Google Chrome - week 1

Well, it's been just over a week since I decided to try using Google Chrome as my main web browser. How have I found it? Will I stick with it?

To be honest still I'm torn between Chrome and Firefox. There are pros and cons to both. Here's  a quick list of where each browser scores, from a fairly non-technical perspective (i.e. I'm sure there all sorts of things 'under the hood' that could affect the comparison but which I don't know enough about):

Chrome

• Significantly faster startup time
• Separate processes for each tab and extension (if one crashes you can carry on using the browser)
• Memory is periodically 'cleaned' to prevent memory usage constantly creeping up (although it uses more memory overall)
• Looks nicer!
• Web search integrated into address bar (although FF similar, though not quite so good, with search keywords)
• Searching browsing history searches page content, not just titles
• Generally, Google apps (which I use a lot of - who doesn't?) work better with Google browser

Firefox

• Uses less memory overall (although memory leaks do tend to mean it increases over time)
• Several key extensions not available for Chrome (yet), e.g. Web Developer, Colorzilla, NoScript, CookieSafe
• Better bookmark management (e.g. tags)
• Sorting options for history
• Right-click to view images/background images (have to open developer console in Chrome)
• Toolbars are customizable (particularly important with extensions - Chrome's extensions all get added into the main toolbar and move around randomly! Plus FF has the added advantage in this respect of a status bar for extension icons etc.)
• As a colleague pointed out yesterday, from a web development and browser compatibility point of view, Firefox is the most widely used browser (if you treat each major version of IE as different browsers) so it makes more sense to use it as your primarily browser when developing sites.

So, the jury is split! I expect Chrome to catch up with Firefox in many of these areas, although having said that, I know that the Firefox developers are already looking into many of the things where Chrome has taken the lead, such as separate processes, better search integration, etc. for future versions, so nothing is a foregone conclusion!

Google Chrome extensions

This week I finally made the big switchover from Firefox to using Google Chrome as my web browser of choice. I'd tried several times before, but the lack of extension support in Chrome put me off as I'm a bit of an extension junkie, as those of you who know me will testify!

However, with extensions now supported in the Beta version of Chrome and soon to be in the main release version too, I decided to make a serious attempt at switching over. I was already convinced about the browser itself - it wins hands down on the speed and stability stakes, compared to Firefox which, while it started out so well, has just got slower and clunkier as time has gone on (partly a result of all those extensions, but by comparison Chrome hasn't seemed to be affected too noticeably yet).

Admittedly, Chrome's extension gallery is still in its infancy. There are a number of things that are not yet catered for and many of the existing extensions are still in the early stages of development and quite buggy. However, there seems to be just about enough to work with and obviously over time things will improve.

I started out by making a list of all the addons I've got installed in Firefox and then searched for equivalent Chrome extensions.

Here's the list as it stands at the moment:

