“Browser Wars”

Thursday, August 12th, 2010 at 8:22 am

Do you spend lots of time on the Internet and get frustrated when the browser stalls ? or even worse you are in the middle of an important task and you get the
host Not responding message?. If your anything like me that’s the time I want throw my computer out the window logic prevails and I go make a coffee instead. We are in the days of the Browser Wars!!

I was an avid Mozilla FireFox fan until I found Google Chrome !

Google chrome is the fairly new kid on the block, after much beta testing since 2008 now has a stable functionality platform for Mac, Linux and Microsoft Windows as of May 2010.

What Do I like about Google Chrome

It has a super fast start up with your most used sites seen directly on the home page as thumbnails so you can get to work straight away. With its clean interface you have much more screen space so the guys with small screens will love this.

It has tab pages much like FireFox however the tabs are separate and are hosted on the top of the window and can be moved around the screen by dragging and dropping the tabs as they are self functioning. As the tabs are separate if you are looking at a web site that for some reason hangs, it doesn’t crash the entire Internet as the tabs are individual and only the tab with the website you are visiting is affected.

Another neat feature is the address bar as it also doubles up as a search box and web site browser whats know as an omnibox. The address bar has the same feature as in FireFox in that it displays previously visited sites as you type.

The Extensions functions on the left hand side of the web browser means you can use your extensions independent to normal browsing function, fantastic for stuff like You tube, other video sites and wiki to name a few.

When adding new extensions there is also no need to restart your browser as with FireFox, so saves on time and the extensions are automatically updated.

The incognito function allows you to search sites without them being stored in your history. This is great if you have kids around and have sensitive sites that you don’t want them to see ( No i didn’t mean adult sites Guys, but I guess it would be good for that too)

Favourite bookmarks can be saved on the tool bar menu for ease of visibility and has a folder option for each so you can save preferred pages stored directly within that fave bookmark folder of each ( so you can view later if you don’t have time). This is noted by a star by the left of the browser bar, click on the star and add your book marks. It also has a delete function.

Google Chrome Extensions

There are numerous so I will only go over a few that I like and use regularly for their benefits and features. What I thinks is particularly cool is when you are adding the extensions a icon bubble appears to show you exactly where it will be placed on the browser menu so you can easily access and identify it and there is no need to restart as mentioned previously.

Chromed Bird

Interfaced with Twitter so that you can make your favourite tweets quickly and easily

SEO Quake
This has the same features as FireFox in that it provides valuable SEO information about the web page visited such as Alexa, Bing, yahoo ranking, keyword density etc

Ultimate Google Chrome Flag
This is perfect for identifying the the rank of a web site if it is being hosted in a different country.

kuber page rank checker
Measures the page rank of a page so shows the authority according to Google in the search ranking.

Google Global
This is also available on FireFox so if you used it before then you will know that it is perfect for identifying keyword research for words used on sites in different countries for web pages

Facebook colour
Just for fun, you can change your font colour in facebook to add a little twist.

just a note!!

If you are making your own web pages it is always a good idea to have several web browsers available on your computer, safari, opera, Mozilla etc so that when your pages are complete you can test drive them on how they operate within the different browsers. This helps conversions as you can identify the load time, font acumen and the general configuration view.