Sean Walther's Blog

Google Chrome 6 Released

Google released version 6 of their up an coming browser, Chrome.

The biggest feature of almost every Chrome release, is speed.  It’s nice to see browsers focusing on doing their jobs more efficiently (cough cough Microsoft) instead of bloating the software with more unnecessary features.

Some of the features of the new release over previous releases:

• Various UI tweaks
• Auto Fill of forms
• Better Syncing

Chrome has been an exciting browser to use and follow, as it has been growing in leaps and bounds.  Recently Chrome just overtook Safari usage, and is rapidly gaining on IE and Firefox.

Chrome is my current browser of choice.  In the mere 2 years since it’s launch, Chrome has grabbed the position of being the browser to copy.  Through minimalistic design, and significant speed enhancements, Chrome has forced other browsers to become leaner.

To update your software go into “About Google Chrome” and click update (if it hasn’t already).  If you don’t have it, then download Chrome now!

Tags: Chrome, Google

Facebook to drop IE6 support on IE9 beta day, September 15

I’ve been quiet for  while, and wanted to start up again with some great news.  Facebook is going to stop IE6 support for chat on the IE9 beta day.

Projects always ask about IE6 support, whether they need it, etc.  Surprisingly IE7 and IE8 support is also an issue, since they don’t support many of the cool toys supported by actual modern browsers (Chrome, Safari, Firefox).

I hope IE9 quickly replaces at least the IE7 and IE8 communities.  IE 6 seems here to stay, at least for that last 6-8%.

Some other information from that article:

• Microsoft will support IE6 until April 2014
• Google has removes IE6 support in Google Docs, Google Sites, Gmail, Google Calendar and YouTube!
• Microsoft Office Web Apps doesn’t even support IE6 (how could you when trying to do anything cool)

The article quotes numbers as high as 17% for IE6 usage share, but I haven’t seen those numbers in a long time.  My website enjoys an IE6 user base of 0.5% (in the last month, whereas IE, all versions, was around 19%).  Other larger websites I manage see around 7.7% IE6 usage (with IE, all versions, being an amazing 55% of overall traffic).

Tags: browser support, Chrome, Facebook, Google, Ie 6, IE 7, IE 8, ie6, IE7, IE8, Internet Explorer, internet explorer 6, Microsoft

HTML5 – Showcase and Experiments (Apple and Google)

Apple released their HTML5 Showcase a month or so ago.  It was cool, but the showcase required Safari to view it (not sure if this is a technical limitation, or just marketing making the decision).

I just saw the Google equivalent, Chrome Experiments: Not your mother’s JavaScript … and it’s damn cool.  Most of these (if not all, I haven’t gone through them all yet) are NOT limited to Chrome.  If you can’t run it in your browser (and why NOT) – you can see videos of each of them.

Some of the featured experiments:

• Sketchpad – We’ve seen this before, showing off the ability to create vector graphics in HTML5 (we’ve linked to this before)
• Canopy – Impressive fractal zoomer implemented with HTML5
• Browser Ball – Some interesting animation of an element between windows.
• Wavy Scrollbars – physics simulation using browser scrollbars.
• Pong – Pong implemented through browser windows (annoying sound warning)
• Google Gravity – Physics applied to the Google homepage (demos very nicely physics as well as CSS rotations)
• Harmony – Sketching app
• Destructive Video – This is cool, blow apart a playing video (I’ve linked to this before) — notice how the video keeps playing
• Ball Pool – Another physics demo … rotations, animations, large numbers of objects.

Tags: Apple, ball pool, browser ball, canopy, Chrome, destructive video, Google, Google Gravity, harmony, HTML5, pong, Safari, Sketchpad, wavy scrollbars

Chrome 5 is final and released!

I forgot to post this a few days ago, but I wanted everyone to know — Chrome 5 is here!

Upgrades include:

• Full Screen Mode
• Javascript engine (V8) speed boost
• Bookmark Syncing
• Automated site translation
• More HTML5 support (Geolocation, App Cache, Web sockets, etc)
• Drag and Drop file upload support

› Continue reading

Tags: Chrome, drag and drop, Geolocation, Google, Google Chrome, HTML5, sockets, speed boost, V8, web sockets

Flowplayer: Control bar won’t reappear after Fullscreen and the Fix

Was just working with a strange bug in Flowplayer — after going full screen, the Control bar wouldn’t return on certain computers (seems to have been prevalent in certain versions of Safari 4.0.4, maybe Chrome).

› Continue reading

Tags: Chrome, Control Bar, Flash, Flowplayer, onFullscreenExit, Safari

Help: Google Adsense isn’t loading correctly (or you can’t log on)

If you’re trying to access Google Adsense in Google Chrome, and the display doesn’t look right (or you can’t log in) — you probably have AdBlocker turned on for “google.com”.  That means many assets from google’s adsense interface are being blocked by your browser.

