chrome at work. (Well, I'm using something like five browsers^[1] regularly, by nature of the industry, but Chrome is my idle browsing tool of choice.)

Recently I took the bold step of switching off the bookmarks toolbar - something I never really used (and indeed used to disable) before Firefox, but I have rather got used to opening a favourite with a single click (or even in a new tab, with a middle-mouse-button click).

Happily, the cunning folks at Google have arranged the 'new tab' window such that if you have the Bookmarks switched off, your bookmarks show up at the top, under their principle of "When you open a new tab you're making a statement of intent - you want to go somewhere." It is also a neat way of training people to open new tabs and close old ones, preventing the risk of ongoing memory leaks. So it's all still available, without even toggling the bookmarks bar on and off, and as part of your new and improved natural browsing methodology.

Now I basically have to decide whether the extra window space is worth one extra click...

[1] For those interested: Firefox 3, IE 7, IE 6, Google Chrome and Lynx, though Lynx is just for convenience when I'm in a shell and isn't part of our normal cross-browser testing. Paul (lead developer) also uses Safari.

Comments

Links

[stsquad.livejournal.com]

I tend to use Links for my character based browsing goodness. I have yet to try emacs-w3 mode.

So has Chrome supplanted IE or Firefox?

Re: Links

[samharber.livejournal.com]

Chrome is nice, and the porn mode seems easy enough to use, but FF3 still wins hands down just for AdBlock and NoScript.

Re: Links

[stsquad.livejournal.com]

I recently moved from FlashBlocker (which is fairly recent as Flash is usually broken on my machine) to AdBlock Plus. Why I waited so long is a mystery to me, the general browsing experience is so much nicer now.

A clarification

[kingandy]

Chrome has supplanted Firefox as my idle browsing tool of choice.

So no Macs then

[richc.livejournal.com]

No safari testing then? Though I suppose Chrome covers it reasonably well....

Re: Links

[kingandy]

Paul has a Mac at home, and uses Safari on PC as his browser of preference in the office, but again it's not part of our testing...

We do have a mac in the office.

It's in a cupboard.

the keyboard is broken.

[kermix.livejournal.com]

I've been told not to use Chrome for work because their current license agreement basically makes everything you open there available to the public or something, which would be bad if we open a report full of customer orders and credit card numbers and such.

I haven't taken the time to look at the agreement though.

[richc.livejournal.com]

That license agreement was fixed last week IIRC

[kingandy]

Apparently that was a standard "By asking us to distribute your things you are giving us permission to distrubute your things" clause that they inherited from the generic Google terms and conditions (it's intended to apply to stuff like Picasa or Blogger, where you're actually asking them to display stuff, and obviously isn't relevant to a web browser).

And, as Rich notes, the clause was amended the day after release because the Blogs of the World cried out in anguish.

[kermix.livejournal.com]

It's strangely pleasant to know that our CEO / chief engineer is not up on the latest news.

[kingandy]

The Blogs of the World are quick to cry out in anguish, but are less keen to announce reparations.

[paulgregory.livejournal.com]

I am disappointed that Chrome doesn't let me middle-click an entire folder in my bookmarks toolbar like Firefox does.

On the whole I think the extra window space *is* usually worth the inconvenience - but when it isn't going to be for a period of time, the Ctrl+B toggle is simple enough.

[kingandy]

You can't middle-click but you can right-click and open-all. Unlike Firefox, it doesn't immediately nuke any other open tabs you have, only the current one (which, let's face it, is most likely to be a 'new tab' tab).

The wary can right-click / open all in new window.

I have however noticed that the middle-click open-in-new-tab functionality is a bit counterintuitive - if there's something with an onClick event, it is triggered as well as the newtab. Which I suppose is not entirely wrong...