The Google Chrome Web Store has a nice library of extensions to use for web designers and developers. Here’s a few that may interest you and are they are free to install.

1. PerfectPixel by WellDoneCode – Allows you to match your design to your website with an overlay, so you can get the perfect end results.
2. Firebug Lite for Google Chrome – Provides a rich visual representation for HTML elements, DOM elements, and Box Model shading.
3. Resolution Test – Allows you to test web pages in different screen resolutions and even custom resolutions.
4. Web Developer – Adds a toolbar with an nice set of developer tools, such as reviewing CSS, forms, images, resizing browser, check accessibility information, outlines, color picker, display ruler, validations and more.

With the rush of new browser versions in the last couple of months, I had to refresh myself on two options that I commonly need.  I thought it would be nice to put the methods to do these tasks in the most recent browsers all in one location.  Enjoy!

Resetting Internet cache

Browser “cache” or “temporary Internet files” are your browser’s way of saving you time by not downloading web pages and graphics again that you have already seen. However, in my world of web development, being able to reset your Internet browser cache quickly is very important. When we make even the smallest change to a page or graphic, it almost always requires a complete page refresh by the client.

Google Chrome (Version 16)

1. Click the wrench icon on the browser toolbar.
2. Select Tools.
3. Select Clear browsing data.
4. In the dialog that appears, select the check-boxes for the types of information that you want to remove. Usually you only want “Empty the cache“!
5. Use the menu at the top to select the amount of data that you want to delete. Select beginning of time to delete everything.
6. Click Clear browsing data.

Internet Explorer (Version 9.0)

1. Click the Tools button, and then click Internet options.
2. Click the General tab, and then, under Browsing history, click Delete.
3. In the Delete Browsing History dialog box, select Temporary Internet files ONLY, click Delete, and then click OK.

Firefox (Version 9.0)

1. At the top of the Firefox window, click on the Firefox button (Tools menu in Windows XP) and then click Options
2. Select the Advanced panel.
3. Click on the Network tab.
4. In the Offline Storage section, click Clear Now.
5. Click OK to close the Options window

Show the menu bar

I guess I’m old fashioned, but I really like to have the “File, Edit, View, Favorites, Tools, Help” menu options at the top of each of my browsers, even if it does take up a little bit more vertical space of my monitor. The newest browsers make this setting pretty hard (and in Chrome’s case – impossible!) to find, so here’s the instructions:

Google Chrome (Version 16)

As far as I can tell, there is no menu bar in Chrome! Shocker! All user activities are located under the “wrench” icon in the top right cornder instead (supposedly).  Please comment below if you’ve found an add-in or work around!

Firefox (Version 9.0)

If you’re using Windows 7 or Windows Vista, you now have an orange Firefox button that takes the most common functions and puts them in one menu.

• To temporarily show the old style menus, just press the Alt key.
• To have them shown all the time, right-click on an empty section of the Tab Strip and check Menu Bar in the pop-up menu.

Internet Explorer (Version 9.0)

The menu bar can be turned on or off in Windows Internet Explorer. Here’s how to display it:

1. Open Internet Explorer by clicking the Start button . In the search box, typeInternet Explorer, and then, in the list of results, click Internet Explorer.
2. Press the Alt key.

This headline jumped out at me today as I was browsing the web for new blog ideas:  The End of an Era: Internet Explorer Drops Below 50 Percent of Web Usage.  For years I was a fanatical and defiant IE user– perhaps it was the old MSCE loyalty in me– but eventually I went to the dark side and started using Firefox.

What was interesting to me about this article was actually not necessarily that IE continued to slide in popularity (duh), but that Chrome overtook Firefox (at least in that site’s stats).  The article’s claim that Chrome is now “the technologist’s browser of choice” is certainly food for thought.  Though I reviewed Google Chrome several years ago, soon after its release, I didn’t see a significant advantage versus the browsers I was already using and few of my clients were using it.

However, Beacon’s web developer’s often share their preferences for Google Chrome for its speed and performance and I’ve finally made the jump to Chrome as well.  I find that it is consistently faster and less buggy that other browsers, but what ultimately put me over the edge was an issue with AspDotNetStorefront’s HTML editor and newer browsers.  I administer many AspDotNetStorefront sites and simply couldn’t wait for an upgrade to 8.1 or 9.2ML to use the WYSIWYG editor in admin.  Since the editor continued to work in Chrome, I guess I’ve officially made the switch! Who’s with me??

There are several web browsers for us to use these days. One in particualar I really enjoy using is Google Chrome. It’s one of the fastest browsers out there and is very intuitive to use. It also has some great features, like the Chrome Web Store to purchase apps, extensions and themes for it.

You can download it here: http://www.google.com/chrome

This is a commercial that recently came out for it that caught my attention.

Google Chrome: Dear Sophie

Based on data collected by Compuware’s benchmarks division, Google Chrome is the fastest web browser in the “real world” of desktop users. The data, collected over a one-month time frame, captured the results of 1.86 billion individual measurements on over 200 websites.

In the chart below, Google Chrome 12 has the fastest page load time (in blue) of 3.433 seconds. While, Safari 4 has the slowest load time of 6.149 seconds. The chart also shows perceived render times (in green) of browsers, which is the amount of time it takes for the visible portion of the page to load in the browser. Firefox 5 has the best perceived render time (in green) of 2.18 seconds, while Chrome comes in second at 2.374 seconds.

