Google Chrome

I've just downloaded it and now, I'm writing you my first hand experience with new browser, released by Google.

Installation

You can only download setup that downloads required files. This can be an advantage since installer can collect additional information about system and (such as type of the processor you're running) and downloads executable files targeted for your processor family (I'm not sure if this is a case in Google chrome, though).

First run

During first run you can opt to import  bookmarks and password data, browsing history, etc. from Internet Explorer (interesting enough it does not do the same for Mozilla Firefox, even though you have an option to do it manually). I will not comment on reason behind such behavior :).

First grips

Browser has nice feature that is called Task manager. It specifies the amount of memory that each tab is allocating. Interestingly enough, each tab is running as a separate process (personally I welcome that even though memory consumption may be a bit higher - I've no figures to support that but each process requires some of the memory to allow manipulation by OS). Advantage (much bigger than the disadvantage described) is that tab cannot crash whole browser (something Mozilla Firefox is more prone to do it).

What I don't like is the fact that windows are subclassed and rendered using alternate UI look & feel, different to that set by your operating system (same applies also to GoogleTalk and MSN Live messenger). I hate that. All well behaved applications should look and work the same as defined by operating system (visual appearance of forms, mouse gestures, standardized accelerator keys and shortcuts, system dialogs for open/save, etc). There is plenty of innovative things to be implemented and hacking your UI appearance should not be one of them :).

Google Chrome in that retrospect fares no different than GoogleTalk. It has a bit different UI than other browsers (actually I like it for its simplicity). Some of the minor things bother me such as opening TaskManager and switching between programs with Alt+Tab and wondering why TaskManager is still on top of all others. But I guess there must be good reason behind that and since it can be turned off it is not annoying so much).

What I like is that View source/View page source command opens new tab with syntax highlighting. Too bad it doesn't perform tidying of HTML :).

Maybe it was never meant to do that since you have JavaScript console.

Search is also very intuitive (it renders all matching words with yellow background color and current marked match with orange.

About:memory is nice I believe Google has set a goal to release a browser more conservative on resources than other browsers :)

Last but not least

In next days I will use Chrome for my daily browsing tasks so I can get more experience with it (and write another blog post about it ). I hope both of us will get along with each other.

This file should be replaced with licence file when built

Just met this "jewel" when installing some chipset drivers. I clicked yes, most certainly it should be replaced :) Talking about weird license agreement ...

Design issues

I don't consider myself one of those I-am-always-smart-and-right people that can be regularly seen commenting on the daily wtf when someone posts a message regarding poorly designed and implemented piece of code. People are different, they have different knowledge, experience, they handle pressure differently, etc...

Almost always there is an explanation as to why some of the poor "craftsmanship" sees the light of production environment. I wonder what was the reason behind the next COM component that one can observe on computer with Media player 11 installed.

The device, \Device\Harddisk1\DR1, has a bad block.

Grrr... I haven't been reviewing Event log entries for quite a while (around a month or so). Today I've been surprised by the copious amounts of errors linked to the message above. Almost brand new Acer laptop, It isn't four months old since I've bought it. Former laptop (also Acer product) managed to survive without a scratch on a disk for around three years or so. And after such entries began to appear, it worked flawlessly until retirement (well that would be a matter of debate, I agree. Maybe I was only lucky enough for that long).

Even at the highest peak of disk utilization for prolonged periods event log entries were no higher than two or three per week. In my case there is 1.529 events during paging operation and other various I/O operations. Looks like to me that disk is slowly saying it's goodbye... grrr...

PS of a little comfort is the fact that SMART returned good status. Yeah, right....

Found this article when creating and error page in ASP.NET

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/perfect404/

Nicely written, short and precise...

Hi there

It is not the first time I'm writing an introductory to a blog. Major reason for opening a blog here is that writing in your native language (Slovenian in my case) limits the number of people that find your blog useful.

I'll try to write about interesting moments and findings throughout my life. I won't make any sincere promises about writing a blog every week or so. Whenever I find it something I would like to share it, I'll write an entry. Hopefully some will find my writing useful.