blog among blogs

I have a fan!

He's probably the only one who will see this!

Ok, so I just got off of work, Mondays are always busy as a sack at our store for some reason.

(Some person calls about an issue they're having, and miraculously gets ahold of a tech:)

"I was trying to install iTunes but I can't get my computer to turn on and it sounds like it's laughing at me. What should I do?"

"I can't really solve that over the phone. Would you be able to bring the laptop in?"

"Uh sure, do you need an appointment, or when's the best time to come in?"

"Nope, just don't come on a Monday. And make sure you bring your charger," (I avoid the technical term AC Adapter).

"What's that?"

-_-

But anyway, I left the guys at work with quite a few customers. Because of the crazy Monday line we always get. But big deal, I've dealt it alone when people've called Mondays out before. And besides, tomorrow's my day off. And it's time to play! Or I like to begin sentences in this paragraph with conjunctions!

By the way, I'm either hearing shit, or there's a faint... church bell?

No, it's really distracting, like I can barely hear it but I just sat there confused for a minute because I can't tell if it's outside or in my room... or in my head...

But what I was gonna talk about is Google Chrome. I just ditched Firefox for it because I love it so much - in that it's faster, has a tinier interface, yet all the tools I want are still right there, and uh, it frickin browses for you. I feel like I barely have to type or mouse to get to the places I normally visit the most - the way it tracks your use locally and jams it in a surprisingly wel designed shortcutty interface. But you have to use it. Personally, I wasn't impressed by just reading about it, but after I tried it on a whim, and then used it for a week, mostly to see if it would slow my system or crash, more or less than Firefox, I was pretty much sold. For free though. I mean it's Google. I win.

I will say that there are small bugs still, but nothing game breaking, and I was pretty disappointed when I installed it and it hung during import of my Firefox settings. I'll brush that off though, and assume it's because of the unkempt amount of favorites, cookies, and temps that it was going through. Once I got it imported, it was like I had been using Chrome for months, and it seemlessly had all my saved passwords, history, perfectly intact favorites menu with the icons, and the search engines, which would have been Google by default anyway. 

The only thing to learn is terminology with Chrome. the rest you don't need to learn - just browse. In Soviet Russia, browser use you.

Chrome terminology:

Startup Page = What we normally think of as home, the page or pages that open with the browser.

Home Page = Can be seperate from Startup, this is what opens with a press of the Home button (which by default is not shown).

New Tab Page = Chrome's default for both. This is the coolest part, and it's the part that learns your style and helps you get where you like to go most, fastest. There are four parts to it: Most visited sites (with thumbnails) , bookmarks (a bar that you can turn on across all tabs, plus a list menu), links to most recently closed tabs and bookmarked pages, and a search box for your history.

That seems like a lot, and it is, because it does so much more, but it seems so tiny (read as: non-intrusive-all-up-ons-your-businesses) while you use the browser... to... browse. That being said, I'm truly impressed with the extra amount of space available to simply show the page you're looking at. Again, I didn't give a shit about features like this just from reading about them, but I definitely do now. Going back to the small bugs I mentioned, there's one that forces me to go back to Firefox to use certain features in flash, as well as using other browsers at work constantly, and I now get pissed and antsy at the clunky slowness of that which is not Chrome.

That being said, I have to mention that I usualy start my session with one, then within seconds, about six open tabs (I have five now, one of which is streaming music with flash, at no noticably hightened memory or network cost, or skipping/lag, that I might notice on FF or IE), and I frequently have up to, say, thirty tabs open, if I'm browsing for research, web publishing, comparing prices for multiple items simultaneously, getting engrossed in a violent Wikipedia cycle of intrigue (this is totally true for me), etc.

...Here's what I actually changed from the defaults for personal preference, after installing fresh with Firefox imported settings:

Startup Page had to be defined by me, to the "homepage" I was used to. The Home Page button had to be shown, but I let my Home be the New Tab Page. And I use that all the cotton pickin time.

Last, there's incognito mode, opening a new window that doesn't track your moves. Google's description:

You've gone incognito. Pages you view in this window won't appear in your browser history or search history, and they won't leave other traces, like cookies, on your computer after you close the incognito window. Any files you download or bookmarks you create will be preserved, however. 

Going incognito doesn't affect the behavior of other people, servers, or software. Be wary of:

• Websites that collect or share information about you
• Internet service providers or employers that track the pages you visit
• Malicious software that tracks your keystrokes in exchange for free smileys
• Surveillance by secret agents
• People standing behind you

So, to my one fan, if you haven't tried Chrome yet, quit not trying!

http://www.google.com/chrome

Thanks, Dick!