RHFtech Help Desk

I ran into an unresolvable problem with Google Chrome on a client’s XP machine this week. They use Chrome as their browser, on my recommendation. The computer was an underpowered eMachines T3120 model. Chrome is faster and less of a memory hog than other options so it made sense to me to use it on this slow box.

The error presented as a Google Chrome 104 error, "Chrome is unable to load the requested webpage." We couldn’t access any webpage. Oddly, other browsers—IE6, IE8, Firefox 3.6.6 and AOL 9.1—could access the Internet while Chrome would not.

Although new to me, this is not a new issue for Chrome. See http://bit.ly/bkU4xc . None of the various solutions that worked for others beset with this issue worked here. After wasting several hours trying to fix it, I gave up.

I reinstalled Windows XP and the applications. Fortunately, there weren’t many. I discovered on the reinstall that the Windows XP product key, which had been in use on the machine, failed the Windows Genuine Advantage tests and differed from the product key on the sticker affixed to the computer.

I wasted almost an hour of my time dealing with the product key problem. This reminded me that I NEVER have to waste time with this issue when reinstalling the operating system on a Mac. There are many reasons that consumers are moving away from Microsoft. This is one of them.

That solved the problem. I added Firefox to the reinstalled Windows XP applications list, in case the Chrome problem recurs. I also added 1GB of RAM, which made for a huge improvement in the computer’s usability.

Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) has fallen on hard times. Once it ruled the Internet, accounting for over 90% of all web page views. Those heady times are now history. The latest statistics for April 2010 from NetApplications show it with less than 60%. Mozilla Firefox is the second most widely used browser with 25% share, followed by Google Chrome at 7%.

Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome must be installed by the user. IE comes installed on Windows machines. Apple’s Safari is automatically on Macs, iPhones, iPads and iPod touch devices. Firefox’s and Chrome’s large and growing usage shares mean that users like these browsers better than the OS defaults. Firefox and Chrome have versions that work on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. In case you wondered, Firefox has been around since 2003, Chrome since 2008.

Both browsers are quite secure. Mozilla and Google update their browsers frequently to address security issues and to add new features. Mozilla tells you when it has an update. You decide whether to update or not. Chrome does not tell you, it updates in the background.

Firefox has a big advantage over Chrome. It has thousands of add-ons. These add-ons extend the browser’s functionality and allow the user to configure the browser to their needs. I always install Adblock Plus, to reduce the web’s advertising-induced visual distraction and clutter. It is quite popular having been downloaded almost 80 million times. I always install Foobar, which merges the address bar and search bar into a single bar, like Chrome. I also install Bartab, which delays loading all tabs but the browser’s focused tab when I start up Firefox. This means I can keep 25+ tabs open without draining system resources. Firefox also opens much faster this way.

Chrome is catching up but has a long way to go when it comes to add-ons. You can check out what is available for Google Chrome at its extensions pages. Many of the top Firefox add-ons are also available on Chrome. Chrome has better memory management than Firefox and launches pages a bit faster. (If you want a faster browser try the Windows-only Maxthon 3.0 beta, which is faster than Chrome.)

Chrome’s user interface (UI) is different than IE, Firefox or Safari. It is more Spartan in design. Safari, IE and Firefox use a traditional type of UI. Chrome does not. In Windows, it does not have a title bar or menu. Instead it has tabs at the top of the screen. It can be a bit disconcerting at first. All versions of Chrome combine the search bar and the address bar into a single “superbar” that lets you type a URL or do a search from the same place. I prefer this superbar, which is why I install Foobar into Firefox.

The Mozilla team is also experimenting with some new features that look promising. They recently started testing a Weave Browser Sync add-on. It securely keeps your bookmarks, saved passwords, browsing history and open tabs backed up and synchronized between your computers. Chrome can synchronize bookmarks but not the other data.

Mozilla recently introduced an Account Manager beta add-on that implements a new protocol for websites to integrate with the browser, so we can sign in and out right of different sites, like Google, Facebook, or Yahoo, from an icon on the toolbar. This holds promise. It is too early to tell whether it will work well and be useful.

Who do you love?
I use both browsers. I like Firefox better than Chrome.

An advantage that Firefox enjoys over Chrome is that Mozilla is not Google. Do you want Google knowing even more about you then they already do? Do you want to be more dependent on Google services? I don’t. If you still want to use Chrome but keep Google at bay try using SRWare Iron, a Chrome derivative, that cuts the Google tie-in.

