Did you get all that? Have you ever thought, “It’d sure be handy if I could save this online receipt as a PDF to my Google Drive, without much work.”?
If you’re using Google Chrome, it’s easier than you thought.
Category Archives: Web Browsers
Google Chrome
It’s been over a month since it was released, and I thought I’d give my two cents worth, no matter how banal it may be. Overall it’s an awesome initial effort from Google! It is definitely faster than Firefox on my laptop and any slight improvement like that is a welcome plus. The built-in developer tools and task manager, though not yet on the par of Firefly, are a great addition to an initial release. Some of the UI effects are slick, such as the download statusbar, and its built-in support for ‘web applications’ is a neat, new feature (to me at least).
That said what I’m really waiting for is to see what happens in the future, specifically their support of add-ons, or extensions. There were rumors early on that Chrome may support Firefox add-ons natively (similar to AvantBrowser’s Orca), but recently Google said they were going to be creating their own extension system. A system that they hope is more stable and does not impact the browser’s overall performance.
For now I’m sticking with Firefox 3 until said extension system is completed and we see what types of extensions can be and/or are built. You can use a proxy like Privoxy to replace Adblock Plus, and there is Greasemetal to allow you to use (some) Greasemonkey scripts in Chrome. But they really need a vibrant extension community to pull over users like myself, as the performance of Firefox is getting better with each new release and is good enough to keep me from moving away from my highly customized browser.
Related to this, something that slightly worries me is Google’s past history regarding product development. Don’t get me wrong I love all of their tools such as Docs, Maps, etc. but things like Gmail are still in beta after over 3 years have passed. New features that you feel would just be built in are being slowly offered via optional Labs settings. Though Google did an excellent job with their initial releases of Gmail and Chrome, they really need to keep the new features or innovations coming to keep users interested. This is where extensions are so important, as no one at Google (or Mozilla) could come up with all of these trinkets on their own.
Font Issue – Firefox 3 on Mac OS X
Just upgraded the wife’s Mac to Firefox 3, seemed to be painless and straightforward. Until she went to use it the first time herself and some sites would show garbled text, what looked like squished fractions for certain text on web pages. Only certain sites, only certain text. Wikipedia is one that is usually affected.
Unfortunately not much information can be found on MozillaZine or most support forums. Mainly because it’s kind of hard to describe or find the right search terms for. But I did find a support post finally that pointed me to the true fix: disable the Helvetica Fractions font in Font Book.
Hope this helps save an hour of someone else’s time 😉
Coolest FF extension yet!
If you’ve ever used iRider the browser, it’s somewhat along those lines. Shows pictures of the current page for each tab you have open, in the sidebar that is. I’m digging this so far…..
Might I also say one of the few innovative features for Firefox, albeit the aforementioned (and little-known) iRider has had something similar for awhile.
The Macintosh Hell(vetica)
As I was toiling away on my wife’s website, I came across an extremely weird and frustrating bug/problem. She adamantly wanted to use Helvetica as the font for the text on her e-commerce site; being a non-designer myself, I had no objections, and I put it in the font-family list in the CSS, and then added more mainstream fonts as backups.
After doing so, we noticed all of a sudden that the site was acting strangely in Safari. Most of the pages displayed gibberish, actually what looked like a bunch of numbers and fractions, instead of the text copy. Not being a Mac fan or guru, I struggled to find any semblance of an answer, as I wasn’t sure if it was the browser, or Mac OS X, or what.
Finally I found this Usenet posting that finally described my symptoms in detail. Bullet point 1 was my issue. Looks like for some reason Helvetica Fractions font gets used instead of Helvetica by the OS/Mac browser. Whether it’s due to a font cache issue, or a corrupt font, I’m not sure. Regardless, it’s random (can happen to any Safari user) and I can’t afford to do much else other than make the site work out of the gates for all users (I can’t afford any display issues for any potential user).
So we ended up removing the use of Helvetica altogether; even one unhappy or confused/lost customer is too many. Arial was a nice compromise….but I share this to warn others considering that font, or those who use Safari and wonder what’s going on when some sites have garbled text.
Opera adds BitTorrent client
Opera has released a tech preview of version 8.02 of its browser. As always, you can get it here.
Feature of note: they’ve added a BitTorrent client. Wow! Nice!
The browser wars have already begun
And it’s not who you’d expect…seems a little flamewar has erupted between Asa Dotzler over at Mozilla and Opera’s CEO, lemme just call him by his initials of JVT. Asa is known to be rather critical of Opera, IMO a troll dedicated to ripping them at every chance. Just read his rant from a couple weeks back, where he called Opera a bunch of liars when they claimed to have won Best Browser of 2005 from PC World, when in actuality it was a mistake due to the confusing article at PC World. He was hit hard in his blog for that one, all of us Opera users came to our defense, most of us with civility (please ignore trolls, they live in every group). You’ll notice a response from me in there as well, if you look close 🙂
Anyhow, as seems typical, he secretly cowered and posted a followup entry where he says ‘I don’t hate Opera’. Asa has a habit IMO of spouting off, then surreptitiously backtracking in later comments.
Well, in the ‘foot-in-mouth’ category, you can now add the suddenly-vociferous CEO of Opera, Jon von Tetzchner, or JVT, who has started commenting on Firefox’s usage statistics, and how he thinks their flawed due to pre-fetching. Now even though I use and love Opera, and agree with his comments, I don’t think it’s time to start exchanging barbs with Mozilla. For a couple of reasons: most importantly, because all it will be is bad press that Opera is now attacking Mozilla, and whining about something because they can’t get above a 1.x% market share. Additionally, this could then be misconstrued as commerical vs. OSS.
JVT and Opera are usually very secretive about their plans and the company, etc. Just about anything you ask about, especially related to the next versions of the software, you won’t find out until they release it. Which I’ve disagreed with, but it’s their call; but actually now I think it’s good, as I would assume such traits would transfer over the marketing/PR department, or at least be coming from their CEO. But alas, JVT decided to misstep, and make comments against Mozilla. Alot of Operettas (as I like to call Opera fans, endearingly), are coming to his defense, saying it was the press’ fault, misconstrued comments taken out of context, he wasn’t attacking them, just stating opinion. Once again, though, if you know this, should you not temper your comments against Mozilla? Make the PC comments….
C’mon, people, we’re all on the same side, fighting the same fight!
Opera 8.01 (Final) released
Well, after much anticipation (almost 2 months’ worth), Opera 8.01 [FTP] was unleashed unto the world. It’s a recommended security update release as well, as they addressed a few open security bugs, nothing critical AFAIK.
Seems OK so far, I mean I’ve been using the RCs for awhile. Although I notice some graphics problems while scrolling. The text that scrolls off and then back off the screen starts looking pixelated and distorted a little. Hmmm…will have to keep an eye on that.
Mozilla flaw resurfaces -AND- Opera 8.01 removed
An oldie but goodie bug in Firefox (Mozilla) has resurfaced, affecting multiple browser window sessions. They need to get their act together; I know the number of bugs is small, but come on, every month a new one. Let alone an ‘old’ one, new again.
On another problematic note, albeit less serious, Opera removed their ‘final’ candidate for 8.01 after some crucial bugs were discovered. It’s the first time I’ve noticed this happening for Opera, but that is also why they don’t announce it to the public right away, even the final releases. They simply post to their FTP servers, and after a couple of days, if nothing is found, then it becomes the official release.
blog of hair 