Saturday, November 20, 2010

The End of the Road: A Wrap Up

Well it's been quite the journey. From installing to using for my every day browsing needs to finding new extensions to discovering the world of Google Code to learning how to spell extensions correctly.

Now, I stand on the cusp of a decision. Do I stay with Google Chrome or do I go back to using FireFox.

Let's weigh the options.

Speed
Both opening and browsing speed is just a tiny bit quicker on Google Chrome. Although Firefox isn't far behind, and I'm not doing a scientific speed test here, I feel that Chrome is just a little more light weight and easy to use.

Winner: Google Chrome

Installing and Updating
One browser requires you to restart every time you download an update (Chrome). One browser does not (Firefox). Both do a decent job of importing bookmarks and different features. When I moved over to Chrome, my toolbar with all my bookmarks moved over exactly as it had been. I really didn't have to set anything up again. However, I know Firefox does the same, albeit, a little more awkwardly.

Chrome has installing down to an art though. It's really a one click process, you never even have to click save as or run, once you click to install it closes Firefox, installs in minutes, and then opens up Chrome.

Winner: Google Chrome

Add-Ons / Extensions
Both Google Chrome and Firefox have great extensions. Google Chrome definitely does the better job of installing and updating, no browser restarts required! Firefox installs and updates Add-Ons fine, but they usually require you to fully restart the browser before they take effect.

However, while installing and ease of use are important, where it really matters is choice. How many options does each have? A quick look at both sites tells me that Firefox has over 5000 different extensions available while Google Chrome has far fewer.

This is mostly because Firefox has a far wider user base and has been running for many years while Chrome has a lower user base and has not been around as long.

Winner: Firefox

Graphical User Interface
Although both browsers look good, Firefox has stuck with a very traditional look. Although you can modify the look, it basically functions around the conventions browsers are built on. Toolbars, Back, Refresh, and Home buttons, and a URL bar that you can type directly into to search.

Google Chrome has done something radically different by going very minimalistic. Instead of having the normal buttons up top, the whole top of the browser is the tabs themselves. This gives you more screen more to work and play in. All your options are minisized and the toolbar is moved to a single button on the right hand side of the screen. I love this inventive and inovative look and feel. I never missed any of the bigger buttons or old layouts.

Winner: Google Chrome

Open Source Community
Both Firefox and Google Chrome have a deep open source community. Overall, Firefox is more of an open source project as it was built from the group up by the open source non profit community. There are is a wealth of information and developers available who are constantly creating new ad-ons and even finding bugs and enhancing the very code Firefox runs on.

Google Chrome was created by Google, a for profit organization and the base was coded by employees. Although it has since been released as an open source project, it didn't have the same beginning as Firefox.

However, what Chrome losses from being from a non-profit and having less developers, it makes up with Code.Google.com. Google Code is an incredible service that provides a backbone and framework from within which developers can create and grow projects. Now that Android App developers are also using Google Code, the community will only continue to thrive.

Winner: Toss Up

Overall Functionality

All of the other categories were nice, and especially for this project, the open source community is extremely important, but for me, what really matters is how it functions in day-to-day use.

For most things, Google Chrome performs just as well as Firefox. You can browse and read email and look at photos all day, but there are times for me, and other Google Chrome users I've talked to, when you are faced with a weird glitch or problem and have to say, "Well, let's try it in Firefox."

I've discovered that I have to type most of my blogger posts in Firefox, or I will get weird button or formatting issues, as well as on elearning.emporia.edu. Sites that rely heavily on flash or video sometimes glitch out, as do some streaming services.

Winner: Firefox

And the Decision Goes To:
Drumroll please. Who will it be? The old and reliable or the young and vibrant with a few personality flaws?

Firefox.

I can't stop using it. Although Chrome does a great job, I hate those moments when I have to close down Chrome and use Firefox instead. Why go through that pain and trouble? Firefox, although I tried to quit you I just can't.

Chrome, I'll be back. You're getting better all time time.

