Browsers I Have Known
—Melissa Morrow
When Chrome, the web browser application in Google's vast corral of products, was first released, I considered trying it. It was the same attitude I had back in 1995, when my boss asked me if I would like to design a website. I said, "Sure, I guess I'll try it," and installed Lynx from a CD that came with a book I bought about the Web. Remember Lynx? Yeah, me neither. Also included on the CD was Mosaic, which was crazy and ugly but I didn't know any better and thought it was a miracle.
Soon, there was Netscape. It was a little prettier than Mosaic and I used it happily for a while. I eventually upgraded my PC and, lo, there was Internet Explorer. It was beautiful! It was slow! It crashed my computer and did strange things to my websites. When I switched my main computer platform to Mac in 2001, IE followed me, like a small, evil but pathetic dog that you feel too sorry for to get rid of. It was crashy but at least on the Mac it didn't lock up my entire machine, though it still did strange things to my websites. I was relieved to get Safari with OS X and used it almost exclusively for years, occasionally opening IE only to see how bad it was rendering my websites and then quickly closing it before it could infect me with its wickedness.
When I started working as a web programmer for MeridianSix in Santa Fe, I soon learned that in a perfect world, well-written, standards-compliant code would produce a site that renders well across browsers, but that this perfect world does not exist. Every browser has quirks. This makes it a challenge to ensure that sites look as they were designed.
Adam designing a website. Clint seems like he really wants it to render nicely across all browsers.
At M6, we test on the main browsers: Internet Explorer 7, 8 and 9 (PC only), Firefox (Mac and PC), Safari (Mac), and Chrome (Mac and PC.) There are quite a few more browsers available (see list here) but since, all together, they hold less than 1% of the browser share, we don't worry about them unless a client has a specific request.
That brings us back to Chrome. Remember I said I thought about trying it, back before my trip down browser lane? In December of 2009, Chrome Beta for the Mac was released and I downloaded it under Pete's firm insistence that we test our sites on it.
Pete insisting I download Chrome. See his unyielding stare of nuclear doom?
Chrome was introduced in 2008 with little fanfare but to great interest, and in the tradition of all things Google (Search, Gmail, Maps, Street View), is quickly becoming an ubiquitous part of the internet experience. And by quickly, I mean quickly. Here's a nice graph from StatCounter:
Three years of browser wars.
(And, as a web programmer, let me just mention: that blue line? Rapidly falling? Is enough to make me smile bigger than a LOLcat.)
I knew that yet another browser meant more time-consuming testing for me. What I didn't know is that I would fall in love with Chrome. Granted, my browser relationships have been borderline-abusive, so when I encountered one that is simple, kind, dependable, elegant and gentle, not to mention smart, I tended to overlook any shortcomings.
Some things I love about Chrome:
Fast. Fast. Fast. The application opens fast. New windows and tabs open fast. Switching between other applications and Chrome is fast. Do not get me started on what Firefox does to my laptop when I try to switch back and forth from other applications, especially memory hogs like Fireworks.
Combination Address and Search Bar. No other browser has it. They need to get it. I know it goes right to Google. Does anybody even use a search engine besides Google anymore? Please, other browsers, combine your search and address bar.
Stability. I have used Chrome daily and it has only crashed twice since December 2009. The Browser-That-Must-Not-Be-Named (unfondly known as Internet Exploder at M6) used to crash two times an hour.
New Window/Tab. This brings up thumbnails of your most browsed sites, along with some links to Google Aps and a list of your recently closed tabs. This is similar to Safari's slightly more curvaceous but significantly slower and predominantly useless version. It's nice if you are frequently going to sites that you don't want your coworkers to know that you are visiting, like, um, Drudge Report.
Some things I don't love about Chrome:
Bookmark Management. It did not exist in Chrome Beta and to this day is still kind of wonky. I like it better now that you can drag a bookmark to the bookmarks bar or into a folder, but it still seems a little awkward to open a new browser window to manage bookmarks. Maybe it's good, but I don't love it.
Broken Sites. When I first starting using Chrome, there were a few sites didn't work at all with Chrome for the Mac. Of these, the "Watch Instantly" feature on Netflix (netflix.com), some of the IRS tools (irs.gov) and my online banking site were the prominent ones I remember not working. However, it appears either Chrome or the site developer has worked out the bugs on those.
Inspect Element. The Inspect Element feature in Firefox (cleverly named Firebug) (which can also be used as a verb, as in Pete telling me, "Let's Firebug it!") is a web developer's secret weapon. You can highlight or mouseover some element of a webpage, right click and select "Inspect Element" and you get a split screen (or a pop-up, depending on how you have your settings) of all the attributes that make up the element's style.
Inspecting an element in Firebug.
For instance, if you have a weird spacing issue between an image and a H1 (heading) tag, you can inspect the elements to see that at some point one morning when you had too much coffee, you put a default top margin of 28 pixels on your H1. In a stylesheet that has hundreds or even thousands of lines of code, this might be hard to spot, but using the Inspect Element feature in Firefox, it's a snap. Note I keep saying "in Firefox." Because the Inspect Element feature in all of the other browsers, including Chrome, is full of confusion, irrelevance and spite.
I give Google Chrome 4 stars out of 5 for speed, stability and the neat "Recently Closed" feature, deducting a star because I have to open Firefox every time I want to inspect an element.
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