cc licensed flickr photo shared by myoldpostcards

It’s hard to stay shiny.

A few weeks since moving to Chrome for my primary browsing, a few dents:

  • Lack of Java. Not supported. Just means I have to launch Safari to sit in an Elluminate webinar. Very minor damage, just an annoyance.
  • Irregular frame targeting. Some of the messaging from windows to frames seems amiss, most notably in using phpMyAdmin where some queries seem to pop into its own tab. Just a scratch we can ignore.
  • Inability to render RSS. Put a URL in your Chrome bar for any RSS feed- whadyya see? Raw code. Yechhh. to see the RSS you have to view the source. Unsightly and embarrassing if your neighbors see that dinger.
  • The dreaded “Aw, Snap” I cant do anything screen. Some pages just bork- this one was for a Paul Saffo ComputerWorld article. From what I can sense, the page is fine, it is borking on the last bit loading of ad content. Maybe there is a moral there about the value of ads. I guess I can live with the inconvenience, moreso than filing a claim.

These are relatively minor. The browser is quick, and has crashed maybe once on me in the last 3 weeks, compared to Firefox which seemed to exceed that crash rate in a day. And none of that waiting for the cursor to respond while typing in a form field that the Fox lumbered along with.

I really like the Inspect Element (right/command-click on a highlighted page element- dive into the details of the CSS or scripts, all kinds of techie inspectors. I really like the usability of the view-source, with the code being text wrapped so I can actually read it w/o miles of horizontal scrolling, and URLs in code act like hyperlinks.

I like the built in language translation, been saving my uni-lingual ability all over the place.

I run about 4 other browsers anyhow, so its not a major pain to have to open a URL in another one.

I can easily live with the dents. I don’t miss the old wreck at all.


cc licensed flickr photo shared by Jeremy Brooks

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An early 90s builder of web stuff and blogging Alan Levine barks at CogDogBlog.com on web storytelling (#ds106 #4life), photography, bending WordPress, and serendipity in the infinite internet river. He thinks it's weird to write about himself in the third person. And he is 100% into the Fediverse (or tells himself so) Tooting as @cogdog@cosocial.ca

Comments

  1. Are some of these platform related? Because, as far as I can tell, Java works fine in chrome in my Blue Screen Machine. And the page you pointed to loads just fine.

    I’ve seen the “aw snap” message a few times over the last few months (I adopted Chrome as primary browser in January), but no more than 6 times at most.

    There are a few plugins I miss (in particular, I REALLY miss vertical tabs) and the RSS handling is abysmal, but overall I haven’t looked back in my shiny chrome rear-view mirror much.

  2. I’m converted too. I use FF to stream Netflix. Until now I’ve been a single browser-gal; you’re the 2nd person I’ve read who says they use multiple browsers. I used to when I was web-designing but no more.
    How do you use multiple browsers, then???

    1. Between my own stuff and NMC I have multiple YouTube, Google, delicious, flickr, twitter accounts, so I use them so I can stay logged into the same service with different usernames.

      Now I use Safari for sites needing Java.

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