I received the following email from the Google Apps team:

Dear Google Apps admin,​

In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology.  This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5. As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.

We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010.  After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.

Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.

Starting next week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser.  We will also alert you again closer to March 1 to remind you of this change.

In 2009, the Google Apps team delivered more than 100 improvements to enhance your product experience.  We are aiming to beat that in 2010 and continue to deliver the best and most innovative collaboration products for businesses.

Thank you for your continued support!

Sincerely,
The Google Apps team

If you run Mac OS X, Leopard or Snow Leopard, here is how to turn on automatic spell checking.

Firefox 3.5.x

1. Go to the menu Firefox —> Preferences…
2. Select the Advanced tab
3. Check the box Check my spelling as I type
4. Close the window

Safari 4.0.x

1. Go to the menu
2. Select Edit —> Spelling and Grammar —> Check Spelling While Typing

SmarterFox is a Firefox add-on that has some remarkable features. It adds useful functionality to Firefox. I liked SmarterFox until today. The current version has changed the way that Google Reader displays, adding its “endless page” feature to the Reader and in so doing, obscures the page header, as can be seen in the image below.

Attaching the SmarterFox endless page feature to Google Reader means the page will never stop “Loading…” as there are hundreds of thousands of old RSS feed items to catalog.

SmarterFox 2.1.2 also changed the way that the Google search page displays. This has made an elegantly simple page ugly. I wish there was a way to disable these features on selected URLs.

I have been a fan of Firefox, the free web browser from the Mozilla Corporation, since before the original 1.0 version was released in November 2004. The current release is version 3.0.11. A new version 3.5 is scheduled for release by end of June 2009. It may already be out when you read this. I have been testing the beta and release candidates for a couple of months. I am impressed.

Firefox has editions for all major operating systems. Version 3.5 runs faster on all of them. I have informally tested it on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Mac OS X (Leopard), and Ubuntu 9.04 (Linux).

Faster and Better Memory Use
The individual pages open faster than earlier versions. The application loads on your computers is a fraction of the time that 3.0.xx does. System memory usage is better than prior Firefox versions, which often became memory hogs. I read an independent report where Firefox 3.5 memory use was compared to Google Chrome 3.0, Safari 4.0 and Opera 10. Firefox beat the others.

Tab Tearing
Version 3.5 has several new features that add functionality to this versatile browser. One that I find particularly useful is tab-tearing. Firefox is not the first browser to have this. I believe Opera may have originated this. Google Chrome and Apple’s Safari also feature tab-tearing. This allows you to grab a tab and drag it into a separate window. You can also reverse this if you want to combine windows.

Private Browsing
Another new feature is private browsing mode, which is accessed from the "Tools" menu. Private browsing allows you to browse the Internet without Firefox retaining any data about which sites and pages you have visited. This is useful when you are on a foreign computer, such as a library computer, a friend’s or relative’s. This is also useful when you share a computer and want keep your spouse, children, or parents from being able to review your browsing history.

Location-aware Browsing
Optional Location-aware Browsing has also been added. Websites that use location-aware browsing will ask where you are in order to bring you more relevant information, or to save you time while searching. If you look for a Chinese food in your area, a site can ask you to share your location so that simply searching for “Chinese food” will return the results you want. Another use might be if you are mapping directions, the map site can know where you are so you only need to tell it where you are going.

Session Restore (enhanced)
Session restore is enhanced in Firefox 3.5. It displays a window which lets you select which tabs from a previous session you want to restore. Previous versions were not selective, only letting you restore your old session or start a new one. Perhaps a web site is crashing Firefox. The new session restore lets you disable it while opening all your other previous tabs.

The Firefox community makes Firefox the great browser that it is. There are thousands of free extensions that let you modify Firefox for the way you want to work. Unfortunately, some extensions (AKA add-ons) may not be compatible with the new version. This means that Firefox 3.5 will not allow them to load.

Nightly Tester Tools
I use lots of extensions, 25-35 per machine, depending upon the operating system. Disabled add-ons are frustrating. I use the Nightly Tester Tools add-on to override incompatibility issues. Once this is installed you can force the incompatible add-ons to load even though Firefox 3.5 doesn’t like them. This has never created issues for me. It might not work the same for you so use it at your own risk.

