My Return To Chrome Has Been A Pleasant Surprise

Some months ago, FireFox was running so slow and was so lame for me that I decided to make the switch to Chrome. After working with it a few weeks and finding that there were so many add-ons and intricacies where FireFox worked better for me, I decided to go back to FireFox and see if things had improved. They had but, after my last update, FireFox has been maybe even worse than before. So, back to Chrome and with the improvements I am discovering, and as long as Google doesn’t hose me, I see no reason right now to go back. Here’s what I have discovered since I last used Chrome …..

Good:

1. Chrome is still blazing fast. Sweet!
2. Wisestamp signature lines for Chrome are now available as an extension. Must have! Even better is that there is a hitch in the version for FireFox that automatically inserts a new signature line every time you open a draft. Not a problem with Chrome.
3. Zemanta is now better integrated with Chrome. Perfect!
4. My FaceBook gadget on my iGoogle home page now expands to multiple lines on the update where on FireFox it just kept scrolling on a single line to the point where you could not even remember what you type.
5. A number of my other gadgets on iGoogle appear to be more stable.
6. I had a FireFox add-on that allowed me to reduce tab widths. Chrome’s “pin tab” feature may be even better as it reduces selected tabs to favicons only.
7. I was able to create a universal search box with an extension which was a feature that I had with FireFox and used almost exclusively for LinkedIn people searches.
8. There is actually a LinkedIn extension that displays updates from my network. I did not have this with FireFox. It was a pain to get running as the RSS feed from LinkedIn refused to work (I know this to be a LinkedIn problem) but, after repeated tries, a feed link finally took and it works great!
9. Rapportive for Gmail is now available on Chrome. This gives me a snap shot view of my contact’s social media networks.
10. Every bookmark that I need on my toolbar, particularly those for sharing, are right where they should be.
11. I actually have four different Ning sites and, previously, the editing commands did not play nice with Chrome. That issue has been since resolved.
12. AddToAny is now a Chrome extension. I use this to circumvent WordPress.com and insert the sharing bar found at the end of each of my posts.

Not So Good:

1. I can’t believe this but I cannot get a Gmail for hosted accounts iGoogle gadget to work with Chrome. This sucks. Mostly I want this to see if new items are in my inbox. My work around was to install Better Gmail, which I like, but it was doing funny things. This was yesterday when Gmail was announcing that it was going to a OAuth authorization system. I may have been caught up in that but was able to install the Gmail Notified extension that alerts me to items in my inbox.
2. Sizing images in WordPress.com used to be something where you could select a point on the image and drag it to whatever size. With Chrome I need to manually specify the size needed which is more difficult as I have no visual. If this presents a problem, I can always log back in using FireFox.
3. FireFox was not much good at remembering form-fills and the jury on this is still out on Chrome. However, Chrome is real flaky on remembering passwords. Some sites it does and others it does not. Part of this is form fill. For example, I have three different Zoho CRM accounts and Chrome is not remembering my usernames and passwords for any of them. This really sucks.

Overall, I really am liking Chrome. That being said, I am also quite fickle. We will see what tomorrow brings (smile).

Thanks for visiting!

Craig

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