Turn off AdBlocker for Google.com (for me there is a button in the top right corner which is a red octagon, click on it and enable ads for Google.com).

All of a sudden forms load, stylesheets load, etc.

Magical

Tags: adblock, AdSense, Chrome, Google

Help: IE7 won’t load my JSON but IE8 will – Using a JSON Validator

I just ran into this issue, and found surprisingly little documentation.  My JSON request wasn’t returning.  I was using the jQuery “getJSON” method to send the request out.  Nothing was coming back.

› Continue reading

Tags: Chrome, Firefox, getJSON, IE7, IE8, Internet Explorer, jQuery, JSON, JSON Validator, JSONLint, Safari

Google Chrome 4.0: Extensions and Bookmark Sync

Today Google officially announced the release of Chrome 4.0.  The update features two major pieces of functionality, Extensions and Bookmark Syncing.  If you already have Google Chrome, just click on the “tool” -> About Google Chrome, and click on “Update” in the lower right corner next to the OK window.  Otherwise, download it from Google. › Continue reading

Tags: adblock, bookmarks, Chrome, Firebug, Firefox, Google, Google Chrome, IE, IE Tab, IE7, IE8, iPhone, Xmarks

OpenDNS – Free powerful DNS service

You may have noticed the Entrecard advertisement on the side of this blog, it’s a site that links bloggers together.  

Entrecard helps you get the word out about your blog, and hopefully find more people that you want to follow, as well as readers for your own blog.  

One of the habits Entrecard creates is looking through a lot of blogs in the beginning of the day.  You can see a list of blogs that are members of Entrecard and have looked at your site.  It’s nice to see a list of people who are interested in your subject matter.  Unfortunately, that list of blogs can reach into the hundreds on a daily basis.

I found myself queuing up about 40-50 tabs in Chrome (still using and loving it) and looking through everyones blogs.  

This brings me to OpenDNS.  

Before using OpenDNS servers, I would normally be able to only load up a page or two before pages started to fail.  I know I have a fast computer, and that the links were valid, the hosts were not going down, it was merely a problem with my internet connection.  Seeing as the problem was mostly binary — either pages loaded or had DNS issues, I figured the problem was DNS related.

OpenDNS has a great tutorial on how to setup OpenDNS on your network. 

It was quick, easy, and drastically improved some browsing experiences (normal browsing is a bit faster, but not as noticable as when I load dozens of pages at a time).

One bonus is that you have a dashboard that can be used to control your networks usage.  You can easily filter sites, monitor usage, and create shortcuts for any machine in your network (home points to www.google.com, mail could point to mail.google.com/a/domain.com, etc).

Below are some recent articles about OpenDNS:

• Lose your Time Warner internet connection (again)? You could try Open DNS
• 20,000 K-12 Schools Adopt Free Web Security Tool
• OpenDNS – a blogger writes about DNS security issues, and why OpenDNS helps 

Tags: Blog, browsing, Chrome, DNS, entrecard, internet connection, OpenDNS, security

Chrome – Holding Steady

I had posted earlier that I had setup Google’s new Chrome browser.

Now it’s been at least a week that I’ve been using it and I wanted to post some comments.

First of all, I don’t consider a “beta” browser.  I know whenever I test out a new browser it feels like it’s almost unusable for a period of time.  It’s been getting much better since the IE4 days, but there’s still always a sense of “this isn’t ready yet”.

Being a web developer, I dread new browsers because … thats just one more environment you have to test in.  

With this browser, I feel like it is already a final product.  Already I’m excited about the integration of “Gears”, the slim application like interface when you “Create application shortcut”, how fast it seems to run, and the possibilities it introduces for Javascript and AJAX online.

Some minor issues I would, however, like to raise are:

• I had a tab freeze, and the other tab froze as well — I had thought each tab was supposed to be entirely independent from one another in processor space and prevent this.  Maybe I’m misunderstood?
• It seems the great “V8” team that Google had put together is in competition with SquirrelFish Extreme in terms of pure performance.  Needless to say, I’m no expert in this, and it’s probably one of those benchmarks that highly favors a browser, or isn’t indicative of the complete functionality of an engine.
•  This is entirely a subjective point, but I don’t like the way the Taskbar icons look.  I know I’m tuned into Firefox and IE’s icons for the web, but I always get confused with the 3 colors in the Chrome taskbar icons.  
• Whos’ taking advantage of the new functionality the most?  I remember years ago seeing links to who was taking advantage to IE4′s new capabilities, does anyone have a list of site’s that are built to embrace Chrome?  (maybe an idea for a future project)

Tags: AJAX, Arstechnica, Browsers, Chrome, Firefox, Gears, HTML, IE, Javascript, SquirrelFish Extreme, V8