Google Chrome:
Very interesting new browser, just released from Google. I use a lot of Google stuff, and I was impressed with the speed and reliability of the thing. It doesn’t have a Linux version yet, unfortunately.
I generally hate and despise Internet Explorer as clunky; I have found again and again that ‘The Microsoft Way’ is clunky and gets in the way of pretty much anything that I’m doing. Really. I use it to check web pages that I’m doing (especially when I’m doing fancy CSS tricks) but otherwise, no way.
Generally, I use Firefox for everything. But the memory bleeds of the thing sometimes can get to be really obnoxious, and especially when I am opening up a bunch of pages at once…
Let me explain. My bookmarks are *extensive*. Up at the top on my bookmark bar, the headers read:
EPA | JIM | ESSENTIALS | PALIN | NEWS | POLY | REFERENCE | SCIENCE | TECH | PALEO | TECH and some delicious-related tags.
The EPA stuff is for work, of course. the next two are the areas I use for my top everyday stuff, News is a congregation of news stuff that caught my eye and I put aside for ‘later’. POLY is not polyamory, it’s Politics. Reference is like news, but more the sort of thing where you find a neat reference tool and put aside For Later. Science is subdivided into my interests, history is links on history, and Paleo is sort of a hybrid of the other two for a major research project on the Ice Ages and prehistory.
Inside each are many subfolders. Looking at POLY, I select subfolder MULTI (frequently updated sites) and the sub-sub-folder SHORTLIST. There’s 18 links in the ’shortlist’, and I pull them all up at once. Instant update on what’s going on. Similarly, under JIM, there’s COMICS, and the subareas EDITORIAL (9 links), DAILY (14 links) and WEEKLY (11 links). I usually pull all of those up at once.
In Windows, this works OK. In Ubuntu, it crashes - a lot. it gets to about 3 or 4 tabs and blows up. I’d love to know why.
The set of bookmarks I have are refreshed to a server all the time, and all of the Firefoxes I run use the same add-on that synchs those bookmarks very regularly. So I can be working on something downstairs in my office, and go upstairs to Susan’s office and pull up my Firefox setup on her computer, or on the server, or on Mere’s computer, or on the laptop, and have the same set of bookmarks available.
Google Chrome will import your bookmarks - some of the time. For some reason, when I installed it tonight on Mere’s computer (my account on same) it wouldn’t pick up the Firefox bookmarks. And it won’t (on any machine) use the same plug-in that Firefox does to synch those bookmarks, so any changes I make in the bookmarks (sort, delete or add) won’t transfer to anywhere else. THAT is a game-killer for me.
However, it’s a beta product, and I suggest (especially if you want some zip and you’re not tied to application-specific plugins) you give it a go. I intend to check new web pages for work or home in this all the time, and it’s absurdly easy to use.
There’s also a bit here about a good deal of neat stuff on Google Mail that’s up for testing - if you’re a user, give it a go.