I just installed the latest build of Chromium on my MacBook because I wanted to use some of the new extensions available recently, but when I ran it, it had a blue title bar, like on Windows XP and Linux. I didn’t think too much of it, backed up the Chromium profile folder, and copied over my Chrome profile, and Chromium went back to grey.

After poking around and comparing the two Preference files, I figured out what was causing Chromium to go blue, there was an extension listed in the file, which the theme entry lower down referenced.

I did this using build 34868, and I cannot guarantee this will work for others, it just happened to work for me. If you do it wrong, or it doesn’t work, and it messes up your Chromium profile, I accept no responsibility. Backup the Default folder just in case this happens.

• Close Chromium, then go to ‘~/Library/Application Support/Chromium/Default/’
• Backup the Extensions folder and the Preferences file. If you make a mistake in the Preferences file, it deletes all the Extensions for some reason…
• Open up ‘Preferences’ in TextEdit (or whatever plain text editor you want to use).
• Find where it says ‘”settings”: {‘, it should be after ‘autoupdate’ under ‘extensions’
• Add in the following before ‘”settings”: {‘:
  “theme”: {
  “colors”: {
  “null”: [ 0, 0, 0 ]
  },
  “id”: “hkacjpbfdknhflllbcmjibkdeoafencn”,
  “pack”: “nopath”
  },

  and the following after:
  

  “hkacjpbfdknhflllbcmjibkdeoafencn”: {
  “location”: 1,
  “manifest”: {
  “key”: “MIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GNADCBiQKBgQCycmVJSXAf57FMqFmmTdmQtbvhYHx7850dYFcU9zyPMGgbpqDJ4PG8zFv3vqiVIwEkxoSCK/JbVdGUyenu5H4F8/e4+18rAjCMZffYEkXLme1ZkuirdhUD9KNobP+Y8wBUpQRsOEg8vpThjQaOovEI/u2AlSh9ckwDRKphqqwMNwIDAQAB”,
  “name”: “Default”,
  “theme”: {
  “colors”: {
  “null”: [ 0, 0, 0 ]
  },
  “images”: {
  “null”: “notused.png”
  }
  },
  “version”: “1.1″
  },
  “path”: “hkacjpbfdknhflllbcmjibkdeoafencn/1.1″,
  “state”: 1
  },

  so it’s like:
  

  “theme”: {
  “colors”: {
  “null”: [ 0, 0, 0 ]
  },
  “id”: “hkacjpbfdknhflllbcmjibkdeoafencn”,
  “pack”: “nopath”
  },
  “settings”: {
  “hkacjpbfdknhflllbcmjibkdeoafencn”: {
  “location”: 1,
  “manifest”: {
  “key”: “MIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GNADCBiQKBgQCycmVJSXAf57FMqFmmTdmQtbvhYHx7850dYFcU9zyPMGgbpqDJ4PG8zFv3vqiVIwEkxoSCK/JbVdGUyenu5H4F8/e4+18rAjCMZffYEkXLme1ZkuirdhUD9KNobP+Y8wBUpQRsOEg8vpThjQaOovEI/u2AlSh9ckwDRKphqqwMNwIDAQAB”,
  “name”: “Default”,
  “theme”: {
  “colors”: {
  “null”: [ 0, 0, 0 ]
  },
  “images”: {
  “null”: “notused.png”
  }
  },
  “version”: “1.1″
  },
  “path”: “hkacjpbfdknhflllbcmjibkdeoafencn/1.1″,
  “state”: 1
  },
• Save and open Chromium and hopefully you’ll have a blue title bar.

A lot of work for something so simple really… I wonder is there a theme available that’ll do this for you…

I’ve always liked the idea of Windows Live SkyDrive and DropBox, but they just don’t get it 100% right (although DropBox is pretty nice).

I’m a heavy user of Google services and there are so many ways online storage can tap into each of these services. When I go into SkyDrive to access a Word document or PowerPoint presentation, I would expect it to give me an option to open it in Office Live, but it doesn’t, it just downloads it. DropBox suffers from this too, but it’s acceptable as they don’t have their own solution. Another gripe with SkyDrive is the lack of a desktop application for managing your online storage. There are third party alternatives, but they lack in speed and are quite buggy. DropBox’s application is seamless brilliance. Just simply manipulate files in a folder just like you normally would and they automatically sync.

But where both these services lack, I think Google can fix. They have a wide infrastructure of hardware and software services, such as Picasa Web Albums, Google Docs, GMail, YouTube and Blogger. Google Web Drive could integrate these services (in particular Picasa Web Albums and Docs), and provide a single place to share files, pictures and documents, or keep them private for personal use. Imagine you upload a video to Web Drive so you can access it later at another computer. And then later you want to put it on YouTube, so you just right click, then click publish to YouTube, fill out a form, and no second upload. The same could be done for pictures. Saving files from GMail to Web Drive could be a single click away.

Of course Google could go and create the best interface and integration with their other services, but if they neglect desktop software, they will have problems. DropBox is great because of it’s software, not it’s web interface. In fact a portable application that can be installed on a memory stick would be very handy. I really hope Google can pull something special out of the bag with this, and I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for it.

