I have started using it and the experience is good so far. I still miss the PR functionality available via plugins in Firefox, but other than that – it’s cool.  

Chrome is very fast and doesn’t hang up as much as FF does. Especially for power users. The omnibar is very must have. And for those of you that like to cover your tracks, there is the incognito window.

Here is a web site that starts the trend of Chrome Tips that no doubt will become less and less exotic as time goes by.

Lockergnome has done an early adopter video too.

And Matt Cutts has pre-empted some objections too.

It is normal now to release beta grade software to the public especially when that software is deployed on the internet as a service.

Typically this includes software like Gmail or anything that runs on a web server somewhere. It also applies to software like browsers that run on your local station, but that are capable of auto download update, like for example, browsers.  

Pre-internet, the release of beta software was just not done in the same way. This was because deploying, installing and keeping track of new versions was a major nightmare. The internet has changed all that.

So Chrome is in beta. There is a lot of buzz on the internet in the last few days about what is missing from Chrome. No-one really know if these items are just temporarily missing, or if their lack of presence has meaning – like why would Google release a browser without the PR of the loaded site appearing somewhere on the page. After all – PR is Google data and their invention.

Is it because PR is no longer what it was, or is it because Chrome is in beta?  We are all used to seeing PR in out toolbars and status bars so like me, quite a few people are missing it. 

An in-depth Chrome Review

It will be available for limited use from 2nd September 2008 – that is today.  As soon as I hear about it I will update this post with a link to where it can be downloaded.

It will only be for Windows users intially, but if you visit the Google Comic, you can read about the reasons why Google felt it necessary to release a new browser.

While it is exciting, it is still presents a major pain for us web developers. We have enough cross browser, cross version, cross platform worries as is. Now another?

The good points to note from the comic presentation, is that the browser will be open source, and will improve on past browsers making it more approprate for today’s needs.  The most exciting element being that Chrome won’t be just multi-threaded, (where one activity can interrupt another), but will be multi-processed (where the browser will actually be doing many activities simultaneously (virtually)), in the same way that operating systems themselves behave. Now there is a leap.

The comic makes an excellent job of describing the current problem with browser memory leak and goes way further explaining many of the design concepts behind Chrome.

You can download Google Chrome here.

When you bookmark a site, the favicon appears next to the name of the site in your bookmark list. Most sites have a favicon now, but when they don’t they stand out for the wrong reasons.

You can generate your own favicon by using an online tool, very easily.

Just pick an image you want to use – maybe an icon or your logo and then submit the image to a favicon generation tool.

When you get your favicon returned to you, simply put it in the root directory of your web site.

I used this service from favicon.co.uk to generate mine. You can also add your icon to the gallery – I did, and five months later they wrote to me to say the icon had been accepted.

Some menus are supplied free of charge for you to down load an use on your sites, or you can buy the use of  all available source Photoshop files for a very reasonable one-time fee. This enables you to change the colours of the menus. Well worth it and you’ll become familiar with CSS styling in the process.

If you use any of the free menus supplied on the site, he asks for a link back in return.  Add this site to your toolkit of web building sites.

I wish they had an affiliate program as I would promote their products happily. I recently bought the product they call the Browser Book.

The Browser Book costs $50, (I didn’t buy the laminated version which is a bit extra), and it contains a wealth of information.

I am in the UK, and Visibone are located in the US. I ordered the Browser Book on the 8th July and it arrived today – the 16th July.

Anyway – here is a run-down of what the browser book contains:

Web Safe Colours

Colour Card with hex and RGB values for all web safe colours. The image above shows the colour chart with all 216, web safe colours. When you are stuck for a colour scheme this can be a good starting point. Web Safe colours have never looked so appealing.

Fonts

All standard fonts on Windows, Macs and Linux, with examples of how they look and an indication of font sizes

Symbols

Codes for HTML symbols with hex values too. This makes it a simple lookup to figure out how to do characters like these : ♥ and ½ and ∇

XHTML

A full list of XHTML tags with popular attributes – never for example have to scratch you head for all the attributes available on a form tag again. And did you know there is a tag for quote marks. I didn’t.

CSS

Just what I need – a list of stylesheet reminders, (CSS2). This is great as I love to code CSS by hand and now I can just look something up if I’ve forgotten. I can code in Notepad if that is what I want, (rather than have to bring out the predictive HTML editor . . .). There is also a useful HTML ⇒ XHTML migration checklist.

Javascript

Visibone uses Javascript asserts to explain the Javascript syntax. As Bob says “all the code here not only runs, but tests itself”. Somehow manages to introduce you to Javascript functions you don’t know, by using them to explain the ones you wished you knew.  Clever.

The DOM

The Javascript Document Object Model. Really very useful when you are manipulating page content. Which in itself can make you drive you insane, so this helps.

Regular Expressions

Javascript Regular Expressions with lots of usable code, right there on the page. I bought a book once, called Regular Expressions for Dummies. So this is definitely a step up.

MySQL

Next is a MySQL statement summary – very useful for jogging you memory for date functions, and the order of tokens to use when you are wanting to GROUP BY, LIMIT TO and ORDER BY whilst HAVING a headache.

PHP

There is also help with PHP 4 and 5 with a fabulous list of functions including MySQL calls, string functions and even PHP.ini options.

Thanks Bob!

I say free, but on the date of writing, this service also has a paid option which provides a faster turnaround. You can still use it for free, but there may be delays in getting results returned.

When you write a web page of any kind you do need to check that it works properly in the browsers and on the platforms used by your target audience.

I have found this free service to be slow and a little unreliable. But it is offered at no cost, so before you head over to Browsercam (see previous blog post about the special relationship between BrowserCam and Fundable), do give it a try.

Browsershots also does not have as many options as BrowserCam’s service; its functionality is limited by comparison – but of course, this is to be expected given its pricing. However it’s a good start if you’re new to this type of web page testing.

BrowserCam is my preferred option, but using Browsershots first will get you to appreciate how good BrowserCam is, and then (presumably) you won’t mind paying! This is an excellent example of the false economy of free.

I want to tell you about a web site that allows people to ask others to provide funding for their projects.

People ask for money for all sorts of small and not so small projects at Fundable.

I’ll leave it up to you to look through the projects there but the reason I point this site out is because it allows you access to a very expensive web developer tool for a low price. That tool is Browsercam.

Browsercam is used to test web sites you have written in a variety of browsers, platforms and screen resolutions. It saves embarrassment when you create a web site and find that it doesn’t work too well for people still using IE6 for example.

Browsercam costs around $1000 for one year’s membership. However, if you go to Fundable, you can either launch your appeal, or join someone else’s where 25 people get together to each place $40 into the collective pot and then together share a membership to Browsercam. Browsercam are in full agreement of this and I have access to a shared membership via Fundable. Fundable is just a mechanism to allow an organised gathering of people to pool their financial resources, in this case, to achieve an expensive membership to an online resource.