Un-Chromatic
Mar. 17th, 2010 10:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kerravonsenI've been trying out the Google Chrome browser, because Firefox is a resource hog.
Verdict: very very close, but no cigar.
It is fast, it is lean, it is pretty. Why, then, am I leaving it cigarless?
1. It doesn't support MHT format, and there aren't any extensions which support MHT format either.
What is MHT format? It's a file format which saves a whole web page (including images) in one file. I only recently discovered Firefox's extension which understands MHT format, but I've found it very convenient for saving web pages offline for reference. But if I can't read those web pages in Chrome, well, that's a problem.
2. All extensions are disabled when accessing pages at google.com.
Yes, this is understandable as a security measure when people are downloading extensions, but... it also means that my extensions are disabled when I am SEARCHING on Google. That is really, really annoying. What's the use of installing Vrome (the closest thing that Chrome has to Firefox's Vimperator extension) when I can no longer use my keyboard shortcuts when searching for stuff on the net?
3. A niggle with Vrome: it remaps Control-N (new window) to Next Tab; that's okay, that's what I'm used to with Vimperator. Unfortunately, it doesn't provide a "new window" shortcut of its own (while Vimperator does). So I can't open a new window with a keyboard shortcut. This, also, is annoying.
4. Showstopper: I couldn't get Vrome to work with Dreamwidth posting to post this very post. I couldn't open an external editor with the Control-I shortcut. No, I don't know why.
Perhaps I might have been willing to put up with one of these defects, but not all of them. I'm not ruling out Chrome completely, but I shall wait until it improves.
Maybe I should check out Opera.
Edit: (one hour later) Tried out Opera. Bah! It was worse than Firefox. It drove me nuts. I'd click on a link and randomly Opera would decide to sit there and think and chew up 100% of the CPU before it would give me the page in question. It wouldn't read my MHT files even though MHT support is supposed to be native to Opera. I couldn't find any useful extensions, just toys. Lots and lots of toys. Most importantly, nothing that was equivalent to Vimperator. So for my purposes, Opera was also worse than Chrome. (sigh)
Verdict: very very close, but no cigar.
It is fast, it is lean, it is pretty. Why, then, am I leaving it cigarless?
1. It doesn't support MHT format, and there aren't any extensions which support MHT format either.
What is MHT format? It's a file format which saves a whole web page (including images) in one file. I only recently discovered Firefox's extension which understands MHT format, but I've found it very convenient for saving web pages offline for reference. But if I can't read those web pages in Chrome, well, that's a problem.
2. All extensions are disabled when accessing pages at google.com.
Yes, this is understandable as a security measure when people are downloading extensions, but... it also means that my extensions are disabled when I am SEARCHING on Google. That is really, really annoying. What's the use of installing Vrome (the closest thing that Chrome has to Firefox's Vimperator extension) when I can no longer use my keyboard shortcuts when searching for stuff on the net?
3. A niggle with Vrome: it remaps Control-N (new window) to Next Tab; that's okay, that's what I'm used to with Vimperator. Unfortunately, it doesn't provide a "new window" shortcut of its own (while Vimperator does). So I can't open a new window with a keyboard shortcut. This, also, is annoying.
4. Showstopper: I couldn't get Vrome to work with Dreamwidth posting to post this very post. I couldn't open an external editor with the Control-I shortcut. No, I don't know why.
Perhaps I might have been willing to put up with one of these defects, but not all of them. I'm not ruling out Chrome completely, but I shall wait until it improves.
Maybe I should check out Opera.
Edit: (one hour later) Tried out Opera. Bah! It was worse than Firefox. It drove me nuts. I'd click on a link and randomly Opera would decide to sit there and think and chew up 100% of the CPU before it would give me the page in question. It wouldn't read my MHT files even though MHT support is supposed to be native to Opera. I couldn't find any useful extensions, just toys. Lots and lots of toys. Most importantly, nothing that was equivalent to Vimperator. So for my purposes, Opera was also worse than Chrome. (sigh)
no subject
Date: 2010-03-17 09:31 pm (UTC)1. They don't have a Linux version yet (last I checked).
2. It doesn't support NoScript or AdBlock Plus. I will put up with the resource hogging nature of Firefox for a long, long time before I'll give up the ability to surf the net without getting hammered by ads and pop-ups.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-17 09:39 pm (UTC)As for ad-blocking, have you tried privoxy? That does the ad-blocking as a proxy, rather than at the browser level. That means that it doesn't matter what browser you're using. I've found that privoxy needs a little tweaking to allow one to see animated user icons, but apart from that, it's pretty good. For a while I was using it instead of AdBlock Plus, but now I'm using both, though I can't remember what it was that prompted me to re-enable AdBlock plus, so I can't give you the reason why. 8-(