For a brief period I had Friend Connect in the sidebar too, but it just seemed pointless to me really. I couldn’t use it to create local WordPress accounts to authorize comments. I would have to replace the WordPress comments with Friend Connect comments, making Facebook Connect AND Popple3.com accounts pointless. Maybe I missed something, but really Friend Connect seems like Disqus with a slightly more social aspect to it.

Based on the last paragraph I think it’s quite obvious which is the better platform in my opinion – Facebook Connect. It allows for full integration with any website, it’s all down to the developer. It’s a bit harder to set up, due to there being PHP involved, but still, totally worth the effort. It also posts actions to your Facebook feed if you choose to do so. I hope that sites all over the internet implement this in some way. Facebook will be launching a WordPress plugin soon, but until then you can still use (the not so great) Sociable.es plugin. With some editing, you can get a good proper functioning Facebook integration, as you can see right here.

The first think you will definitely notice is how fast Google Chrome starts up. I would usually be waiting a few seconds for Firefox, even if it had no add-ons, but Google Chrome is as quick as Notepad or MS Paint, which is quite a feat. It’s instant.
It can easily import your preferences, bookmarks and history from other browsers on your computer, which is something you expect from browsers these days. The speed at which it runs is amazing. No matter how many windows and tabs you open up, everything runs as smooth as just one. This is due to their new approach of giving each tab and windows their own process. That way if a webpage crashes, only that tab will crash leaving the rest of your browsing unharmed. I thought this would mean that more CPU and memory would be used, but I was wrong. When I compared Chrome’s resource usage with 2 tabs (Google Reader and my site), the total was less than Firefox with the classic Google homepage, nothing else. You can view each tabs resource usage in Chrome’s own task manager, even allowing you to kill all flash processes, but leave the webpage working perfectly, or close tabs using far too much CPU or memory.

The interface is pretty. It’s clean and far from cluttered. The tabs appear in the title bar, then there’s an address bar, and bookmarks bar. That’s all. It leaves much more room for displaying the webpage. The status bar only shows when it’s needed, and only takes the width it needs.

Downloads are shown in a box at the bottom of the window. This feature still needs tweaking though, as the downloads will only appear on the tab/window that the download was initiated. There is a downloads tab that you can open, but it just isn’t enough. Another fault with the download manager is the lack of percentage indicator. It shows the total size of the file, what has downloaded, and the speed it goes at. The downloads have a ring around the file icon, which indicates the amount downloaded, but it’s just not enough.
Arranging tabs and windows is effort less. Just drag them around the way you want them. Pull a tab out of the windows to create a new window.

Security and compatibility is something Google are touting as a big thing. Google already stores URLs of phishing sites, site that are known to host viruses, or any other security concern. Google Chrome utilizes this to protect the user even more, by bringing this list out of the Google search page and into the browser. Google also have access to a massive infrastructure to test Chrome’s compatibility with websites all over the world. They advertise a 99% compatibility, which is huge for a brand new, still in beta, browser. Chrome also includes an “Incognito tab” which allows users to browse whatever they want, without leaving any trace behind. Perfect for ordering gifts for other users of the computer, or certain other things (use your imagination).

Chrome still has a few other flaws though. It doesn’t have a way to effectively organize bookmarks, downloads and history. There is no way to remove from the list of downloads, or even get rid of the list altogether as far as I can see, and history only lets you delete entire days, and not individual entries. Nor does it have a way to change order from time to anything else, however a search box partially makes up for this.

In conclusion, Google Chrome shows lots of potential. Considering this is the very first beta release, Google have done a great job. I can’t wait to see the finished browser, and how it stacks up against it’s rivals. It’s definitely worth the download now. I’m using it as my default browser now after being a Firefox (and for a while Flock) user for many many years. Only time will tell if it grows old and I return to Firefox (like I did with Flock).

You can download Google Chrome Beta now from http://www.google.com/chrome

Google have unvieled that they are working on a new web browser based on WebKit. The first images appeared yesterday, when Google sent out cartoons (yes, cartoons) to promote the new browser.

The new browser, called Google Chrome, is built on WebKit, which came as a shock to many as Google have such a tight relationship with Mozilla, and have invested large amounts of money into their Firefox browser. Google have decided however, not to use an open source JavaScript engine, but instead built their own from the ground up, dubbed V8.

The design of Chrome is quite unique and I have to say I like it. However, good looks and a few extra features aren’t gonna tear me away from Firefox. But if it includes a similar add-ons system to Firefox, then it may pose a challenge to me.

One feature I like is that the tabs each get their own process. Yes, this will increase CPU and memory usage, but it also makes it more stable. If a particular website causes the browser to crash, only that one tab will actually crash, leaving the rest of your tabs intact. I’ve had a problem with Google Reader causing Firefox to crash, causing up to 30 tabs (yes that is a tad bit too much) to crash in the process. Sure there’s session recovery, but it’s still an annoyance.

Overall, it looks nice, but may possibly be lacking in features. Most features are already implemented into Firefox natively, or through add-ons, but it may be something to keep an eye on.

Rumoured for release tomorrow, I’ll post a full review as soon as I get my hands on it.