Firefox	Chrome
Adblock Plus	AdBlock
AFOM Addon	-	Not needed in Chrome as memory leaks are not such an issue
AVG Safe Search	WOT	However, Chrome's built-in security features make the need for this less urgent.
Colorzilla	-	One of my most-used FF extensions. However, the various functions are fairly well covered by Pendule and Chrome's built-in developer tools.
CookieSafe	-	This is one that I'd really like to see ported over to Chrome as soon as possible (I'd do it myself if I knew how!). In FF I disabled all cookies and then just enabled them on a per-site basis only when absolutely required, and temporarily unless for trusted sites I visited regularly.
Download Statusbar	-	No need for this as Chrome already shows download status in a fairly unobtrusive way.
Fasterfox Lite	-	Chrome is already a lot faster so no need for this at the moment.
Firebug	Firebug Lite	However, Chrome's built-in developer tools provide all the Firebug-like functionality I need at the moment.
GMail Notifier	Google Mail Checker Plus	The Chrome extension is actually much nicer than the FF one, although still has a few bugs.
Greasemonkey	-	It is possible to enable userscripts in Chrome, but as the only Greasemonkey scripts I used in FF were for Flickr, I've managed to find Chrome extensions for Flickr that do most of what I want anyway. Still, a standard way to add userscripts would be handy.
Html Validator	-	There are several validators for Chrome, including HTML Validator, but none currently works with locally hosted pages, like the FF one, which is a shame.
JSView	-	I never used this all that much anyway, but occasionally it was handy for quick access to scripts. The lack of an equivalent for Chrome is not a big deal though.
KeyScrambler	KeyScrambler Pro	Although I do like the added layer of security this provided, I did often find it a bit slow meaning I'd sometimes find myself typing garbled text into the browser. You can use the Pro version of KeyScrambler which works with a whole host of desktop applications, but I'm not about to fork out for it at the moment,
NoScript	-	Like CookieSafe, this is another one I'd really like to see ported to Chrome. FlashBlock provides some of the functionality (blocks Flash and Silverlight) but not all.
OpenBook	-	Chrome's bookmarks don't seem to have a tagging mechanism so this is fairly redundant. It would be nice to see more bookmark features in Chrome though.
Organize Statusbar	-	A must if like me you had so many extensions installed. Chrome doesn't have a status bar, but it would be extremely useful to have some way of customising and managing extension icons in the toolbar and address bar as currently there's no way to arrange them and they swap order for no reason every time you open the browser!
Personal Menu	-	See above. Thankfully Chrome has a much more minimal interface which minimises the need to mess around with the built-in menus etc.
Profile Switcher	-	I'm not sure if Chrome even supports profiles yet. This was handy at home with my wife and I using the same browser. However, as I've just bought her a netbook this won't be a problem in the future!!
Resizeable Textarea	Always Resize	Chrome supports resizing textareas by default anyway, but this extension makes even locked textareas resizeable.
Speed Dial	Speed Dial	Not quite as feature-rich as the FF one yet, but nonetheless does the job.
Split Browser	-	Never made too much use of this anyway, but Chrome's nifty ability to drag a tab out into a new window makes this less necessary anyway.
Unsorted Bookmarks Folder Menu	-	Not needed due to the different way Chrome handles bookmarks. It was a bit of a hack for Firefox anyway!
Vacuum Places Improved	-	FF got slower and slower the more pages were stored in it's history. However, even after importing my browsing history from FF into Chrome, it's still incredibly fast, so no need for this.
Web Developer	-	Number one on the wishlist of FF extensions for Chrome. Chris Pederick is apparently looking into the possibility but its a complex extension so could take a while even if he does decide to give it a crack! However, Chrome's built-in developer tools do cover a lot of the more useful functions, and Pendule has a few more, so its not the end of the world.
XMarks Bookmark Sync	XMarks Bookmark Sync

In addition, I've found a number of additional Chrome extensions that are proving (or look) useful, either in covering some of the fucntionality of one or more of my old Firefox extensions, or providing other functionality:

Fittr Flickr
Facebook To-Go with Instant Notifications
RSS subscription extension
Flickr Gallery Plus!
Chromed Bird
Google Calendar Popout
AutoPager Chrome
Slideshow
Google Apps Shortcuts

Speeding up Firefox

If you use Firefox and have found it slow starting up or laggy typing into the address bar, install the oddly named 'Vacuum Places Improved' add-on from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/13878.

It adds a little icon to the status bar allowing you to defragment Firefox's places.sqlite database file with a single click- that's the file that holds all the information about your browsing history etc.

I've installed it in FF on all the computers I use and noticed a considerable improvement. On my laptop the places.sqlite file was initially 25Mb and after 'vacuuming' its 15Mb. On my desktop, Firefox had almost ground to a halt, often taking over a minute to start up, and when you clicked into the address bar it took around 10 seconds before you could actually type anything! After 'vacuuming', FF starts up in 10 seconds and typing into the address bar is fine.