Here's looking at you kid.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

A Hive of Code and Open Source: Google Chrome

After using Chrome for a month (well I'm on month two pretty much at this point), I've explored a lot of what Chrome has to offer. It's a slick browser, speedy, and it's got some great features.

But really, the point of this project is about open source, and today I'm going to explore Google Code, where many of the open source developers hang out. My goal is to simply give a few feeble insights into the matter, as after reviewing code.google.com for a while, there is really too much inside this massive site than I can take in.

Code.Google.com

code.google.com, or Google Code, is Google's open source "playground". Within the site you will find all the Google APIs, technical documents, news, video, forums, but most importantly, Google Code acts as the place developers can create new code, work on projects together, and receive free versioning control.

Google Code is a place that fosters the development of open source projects, and not just widgets for Google Chrome. The Google Code site lets users develop for any of Google's apps, from Google Maps to Google Book Search. This means developers have a place to host and control their software as the group works together.

Recently, Google Code has added the ability to work on Android Apps as well.

The Open Source mission statement reads:
Recognizing the vital role that open source software plays at Google, we of the Open Source Programs Office are tasked with maintaining a healthy relationship with the open source software development community. We do this by releasing Google-created code, providing vital infrastructure and by creating new open source software developers through programs like the Google Summer of Code.
Project Hosting
These projects are hosted through Google Project Hosting. Project hosting gives developers (and this is a quote from the main Project Hosting page):
  • Instant project creation on any topic
  • Subversion and Mercurial code hosting with 2 gigabyte of storage space and download hosting support with 2 gigabytes of storage space
  • Integrated source code browsing and code review tools to make it easy to view code, review contributions, and maintain a high quality code base
  • An issue tracker and project wiki that are simple, yet flexible and powerful, and can adapt to any development process
  • Starring and update streams that make it easy to keep track of projects and developers that you care about
Limitations
Before I let you go to far in thinking you can host just any old code project on Google Code Project Hosting, we should look at the vision statement. Their philosophy stems from keeping out a majority of the useless Open Source Licenses and only supporting features that over 80 percent of the community can use.

I hope you enjoyed this little look into Google Code. It's fun to dive in and look at where many of the developers who create exstentions for Google Chrome, create, store, and work together on projects.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

How Hard Could It Be? Installing a Chrome Extension



Last post I talked about using and navigating the Google Chrome extension page. This week I'm going to actually attempt to install a extension. Even as I write this, I know that I'm not completely happy with the right click dictionary that appears if you misspell a word and then right click on it.

I'm going to test, some what live, if I can find and install and extension that fits my need. Come with me! It's extension installing time!


I started by going right to the search and trying "improved dictionary". Nothing, so I tried "dictionary", "spell check" "spell check" still nothing. I was so sure that this would exist, but maybe not.

And then I saw it! An extension I didn't know I wanted, but I do now! One of my biggest pet peeves is going to a site tries to disable right click. Sure I could just view the page source, but that can be a major pain.
Well I didn't find exactly what I wanted, but this will do. Let's install "Allow Right Click" After I click on the link, I don't hit the install button right away. I'm wary enough of open source software to know that it is sometimes broken, loaded with bugs and spyware, or has a lot of other issues. The comments look OK, and it has a high star rating, plus 800+ install it a week. Looks like a pretty safe bet.

Now to hit that big bright blue install button. Less than 5 seconds later, the extension was installed.

That was really easy, though truthfully after the seamless install of Google Chrome I expected as much. I didn't even have to restart my browser like I do in Firefox.

I thought it was interesting to try and learn more about this extension and the author.

Interesting links I found include:
All of this is hosted on code.google.com

Next post I'll give you a brief overview of the dev world found inside Google Chrome, and then give you quick wrap up of my experience. I hope you've enjoyed. I've really enjoyed using Google Chrome.


Monday, November 8, 2010

The Open Source Side of Chrome: Chrome Extensions

One of the great things about using open source software like Google Chrome is the wonderful world of extensions. Extensions, known on Firefox as Ad-dons, are user or organization built mini plugins that extend the capabilities of a browser. They can turn your browser from just a basic application that browses to web to a Swiss Army Knife.

