cc licensed flickr photo shared by Johnny Grim

Dear Chrome Browser,

Despite our early leaps for joy I am sorry, but to quote BB King, The Thrill is Gone. Despite your spryness in startup and the slickness of the location/search bar, this relationship is just not working out. You have more than lost your shine.

You have really let me down. I cannot go on like this.

How? Do we have to keep going through your faults?

Ok, if you insist.

Today you just broke me with your penchant for inserting unwanted HTML cruft in a simple copy paste. Geez, if I wanted that, I’d be using MS Word. This has gone on again and again, as I work on a Wikispaces blog. Let’s say i want to copy a snippet of formatted text to another document (which works on every other browser as a format-preserved copy)

It’s just a heading and a bullet point. Yet, pasted into a new wiki page editor, it has something extra.. when I go to the wiki source, I see all kinds of <span> cruft:

==**1) How might this technology be relevant to the educational sector you know best?**== 
* your response here

When the source it is copied from is simply

==**1) How might this technology be relevant to the educational sector you know best?**==
* your response here

WTF with the extra stuff?

But before you go blaming Wikispaces, take this one on- I copied some text from my plain text editor (BBEdit) into a text field of a web site I wrote. Upon submission of the form, the content kept breaking, breaking (I have a routine that converts all URLs to hyperlink HTML). It worked perfectly in all the other browsers, but YOU inserted stray linefeeds that were not in the source.

Sure, there are extensions that make it possible for me to copy text unformatted- but I want some of the format– just what is in the source. And just for the spite of it, when I did enable the unformatted text copy extension– it broke the WordPress editor’s ability to add a hyperlink (the URL pasted into the tool was discarded and it used the highlighted text instead; which is useless)

Speaking of extensions, oh my. Although you list all kinds of Extensions (and it was slick how you made Greasemonkey compatible), I found many of them would just stop working after a while, forcing a restart to rejuvenate them.

You want more? My, the techies created you, but don;t you think you can manage to handle an RSS or XML URL without barfing? Safari has had rendering in the browser pane for years. You give me text and I have to view source to see the content.

I’m sorry Chrome, but its over. I’m back with Firefox, and on the OS X dock I use Safari, Camino, Opera for keeping me logged into my multiple accounts. None of them have put me through the hoops you have done to me… You’ve been cast off my dock.

Browsers are fluid, and the relationships are always in flux, so don’t take it personally. Maybe you’ll get your act together, but I’ll need some assurance you’ve really worked through your issues.

I just cannot take any more heartbreak with my content. Please don’t beg me to come back, it’s not dignified.

Take care of yourself, I am sure you can find another who does not mind your ways. But it ain;t me.

CogDog

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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. Here here! There’s so much to do and so little time. Fixing things that shouldn’t break isn’t something we can afford to do.

    After two or three people, it’s a movement! (Thanks Arlo).

  2. Mostly I like Chrome. The few extensions that I need (diigo, Amplify) work just fine. But the RSS thing is killing me. That and the much reduced functionality when using moodle, which I have to do virtually every day in term time and often out of term time. So I’m still giving Chrome a chance, but seeing Firefox on the side.

  3. Funny, I just tried several times to embed a video from TeacherTube into my Wiki with Chrome. Nothing. I switched to Safari – showed up instantly.
    I’m back with Safari. There you go.

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