Yslow has yet to be updated, neither has CSSViewer. The Web Developer Toolbar and Firebug are both up to date though.

Google Gears is also not available yet, but Google has released another addon for Firefox called Page Speed. Page Speed, much like Yslow, is used to evaluate the performance of webpages as well as giving suggestions on how to improve the performance.

Closing multiple tabs

The huge flaw that is extremely irritating is no warning of closing multiple tabs.

If you have 10 tabs open and accidentally close the main window at the top right rather than the tab close button. Goodbye tabs.

You can have the sessions enabled to get it back once you open Chrome again but that isn’t very helpful if you had active downloads going when you accidentally closed the browser.

Earlier today I was download Portal: Prelude, an expansion modification for the game Portal. After download 550MB of the 775MB file, I accidentally closed Chrome forgetting that I had the download going.

IE and FF would of both stopped this from happening as they both open downloads in separate windows rather than the main browser, so if you close the main browser the downloads continue. Chrome does not.

I wasted that time and bandwidth downloading 550MB to be lost in the ether and having to download it again, because something so trivial was missed out of Chrome.

It doesn’t take a lot of common sense to know this is could be a problem, Mozilla, Microsoft and Opera all have implementations in place to stop this happening. The fact that Google took the best parts of all the other browsers in to 1 then deciding that a rather important feature wasn’t in their users best interest is worrying. How many other problems are there going to be under the surface?

Downloads

I have found that on many user initiated downloads that they just fail to start full stop on my Chrome installation at work and some downloads on my Chrome installation at home.

By clicking a download button the file will appear at the bottom of the browser and have ’starting…’ next to it but never progress past this stage. Right clicking the file and selecting Save as… works for all anchor links, but any downloads that are done through a form button are impossible to download which results in my opening up Firefox to download files.

Dictionary

You don’t seem to have the ability to add new words to the dictionary in Chrome which is rather strange. In Firefox you can and it is helpful when you type in something quite a lot and it isn’t in the dictionary, that little red line becomes annoying.

While writing this post, there are 2 words with red lines underneath them. The first is Firefox. Fair enough, it isn’t an actual word in the dictionary but still, Google do give a lot of money to the Mozilla foundation (which is in the dictionary). But the 2nd underlined word is an odd one indeed. It is Google. The company who have made the browser haven’t even put their name in the dictionary, instead suggesting that I meant to type goggle.

In Firefox and IE, you get the same text:

Make note of the first paragraph. Now if you open up the same javascript window within Google Chrome, you get this:

Once again, note the first paragraph again.  Within Google Chrome it mentions the Safari menu. Safari is not installed on this computer so there is no reason for Safari to appear there other than Google Chrome being related to Safari in some way.

Also take note that yesterday, typing Google Chrome in to Google search, the results were very different.  In less than 1 day Google appears to have got it’s Chrome site to #1.

As you can see from the screenshot, it isn’t perfect with text out of the box and not aligned in certain places, but still a very helpful tool none the less.

The image “http://www.example.com/button_bg.png” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

I didn’t know what had caused this as I hadn’t installed any extensions knowingly. This happens for all image files, not just jpg.

The problem was Skype. Go to Tools > Add-ons and uninstall it.

Problem solved. Would be nice for Skype to have said it was installing shit in to Firefox…and if it did it would of been good of me to actually read it.

Microsoft has once more come under fire for allegedly anti-competitive behaviour – this time from software rival Opera. The Norwegian company, which makes an internet browser of the same name, has filed a complaint with European Union officials accusing Microsoft of stifling competition.Opera, which has around 12 million users worldwide, said today that Microsoft had been acting anti-competitively by bundling its Internet Explorer program with the Windows operating system.

“We are filing this complaint on behalf of all consumers who are tired of having a monopolist make choices for them,” said Jon von Tetzchner, the chief executive of Opera. “We cannot rest until we’ve brought fair and equitable options to consumers worldwide.”

The company said it was looking for a series of measures from European officials, including forcing Microsoft to unbundle Internet Explorer or allowing rival products to be preinstalled in Windows, and compelling Microsoft to follow design guidelines issued by web standards groups.

Source: Guardian

Microsoft is once again most likely going to have legal action simliar to that of the Windows Media Player antitrust suit in which the EU fined Microsoft €280M.

Opera is now asking the EU to file and antitrust suit for Internet Explorer. Computer users with some intelligence tend to use Firefox or Opera over Microsofts Internet Explorer claiming them to be both faster and more secure, and in some ways that is true so you can’t really complain.

Why is Opera only just bringing up this now? They have been down in the browser rankings for a long time and are trailing behind Mozilla’s Firefox as well as Apple’s Safari. It is most likely because they have a minature stake in the market but feel that they need more as making their software free didn’t help at all.

In my opinion Microsoft have every right to put Internet Explorer in with Windows. Why not? There is nothing stopping the user from getting another browser from elsewhere. There isn’t a message saying to access the Internet you must use Internet Explorer. Apple bundle Safari with OSX do they not? Why aren’t Opera filing an antitrust suit against Apple? Probably because they will get sod all out of it. Microsoft is a much better target and the EU seem to love taking money out of Microsoft. Where they money goes no one really knows for sure.

Back to the case of Windows Media Player, there is nothing making you use Windows Media Player, you can get new media players. Apple also bundle Quicktime and iTunes with their OS, but no complaints or antitrust suits against them.

If Microsoft released their next OS with no browser and no media player there will be outrage and everyone will acuse Microsoft of slacking and delivering a product which isn’t fit for purpose, so they really have no way of getting around this.

If they didn’t include a browser and media player, it will be down to the OEMs to decide which software to put on with all their other shit they like to install.

Why don’t we see any complaints about messenger programs?

Why aren’t Adobe coming out complaining about MS Paint being included with Windows? Or some maths software company about the built in Calculator.

Hell, Apple don’t even allow OEMs to build or sell their computers. That in my eyes is monopolisation.

When you install Firefox or Opera does Windows tell you not to install it and that Internet Explorer is the only way on to the Internet? No.

So to the people at Opera shut up and carry on making your browser better so that the general public may give a shit about what you are making and pay you some attention. Then change your name so it isn’t the same as a genre of music and sound the same as some daft overpaid women on US television.