links for 2010-05-05: Apple's control freakishness; Chrome update; SOA embraced; Android tablets; Solinsky AR splits

• The upside to Apple's control freakishness - I like this from Tim O'Reilly: "It is becoming increasingly clear that the Internet is becoming not just a platform, but an operating system, an operating system that manages access by devices such as personal computers, phones, and other personal electronics to cloud subsystems ranging from computation, storage, and communications to location, identity, social graph, search, and payment."
• Google Chrome update: Speed, performance and a deeper push into browser computing - Upgraded, still had it freeze on me once, but now it pops up a dialog telling me what page is the culprit and I had Flash enabled at the time.
  
• Just as vendor-speak turns from SOA, the users are actually embracing it - No surprise here.  Vendors and analysts are always talking about the next great thing while there is a lot of money to be made just delivering and implementing the last thing.
  
• Android based tablets on their way - Already running Flash and Air.
• Chris Solinsky's splits from his 10000m AR - It appears he could have run faster with more even pacing!  Bodes well for his 5000m AR attempt at the Pre Classic in July.

Found a bug in Google Chrome with Gmail and Google Charts

I've been using Chrome as my default browser for a few weeks now and generally have liked what I've seen.  There are a few web-sites that don't work, primarily due to plug-in issues, but I came across a strange bug when working with Gmail that is kind of surprising.

There is a labs feature for inserting images into an e-mail that I've used in Firefox for awhile now and it works great.  I can provide a URL to the image and it appears in the sent e-mail just fine.

I had occasion to try this with Chrome last week and to my surprise, it didn't work.  Now, it appeared to work just fine as I was composing as I could insert the image and it appeared in the composition, but the receiver of the e-mail said there were no images.  I looked in my sent e-mails and sure enough, rather than an image there was just a blank box.  I sent an e-mail to myself and the same thing happened.  Just to check, I went back and did it with Firefox and it worked.

So, further inspection was required. I tried copying and pasting from the sent e-mail into an HTML editor and what do you know, the IMG tag was indeed wrong. Rather than:

it was:

A little more investigating revealed that things went wrong if I save the e-mail as a draft and go back to it so it doesn't happen only when the e-mail is sent.

Now, the URL I was using was a very long and complicated one pointing to a chart using Google Charts API.  So I tried it in Chrome with a simpler URL to an image and that worked fine.  So the conclusion is that Chrome somehow can't handle a long URL pointing to Google Charts but Firefox can.

I did submit a bug so we'll see what happens, but has anyone else observed this or a similar problem and have a solution?  For now, I'm using Firefox when sending e-mails like this.

Thoughts on Google Chrome

After getting frustrated with a few issues with Firefox, I decided to spend a week using Google Chrome as my primary browser to see how I liked it.  Well, here are my observations.

Things I like:

• In general, it does seem a bit snappier than Firefox.
• I have not had it end up using half of my machines CPU like I was observing on occasion with Firefox.
• I like the "minimalist" decorations/toolbars around the page giving more real estate to the page than I had with Firefox.
• Single box for URLs and searching.  It isn't a big deal but just typing in one place rather than having a separate search box is a little easier.
• Independent processes for each tab.  Should some page become a runaway, I can kill just it rather than having to hunt to find out which one and/or restart the whole browser.
• Bookmarks toolbar that can be turned off by default but appears when you open a new tab.  Another way to increase real estate for displaying web pages.

Things I don't like or are different:

• When using page-up/down the overlap from the previous page seems to be about 10% which is more than I'm used to and I think I'd prefer the roughly 5% that Firefox has.  For example, with normal sized text, paging down results in the last 5-6 lines from the previous page being shown at the top of the new page and this feels like too much.  I haven't seen an easy way to configure this but imagine there is something somewhere.
• I like the "Quick Find" feature of Firefox where you can quickly search in a page by typing "/" followed by the text.  It isn't that much more work to just use Ctrl/Cmd-F so it is more just relearning to not use "/".
• If you accidently close a tab, it does appear in the History menu, but selecting it goes to that URL in the current tab, it doesn't open a new tab.  This is kind of annoying as getting back to where you were requires opening a new tab then selecting the recently closed tab URL.
• Microsoft Silverlight doesn't seem to work in Chrome.  It appears there may be a beta that adds support.
• Without a separate search box, you can't have plugins to use other search engines/sites.