I highly recommend this if you use Firefox and notice any performance issues. Obviously its not going to solve memory leak (FF's other big problem) but it's a big help nonetheless.

Just to explain - the extension doesn't delete anything, it just optimises the file that holds all the data so that that data can be found more quickly.

You can set the statusbar icon to be hidden and only reappear a certain number of days from the last 'vacuum' to remind you to run it, or it can set to automatically run every x number of days.

Foxmarks, Google Bookmarks, Delicious....???

I think its about time I decided on a single solution for managing my bookmarks. At the moment I have different sets of Firefox bookmarks saved on three different computers (desktop, laptop and work), and a Delicious account (which I use with the Delicious Firefox extension).

I started using Delicious a while ago but I've never quite got into the swing of it, and since I don't want to share my bookmarks it seems a bit unecessary. Foxmarks seems a simpler solution if all I want to do is synchronise my Firefox bookmarks across computers.

But if I'm going to start syncing bookmarks, what about my history? It would be quite nice to be able to search back through my browsing history on all the machines I use. But does this mean installing the Google Toolbar? I really don't want another toolbar.

I think I'm going to give Foxmarks a try and see how I get on.

GMail Notifier keeps logging out of Google Reader

There's currently a bug in the (otherwise very useful) GMail Notifier extension for Firefox that logs you out of Google Reader every time it checks your email! Apparently the developer of the extension is aware of this and working on a fix, but I thought I'd mention it in case anyone else had experienced the same problem and was wondering what's going on.

Updated 'Flickr All Sizes Menu' Greasemonkey script

The Flickr All Sizes Menu Greasemonkey script adds a dropdown menu to select which size to view when you hover over the 'All Sizes' button in Flickr. Only trouble is, it's no longer being maintained by the author and consequently doesn't work properly any more. However, the alternative (Flickr AllSizes+) is too complicated for what I wanted, so I decided to edit the original script. Turns out it was only the styles that were a bit broken, so here is a working version of the script. To use it, just install the original script from userscripts.org, then edit it (click 'Manage user scripts' in the Greasemonkey menu, select 'Flickr All Sizes Menu' and click 'Edit') and replace the contents of the .js file with the code below:

(function() {
var test = document.getElementById('button_bar');
if(!test) return;

//get image id
var divs, imgId;
divs = document.getElementsByTagName('div');
for(i = 0; i < imgid =" divs[i].id.match(/\d+/);" imgurl =" new" id="'" size="o'," id="'" size="m'," id="'" size="s'," id="'" size="t'," id="'" size="sq'" imgsizes =" document.getElementById('photo_gne_button_zoom');" newspan =" document.createElement('span');" sizemenu =" document.createElement('div');" innerhtml =" (">' +
  '<li><a href="http://www.blogger.com/%27%20+%20imgURL%5B0%5D%20+%20%27">Original</a></li>' +
  '<li><a href="http://www.blogger.com/%27%20+%20imgURL%5B1%5D%20+%20%27">Medium</a></li>' +
  '<li><a href="http://www.blogger.com/%27%20+%20imgURL%5B2%5D%20+%20%27">Small</a></li>' +
  '<li><a href="http://www.blogger.com/%27%20+%20imgURL%5B3%5D%20+%20%27">Thumbnail</a></li>' +
  '<li><a href="http://www.blogger.com/%27%20+%20imgURL%5B4%5D%20+%20%27">Square</a></li>' +
  '</ul>'
);
newSpan.appendChild(sizeMenu);

//add stylesheet for the menu
var head, style;
head = document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0];
style = document.createElement('style');
style.setAttribute('type', 'text/css');
style.innerHTML = (
'#allSizes {' +
'  display: none;' +
'  background-color: #F3F3F3;' +
'  border: 1px solid #E3E3E3;' +
'  position: absolute;' +
'  margin-left: -49px;' +
'  margin-top: 24px;' +
'  padding-left: 0;' +
'}' +

