I’ve officially switched to using Google Chrome! I installed it today because there was an extension for Skritter that was only available for Chrome. Actually I have yet to install that extension because I’ve been busy getting Chrome to do everything that Firefox does for me. Since Google has allowed developers to build extensions for Chrome for a few months now, there has been a flourishing of productivity and browser-experience enhancing add-ons! Here is my list of extension (or native feature) must haves:
XMarks has been ported to Chrome, as has AdBlock. Instead of QuickProxy I’m using a Chrome extension called Switchy!. The password manager as described above is a feature of the core Firefox browser, however not so with Chrome. While Chrome does encrypt the passwords, there is no master password to the decryption key itself! This is a huge security hole that can be very easily exploited. Enter LastPass. I’ve been skeptical of using hosted password managers however since LastPass actually performs the encryption locally before sending the data I am going trust it.
So far my experience with Chrome has been great. I’ve been able to find all the functionality I need and the browsing experience is super-fast! Much faster than Firefox. By the way, I’m running Chrome on Ubuntu 9.10 64-bit. Chrome itself is 64-bit and I have had no trouble at all installing or using extensions. It seems even Flash works out-of-the-box since I already installed it for Firefox. Nothing special had to be done to get it working in Chrome.
Actually I have not yet used Chrome for web development, and there I might need to stick with Firefox. It seems that only “Firebug Lite” and not the full Firebug is available for Chrome. I might check out the native tools that get shipped with Chrome and see if they are satisfactory. I’ll also need to find some plugin similar to AutoFill Forms.
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Haha… actually Chrome still has a ways to go as far as the plugins are concerned. Since I’be been using it I have found that the ad blocking plugins have more limitations than those of Firefox and these are due to limitations in the Chrome extension API. So for example, adverts can be hidden but not be prevented from downloading! And some video adverts are also showing despite the presence of the ad blocker.
April 25, 2010 at 7:53 pm
Very good sharepoints for Google Chrome.
April 25, 2010 at 7:42 pm