If you want to download the Firefox 3.5 release candidate you can get it at http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-rc.html. Firefox 3.5rc3 was available for download and installation as of the writing of this article.

We live in our browsers today. Well, I do. Sometimes we close a tab and wish we hadn’t.

Here are keyboard and mouse shortcuts to reopen a closed tab for popular browsers. Sorry Safari fans, no shortcuts.

Notes:
1. Macs change Ctrl key to the Command   key.
2. Right click action should be with mouse positioned over the browser’s tab bar area.

Sometimes all we want to do is read the content on a web page. This can be frustrating when the page is cluttered with images, text, navigation tools and flash objects.

The Readability bookmarklet is a way to deal with this clutter. It is easy to install and use. Once installed it is used by simply clicking on the new shortcut in your Bookmarks/Links Toolbar. The web page you are viewing will be transformed into easy-to-read a text-only view.

Readability page before

Readability page after

 Install it by going to http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/

1. Select your settings for Style, Size and Margin.   

2. If you use Firefox, Google Chrome or Apple Safari drag the Readability button to the bookmarks toolbar.   

3. If you use Internet Explorer 7 or IE8 right click on the Readability button and select Add to Favorites…   

4. A warning message “You are adding a favorite that might not be safe…” will appear. Click on the Yes button.   

5. Select “Create In” the Links folder and then click the Add button.

A constant of technology is that it always changes. You need not try every “innovation”, that’s my job! But you should keep abreast of significant trends. The migration from Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) to other browsers is a significant and ongoing change. Two years ago IE accounted for 80% of the market. Today it has about 67% and its share is sinking. Apple’s Safari and Mozilla Firefox are gaining share daily.

Firefox works on all personal computers—Windows, Mac and Linux. It has over 21% of the total market today and this share is growing. This is significant in absolute numbers and because users, other than on Linux computers, have to download, install and learn to use it. Mozilla’s market share is actually much larger than 21% if one takes into account that probably one-half of the computers in use are attached to corporate and government domains. In these locations, the system administrators lock the machines and do not let users install applications. Sysadmins are conservative by nature, for good reason. If is not broken they will not fix it. Changing from IE to Firefox is a substantial commitment for a sysadmin who has other demands on his limited time. If we eliminate these computers from our calculation, Firefox’s adjusted market share is between 40-50% where a user has a choice.

Safari, with about a 9% share, comes standard with Macs. It is understandable that Safari’s share has risen, since Apple’s share of computer sales has been growing. Many users use the applications that come with their machines. Windows users are likely to use IE and Mac users are likely to use Safari. Safari is available for Windows but is little used.

Firefox is my browser of choice because it has thousands of free add-ons, AKA extensions, which allow you to customize the browser to the way you want. This open-source community of add-on developers is a big reason why Firefox will continue to make IE and Safari second choice browsers for those in the know.

My favorite extensions are Adblock Plus, IE Tab (Windows only), Toolbar Buttons, Foxmarks Bookmarks Synchronizer, and Delicious Bookmarks.

Adblock Plus stops distracting banner advertisement images from downloading and displaying on your computer. This enhances your view of web pages and speeds up their display. There is a filter set you can subscribe to, which keeps the Adblock Plus database up-to-date. This is automatically shown to you after you install Adblock Plus.

IE Tab lets you switch the underlying browser engine for a web page on Windows machines from Firefox to IE. This means you do not have to open Internet Explorer to view those few non-standard web pages that are improperly coded to display on anything besides IE.

Toolbar Buttons adds buttons that a user can add to Firefox’s toolbar. I add the three zoom-related buttons to my installations so that I can zoom in, out or reset my page display with a single click. Firefox is smart about zooming. It remembers the last setting for a page when you return to it.

Foxmarks Bookmarks Synchronizer is useful if you use more than one computer as many of us do. Foxmarks works in the background to keep your bookmarks and, optionally, your passwords both backed up and synchronized.

Delicious Bookmarks integrates Yahoo’s Delicious web site service with Firefox. Delicious lets you keep your bookmarks in the cloud so that you can access them from any operating system or computer. Delicious Bookmarks lets you quickly bookmark a page to the Delicious server.

I also change the Firefox Tools > Options… > Tabs menu to: Always show the tab bar and When I open a link in a new tab, switch to it immediately. I recommend selecting the Options Advanced tab Search for text when I start typing feature. This allows you to quickly find text or hyperlinks in a web page.