In this post, I'm going to walk you through using the Google Chrome extension site. In upcoming posts I'll talk about installing and developing Google Chrome extensions.

Google Chrome Extensions
You can find the official Google Chrome Extension site at https://chrome.google.com/extensions.
The Google Chrome Extensions Page

Like any Google product, the Google Chrome Extensions page is powered by Google's search and sorting functions. You can easily search for different extensions, but the Chrome Extension page really helps you find extensions that you might be interested in. On the left, extensions are broken down by categories. In the center top of the page, there are daily featured and top picked extensions, and the main real estate of the page is taken up by the most popular extensions.

I really like this layout, and I found it much easier to browse, navigate, and explore than Firefox's add-on pages. I had a lot of fun picking out different extensions, and Google does a great job of showcasing the most popular extensions. It's a very user friendly site.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Stopping Google Chrome Pop-Ups

Well, it's been about two - three weeks since I've installed Google Chrome, and for the most part, I'm still really enjoying the experience, but there are a couple small (and one big) problem that has really stood out.

My first problem came with pop-ups. After a few days with Chrome, I realized that I was starting to see pop-ups on sites I normally didn't see them at when I used FireFox. This included sites like KansasCity.com, and others that were getting adds served from a particular add provider.

This was really annoying! I looked at Chrome's specs, and yes indeed, it was supposed to come with a built in pop-up blocker. Annoyed, I did a couple of Google searches and ended up on Google Chrome support forums.

There I learned a lot of people were having the same problems, and Google was rather unresponsive other than to say "We are aware of the problem and working on it."

And then, the benefit of open source and having a large and technically skilled user base was made clear. Google told people that, in the meantime, they should use an add-on that a skilled user had created. I installed "Better Pop Up Blocker", and all of a sudden the pop-ups stopped! Problem was, they stopped for everything, include small JavaScript pop-ups that any online rich text editors uses.

I'd gone from no protection, overkill, and it took me quite a while to figure out why. I'd never really counted the functions of rich text editors as a pop-up before.

Once I figured it out, I would just turn it off when I realized it was happening. Unfortunately, I broke my only Chrome for a Month at home experiment when I couldn't get a SLIM post up.

I turned to FireFox and posted to the message board. I'm sorry Google Chrome. Will you ever forgive me?

Monday, October 18, 2010

4 Days With Chrome + A Cool Feature

Well I am now 4 days into my Chromy adventure. All in all, I've been very pleased with the whole experience so far. I really like the minimalist look of the browser, and the opening and closing speeds are very quick.

There are a lot of slick features I'm enjoying, like the downloads queuing and lining up at the bottom of the screen instead of on a separate pop-up window like Firefox. The home page has a nice list of recently closed windows so you can easily skip back to where you were if you close something on accident.


One of my favorite features so far is the view you get when you open a new tab. Before I've always set a homepage, but on the new tab they list out your eight most visited sights. It's cool to see where you visit, and actually rather motivational.

I appear to really like soccer. 4 soccer sites, 2 entertainment, and 1 educational!

I want to make sure that eLearning.emporia.edu is on the list! I don't want a list of all horrible sites, I want to show that I'm using the internet for something worthwhile.

This could really expose laziness at work though. Your boss tells you to open a new tab, and when you do it shows like 8 game or sports sites. Hmm I wonder what this worker has been up to.

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In the next post I'll detail my frustration with pop-ups on Chrome and installing Ad-Block plus to change the internet back to a fun wholesome place.

Friday, October 15, 2010

Installed!


The deed is done. Google Chrome is installed, and it took about three minutes to do so.

Installing Chrome

A simple search for the word Chrome, one click to navigate to the install page, a click on a button, and Chrome automatically downloaded, installed, and then imported all my favorites and favorite buttons from Firefox without me having to think about it.

Installed!
Pretty slick so far! In fact, I just wrote this post in Chrome. I like the minimalist design.