conormulligan.com / blog

Google’s answer to the question no-one asked landed today with the launch of their Chrome web-browser. And it’s actually quite good. It’s light, very fast, very easy to use, and does have some features to love.

Getting the most attention is V8, a new JavaScript interpreter Google engineered from the ground up for raw speed. It’s noticeable too, pages with a lot of client-side code are demonstrably faster than in Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Other distinctions include a very tidy interface that looks great on Windows Vista (Chrome is also available on XP; Mac and Linux users will have to wait a bit longer to get their hands on the beta) and a nice model wherein each tab operates within it’s own process; if the tab content is slow or crashes, the rest of the browser remains unaffected. It even includes a task manager to view the memory and cpu usage of all active tab and plugin processes (in fact, if you have other browsers open, it will include their resource information along side Chrome’s).

It’s not perfect, and is clearly still in beta. While stable, many killer features are still missing, like bookmark management, RSS feed integration and a proper plugin model. Also, the lack of a dedicated search box is really annoying for longtime Firefox users, although this concern may fade with extended exposure (Chrome’s navigation bar doubles as a search box, using keywords and shortcuts to choose a search provider). On the other hand, it does automatically add search engines to it’s collection when you use them (go to amazon.com, and moments later amazon search is listed in your search engine providers).

Overall, Chrome is a very promising entry into the competitive browser market, and while obviously an early product missing some important features, it is stable and usable for those who don’t require some of the complexities associated with Firefox.

By default, Firefox 3 now blocks Javascript code from hiding the browser navigation bar. The idea behind this is simply to stop malicious popups from emulating a native OS window.

But, for advances users well aware of what constitutes a malicious popup and what it looks like, the ever-present navigation bar can be distracting. Fortunately, you can disabled it by altering a setting in about:config.

1. Type about:config into the navigation bar and press Enter (ignore the warning).
2. Type dom.disable_window_open_feature.location into the filter textbox. A single entry should remain.
3. Change the value field to false.

You can now close the about:config window; popups can now hide the navigation bar like in previous versions of Firefox. To restore the default setting, simply change the value back to true.

This Tuesday, the 17th of June, Firefox 3 will finally come out of beta. Just so you know.

I moved to using Firefox 3 nightlies as my primary web-browser a few months ago, a move that was painful not because of the volatile nature of pre-release software, but because of the patchy support for the Minefield builds amongst the most popular Firefox plugins. Slowly but surely, I got all my essential add-ons functional with the glaring exception of the Del.icio.us plugin. I eventually resorted to using an-invasive add-on (Shareaholic) just to have access to simple Del.icio.us functionality.

Well, my worries are finally over, as today Yahoo! released a Firefox 3-friendly Del.icio.us plugin.

The first thing I noticed when I installed the update was how all-encompassing it is; by default it adds:

• 3 navigation-bar buttons
• 3 status-bar icons
• A toolbar
• A sidebar
• A main-menu entry
• An options-menu entry
• Integration with the location-bar bookmark icon
• An ‘imported’ column in the bookmarks library
• And possibly more to be discovered

It sounds a bit much at first, especially when you take into account the massive overlap of functionality between all UI additions, but it is immensely customisable so you can get rid of as much or little of the fluff as you like. If, like me, you’re bookmarking needs are relatively simple you’ll likely get rid of everything barring the navigation-bar buttons.

Anyway, you can download the extension here; as always be careful as this is still technically beta software.

I’ll say it again: Google needs to buy Remember the Milk.

Remember the Milk is a task-management web-application. This may not sound like much, and rightly so, task-management applications are beyond ubiquitous, but it really is an exciting product that blows away many of the conventions associated with your average productivity application.

In particular, the RTM folks have spend a lot of time integrating their product with others, including three from Google (Gmail, Google Calendar and iGoogle; it also uses Google Gears for offline access and Google Maps for geo-tagging tasks). So, is Remember the Milk an obvious target for a Google acquisition? Clearly not, or they surely would have indicated something by now.

Nevertheless, this is an application that they should firmly set their sights on, particularly as they take the company into more corporate territory with Google Apps, where Remember the Milk could be really useful. The Gmail integration (achieved with the use of a GreaseMonkey-style Firefox plugin) should be enough to convince anyone; if RTM was available to everyone in Gmail’s sidebar I have no doubt the vast majority of users would find it useful. It’s a uniquely suitable place to locate such functionality: everyone views their email every day, a lot (like me) keep Gmail open for hours on end.

Come on Google, this is an easy one.