'#button_bar > span:hover > #allSizes {' +
'  display: inline;' +
'}' +

'#allSizes ul {' +
'  list-style: none;' +
'  margin: 0;' +
'  padding: 0.3em 1em 0.5em 0.8em;' +
'}' +

'#allSizes ul li {' +
'  border: none;' +
'  margin: 0;' +
'  padding: 0;' +
'}' +

'#allSizes a {' +
'  background: none;' +
'  border: none;'+
'  display: inline;' +
'  font-size: 90%;' +
'  padding: none;' +
'}' +


'#allSizes a:hover {' +
'  color: #0063DC;' +
'  text-decoration: underline;' +
'}'

);
head.appendChild(style);

})();

Ubiquity Firefox extension

The Ubiquity Firefox extension from Mozilla Labs, while still at a very early stage of development and as such labelled 'Experimental', looks like it has the makings of something quite special. I haven't installed it yet so I can't say much, but this article on Practical Hacks gives a taster and has persuaded me to give it a try when I next get a spare few minutes.

'GCal Popup' Firefox extension

Although I haven't really got into the habit of using Google Calendar yet (to be honest I've managed to organise my life reasonably well so far without the need for a calendar), for those who do use it, GCal Popup looks like a nice little extension for Firefox.

Quite simply, it adds an icon to the status bar which, when clicked, opens Google Calendar in an overlay over the current web page, lightbox-style. Clicking the icon toggles the calendar.

I've not tested it but I guess the acid test is how quickly it opens. If it's no faster than having a conventional bookmark and opening in a new tab then I guess there's no real advantage, unless its psychological.

Anyway, the extension is currently labelled "experimental" so it might still be a bit buggy. But if anyone tries it out or already uses it, lets hear your comments.

Firefox security extensions

Recommendation time. Here are a few useful Firefox security extensions...

Noscript - Blocks harmful scripts and objects including javascript, Flash, Java, Silverlight, even iframes and frames if you want! You can set the level of protection you want and then allow or deny scripts on a per domain basis, either temporarily or permanently.

CookieSafe - Similar to Noscript except for cookies rather than scripts.

KeyScrambler Personal - Encrypts keystrokes when entering text in web forms etc. to protect against keyloggers. You can also install a plugin for Internet Explorer at the same time although this requires a system restart. The default setting for Firefox is for an overlay bar showing your encrypted keystrokes as you type but you can turn this off and just have the icon in the task bar or nothing at all.

Adblock Plus - Whitelist based banner ad blocking.

I know there's a temptation to think, "Is all this security really necessary?" Well, I'd rather be too careful and have to jump through a few more hoops while browsing the web than not be careful enough and end up regretting it!

Changing the Noscript keyboard shortcut

I recently started using the Noscript extension for Firefox in an effort to improve browsing security. One issue I noticed is that the 'Show/hide styles' keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+Shift+S) used by the Web Developer toolbar no longer works as the same shortcut is used to display the Noscript menu.

I already use an extension called Keyconfig which lets you edit most of your Firefox keyboard shortcuts (including those used by extensions) but for some reason the Noscript shortcuts don't appear in the Keyconfig list.

There is an easy fix though. Simply open extensions\{73a6fe31-595d-460b-a920-fcc0f8843232}\defaults\preferences\noscript.js (in your Firefox profile folder) and edit the line pref("noscript.keys.ui", "ctrl shift S"); to whatever key combination you want to use instead. I've changed mine to Ctrl+Shift+N (N for Noscript obviously, and it's not currently used by anything else).

Duplicate Tab Firefox Addon

Duplicate Tab lets you clone or the current tab (as a new tab or a new window), detach the current tab into a new window, merge all tabs in all windows, etc. Useful.

I think Mozilla have a drag-tab-to-desktop-to-create-new-window function (like Google Chrome) in the pipeline for an upcoming release version but in the meantime at least, this is a useful addon.