I'm sure there is much more, and any hints or tips are welcome.  For now, I'm sticking with Chrome at least a little longer as it is working for me.  How about you?

Switching to Chrome from Firefox (for a week at least)

I've had periodic issues with Firefox where it will suddenly start using a significant amount of the CPU for no apparent reason.  I'm not watching any video or viewing any pages that would indicate an issue.  Sometimes closing some tabs helps, but often the only solution is to quit out of Firefox and restart.  Upon restarting all the same pages open and the CPU is fine.

I have installed and played with Google Chrome for awhile now but had continued using Firefox as my default browser, but for this week I've committed to using Chrome as my default browser.  I'll post my thoughts and what I plan to stick with at the end of the week.

FWIW, when I tweeted my plan to use Chrome for a week, @firefox_answers did respond with some helpful info to try to make Firefox behave better, that being:

1. Test Firefox plug-ins http://bit.ly/1x4OH
2. Test extensions http://bit.ly/cy1Ua9
3. Try a fresh profilehttp://bit.ly/ayoh

There was a Flash plug-in update I didn't have but doubt that is the issue, and I'm not interested in testing out #2 or #3 as the problem doesn't happen consistently.  Also, given how often this suggestion comes from @firefox_answers I suspect there are quite a few issues.

Anyway, stay tuned.

Browser Market Share; Who is Really #1?

It has been a long held belief, and data has supported it, that Internet Explorer, due in large part to its ties to the dominant desktop operating system, has been the most used browser out there.  Now, the data has shown that things are narrowing which begs the question, what browser is really #1?

Why do I ask this question?  I've been a long time user of StatCounter.com on my blog to track some statistics and focused primarily on page views, but I recently also set up Google Analytics to see what data it provides.  In light of the recent announcement about Chrome OS, I was also curious how the Chrome Browser was being adopted.

In browsing through what it has to offer I came across its browser report where not only was IE not #1, it wasn't even #2 with Safari beating it out.  I also found it interesting that Chrome is at nearly 4%.

But clearly, a handful of hits on my blog is likely not representative of the broader market.  Additionally, I likely have a significant audience from Sun which may help skew the results towards Firefox and Safari.  And the general audience that reads my blog is probably more technical and likely to be using alternative browsers.  So what else can we look at?

The May report from Market Share By Net Applications shows what one might expect with IE at 65.5% followed by Firefox at 22.5%, Safari at 8.4%, and Chrome at only 1.8%.

For another perspective, w3schools.com lists their stats and for the month of June, Firefox is at 47.3%, the sum for IE 40.7%, and Chrome beating out Safari 6.0% to 3.1%.  Again, a more technical audience leads to greater use of Firefox and Chrome.

Last, going back to where I started with my stat gathering, StatCounter.com has global stats for the past year and while the data shows similar results to Market Share above, approximately 60% IE, 30% Firefox, and everything else in the weeds, since it looks at the past year you can see a trend of IE losing about 10% points.



Will this gradual decline continue?  It's hard to say, but I can say that competition and choice is good and in the end the consumer wins.

It is also very interesting to see the platforms StatCounter.com reports.  This shows that 95+% of their traffic is coming from Windows meaning that even where the provided default is IE, approximately a third of those folks make the choice and effort to switch.

So what does all this data show us?  Clearly, IE is still #1 amongst the general population.  But technical audiences, those that both have the knowledge to make a choice and the aptitude and interest to execute on that and install something other than the default, are seemingly beginning to abandon IE in favor of the competition.

I'll continue to look at this in the future and report back!