Reassessing and retuning Google's Chrome

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	BEST SOFTWARE[/size][/font] Reassessing and retuning Google’s Chrome[/size]
	By Ian “Gizmo” Richards Critics have rightly questioned whether Google’s Chrome browser transmits too much data about user browsing habits to the company’s databases. Although most of the reports of Chrome’s privacy issues are more alarmist than factual, problems do exist — but they can be effectively controlled by changing a few Chrome settings.[/size]

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The full text of this column is posted at WindowsSecrets.com/2010/05/13/06 (paid content, opens in a new window/tab).

Columnists typically cannot reply to comments here, but do incorporate the best tips into future columns.[/td]

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There are a few things that I really don’t like about Chrome. Aesthetically, having no menu bar is wonderful. Functionally, it is not. Sure, there are keyboard shortcuts, but memorized shortcuts are not a substitute for keyboard-friendly operation via menus.

Then there’s the inability to change the timeout for page loading. Got a slow site? Dialup? Lots of net lag? Chrome will roll over and die. If you want to see the slow-loading pages, you’ll have to go to IE or FF. Chrome was built for fast sites & fast connections. There’s no way that I have found to increase the timeout for page loading.

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my 2¢:
1¢) ditto on the keyboard shortcuts. Since before the mouse was a required device, I’ve been an extremely high user of KS’s. Every app I run I memorize the shortcuts. I have been using Chrome for about a year (an IE convert) and I miss the ability to Alt+a get a list of my Favorites/Bookmarks/whatever were calling them today. That’s almost the only only time I reach for my mouse, when I want to navigate to a Chrome shortcut.

2¢) to get the cent sign, hold down the Alt key and type “0162” on the numeric keypad (doesn’t work on the numbers over the qwerty keys) then let go of the Alt key. I think that’s so cool! “0222” is somewhat useful for emoticon types.

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Print Preview … or rather, the lack of it

This is the fundamental problem with Google Chrome so far as I am concerned.
There is a long thread on the Google Help pages:
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Chrome/thread?fid=29ea05faa34bade400048659a5de5fab&hl=en

There have been many, many requests for a decent, flexible print preview facility but so far none has appeared.

It is interesting to note from a few of the comments that there are those who apparently see no need for a print preview. Perhaps they print very little? Or they accept some waste paper. Perhaps they can absorb everything they need to when in front of the screen? I can’t but perhaps the Chrome designers are like that.

I regularly use Firefox’s Print Preview to check how pages will fit on paper, to adjust the size to improve the fit, to control which pages are printed … and to avoid the stupid situation where the last page printed contains only a few unimportant lines from the foot of the document.
When I see interesting news or technical articles, particularly long or complex items, I prefer to print for offline study or to show around the family.

Until Chrome gets a print preview facility, Firefox will remain my browser for every day use.

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Print Preview … or rather, the lack of it

In the course of completing a project for a client, I discovered a fabulous, inexpensive PDF writer, DeskPDF, that runs rings aroud Acrobat Distiller. It comes with GhostScript, which is its distilling engine, and it hooks into your favorite PDF viewer, just as does Distiller. For all practical purposes, it has become my preferred print preview for virtually everything, because what you see really is what you get. What’s more, embedded links are preserved, so you can follow them from within your PDF copy of the page.

In addition to saving articles, I use DeskPDF to create printouts of work in progress for my Web development clients. This enables me to show my clients pages that were generated on my development machine, which is, for obvious reasons, inaccessible to them.

David A. Gray

Designing for the Ages, One Challenge at a Time

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In the course of completing a project for a client, I discovered a fabulous, inexpensive PDF writer, DeskPDF, that runs rings aroud Acrobat Distiller. It comes with GhostScript, which is its distilling engine, and it hooks into your favorite PDF viewer, just as does Distiller. For all practical purposes, it has become my preferred print preview for virtually everything, because what you see really is what you get. What’s more, embedded links are preserved, so you can follow them from within your PDF copy of the page.

In addition to saving articles, I use DeskPDF to create printouts of work in progress for my Web development clients. This enables me to show my clients pages that were generated on my development machine, which is, for obvious reasons, inaccessible to them.

It should be declared when posting product endorsements, how much the product costs. This is not a free product.

-- rc primak

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It should be declared when posting product endorsements, how much the product costs. This is not a free product.

Since it was described as ‘inexpensive’, I don’t think anyone should be surprised that it’s not free!

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I am a Firefox user currently. I use very few add-ons in Firefox. Could someone please let me know which extensions in Chrome are the equivalent of these in Firefox: Adblock Plus, BetterPrivacy, NoScript, and WOT (Web of Trust). When I started researching these in Chrome, there were too many contradictory comments from users on which extensions really work in Chrome without causing problems.

So I would like to hear from Chrome users on specifically which extensions are the same as the ones listed above. Thanks.

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As a result of the latest article, I tried Chrome for the first time, and he was right, it is significantly faster than Firefox. However, after using it for a while, the deal-breaker for me is that there is no way to configure it for larger fonts. At my age and with my eyesight, many pages have text that is too difficult to read. Well, I can read it, but it is not comfortable for the hours of on-line reading I do every day. Sure, I can hit “CTRL+” all the time to increase the fonts, but with Firefox I can set the default fonts to be at least a certain size, then I never have to hit “CTRL+” again. Until Chrome implements that kind of feature, I’ll have to stay with Firefox.

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