I personally use Firefox most of the time due to the number of Add-ons I have installed on my machine, but after reading this article I might have to make the switch to Google Chrome.

Here is the link to the full article found on LinkedIn, if you wish to read further.

I’ll start off by saying that I’m a “lifelong” Internet Explorer user… We may as well get that out there right at the start.   In fact, I usually have to blush when I admit to my coworkers that I’m still using “old” Internet Explorer– and have been for at least 10 years!  They sigh and roll their eyes when I report an ”IE only” issue– being far more impressed with the flexibility and sexiness of FireFox, Mozilla, Opera, Safari or countless other browsers.

I do have a somewhat justifiable reason for this treachery (other than being “stuck” in my old ways!)… I spend a lot of my time testing our software products and– though you Microsoft haters don’t want to admit it!– if 70% of the public is still using IE, I need to make that my main focal point for testing.  Don’t get me wrong– we test in the other browsers too– but IE is still king with the public.

So, with all that being said, I forced myself to see what all the hype is about with the launch of the new browser “Google Chrome.”  Why?  Because I really like Google.  iGoogle is my home page and I have three fully customized tabs worth of content that I review multiple times a day– News, Weather, Web Development, Career, Family/Kids, you name it… I thought that if I was so committed to Google to maintain this content for me, maybe the browser would sway me as well.  So, with some trepidation, I decided to poke my toe in the water…

What I liked

• The interface feels ”clean” and well organized.  The toolbars are smaller, so more of the web page itself fits “above the fold”.
• My Favorites and link menus were successfully imported, which has been a problem when I’ve tried other browser installations (FireFox, you know who you are!)
• The “Recently closed tabs” on the home page and/or New Tab page is cool– easy to get back to closed pages/tabs
• For now, the Auto-suggest in the search bar is nice, but I can see getting sick of that.  At least it doesn’t pop up right in the same field where you are typing, but in the space below.  Time will tell…
• Chrome has a built-in spell-checker to automatically check web forms and text fields!  Hurray!  Apparently, you can also choose the language for the dictionary under Tools, Options, Minor Tweaks, Change font and language settings.
• Under the Page menu :
  • Under the “Developer” menu, the “Task Manager” feature shows stats like memory and CPU usage for each application open.  The “Stats for Nerds” was more of the same, but a fun touch of humor
  • “Application shortcuts” allow you to quickly create shortcuts to the desktop, quicklaunch bar and start menu
  • The “incognito” window has a funny little graphic  .  I suppose the idea of an incognito window– ”For times when you want to browse in stealth mode… Webpages that you open and files downloaded while you are incognito won’t be logged in your browsing and download histories; all new cookies are deleted after you close the incognito window”–  is a good idea too, but I’m all about the fun graphics, to be honest :).
• Under the Tools menu: 
  • The “History” feature is kinda creepy– it shows the date and time of all webpages visited recently– even in another browser!  However, I can see this being useful if I was trying to track down a URL that I didn’t bookmark.
  • Clear Browsing Data– Sooooo much easier to clear your cache (check “Empty the cache”).  LOVE that!

What I didn’t like

• Since iGoogle is my IE homepage, it seems odd that Chrome didn’t at least offer that as my default home page upon install
• I miss the File menu!  I know all those things must be buried somewhere else or have buttons, but I like knowing the things that will be in the File menu across all programs– Open, Close, Save, Print, etc.  You may commence eye-roll at this point if you must.
• When I click on links to files in the web page (Word, Excel, audio, etc.), they open in the task bar at the bottom of the page.  Then I have to go down to that task bar and click again to get them to open.  I’m sure there is some kind of method to this madness, but I don’t like it.

What was just weird

• The initial screen that you see on install is a preview of recent websites visited, but my home page was not one of those, which was odd
• Colors on some websites didn’t exactly match between browsers
• Typing my search words directly into the address bar is going to take some getting used to.  I don’t hate it; I just can’t get my head around it quite yet.

So, my over-all take on Google Chrome?  I’m really torn between a personal and professional point of view…

For my own personal Internet browsing habits, I like the browser quite a lot.  I like that it is clean, simple and efficient.  I LOVE the spell check and empty cache features.  Is it enough to make me change my default browser?  Probably not yet, but if they build in a couple of more features, I just might make the switch.

From a professional point of view, I strongly question the need for yet another browser on the market.  Currently, today’s web pages must look and function identically in at least three other standard browsers (as well as multiple versions of each!)– Internet Explorer 6 and 7 (with 8 on the near horizon!), FireFox 2 and 3, Netscape Navigator 7 and 8 and Safari.  All of these programs (and versions!) behave slightly differently when rendering web content.  I have seen first-hand the pain a web developer goes through to make the same content look and work exactly the same way across all of these diverse programs and I can’t stand the thought of yet another.

If the idea of the web is that content and applications become more ubiquitous, why is it that we are continually adding to the browser market (using vastly different programming platforms, I might add)?  This increases the programming and testing time to make sure that all apps are compliant to all browsers, when we could be using that time to add more functionality and features to the applications!  Hey Google, Microsoft, etc.– We’re begging– please, stop the madness…  Give us a common browser platform to develop upon and then step back and be amazed by the results!

References

Here are some good references that I used as research for this article.  Please enjoy!

• Do We Need Another Web Browser?
• How Google’s Simple Chrome Could Steer Web’s Complex Future
• Is Google Chrome an IE/Firefox/Opera/Safari killer?
• Chrome tops IE, Firefox in Acid3 test
• http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/product/32156/review/chrome.html