{"id":187,"date":"2010-07-07T20:16:42","date_gmt":"2010-07-07T20:16:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scaine.net\/site\/?p=187"},"modified":"2012-03-27T21:15:01","modified_gmt":"2012-03-27T21:15:01","slug":"chromium-take-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scaine.net\/site\/2010\/07\/chromium-take-two\/","title":{"rendered":"Chromium (Take Two)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scaine.net\/site\/2010\/07\/chromium-take-two\/chromium-logo\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-197\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-197 alignleft\" title=\"Chromium Logo\" src=\"https:\/\/www.scaine.net\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/chromium-logo.png\" alt=\"Chromium Logo\" width=\"107\" height=\"107\" \/><\/a>It was <a title=\"Chromium on Ubuntu\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scaine.net\/site\/2009\/09\/chromium-on-ubuntu\/\" target=\"_blank\">September last year when I last properly tried Chromium<\/a> in Ubuntu. \u00a0Back then, there was no bookmark sync, extensions were a glint in the dev&#8217;s eyes and GTK theme support was a new feature.<\/p>\n<p>I didn&#8217;t particularly elaborate in that article about why I didn&#8217;t make the switch back then. \u00a0In fact, I open the article claiming that the experience was a mixed bag, then pretty much rave about it! \u00a0I must have been tired that day&#8230;<\/p>\n<h4>Then<\/h4>\n<p>The primary reason I didn&#8217;t switch was that I was hooked on Firefox extensions. \u00a0Well, four anyway &#8211; SyncPlaces, Flashblock, AdBlock and FEBE.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a title=\"Syncplaces\" href=\"https:\/\/addons.mozilla.org\/en-US\/firefox\/addon\/8426\/\" target=\"_blank\">Syncplaces<\/a> will sync bookmarks using any FTP, NFS or Samba share.<\/li>\n<li><a title=\"Flashblock\" href=\"https:\/\/addons.mozilla.org\/en-US\/firefox\/addon\/433\/\" target=\"_blank\">Flackblock<\/a> does what it says on the tin &#8211; it replaces Flash elements on a web page with a click-able placeholder.<\/li>\n<li><a title=\"AdBlock\" href=\"https:\/\/addons.mozilla.org\/en-US\/firefox\/addon\/1865\/\" target=\"_blank\">AdBlock Plus<\/a> needs no introduction. \u00a0As far as I know, the best advert blocker for any browser. \u00a0 Go on, prove me wrong!<\/li>\n<li><a title=\"FEBE\" href=\"https:\/\/addons.mozilla.org\/en-US\/firefox\/addon\/2109\/\" target=\"_blank\">FEBE<\/a> is a backup and restore tool.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4>Now<\/h4>\n<p>Flash forward, 9 months later : present day. \u00a03 of these extensions now exist on Chromium, kind of. \u00a0Here they are :<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><!--more-->Chromium Sync. \u00a0Technically, not an extension : this is now built into Chromium itself and all you need is a Google account. \u00a0Your bookmarks, extensions, preferences, auto fill and themes can be synced across any PC you use Chromium. \u00a0Syncplaces was, by comparison, pretty horrific to set up (and needed to be downloaded first), but it did mitigate any privacy concerns you might have about uploading your data to Google. \u00a0Personally, I use so many Google products day to day that uploading my bookmarks wasn&#8217;t a concern. \u00a0Your mileage may vary.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<figure id=\"attachment_189\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-189\" style=\"width: 396px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scaine.net\/site\/2010\/07\/chromium-take-two\/chromium-sync\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-189\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-189\" title=\"Chromium - Sync\" src=\"https:\/\/www.scaine.net\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/Chromium-Sync.png\" alt=\"Chromium - Sync option\" width=\"396\" height=\"125\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-189\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Chromium Sync Option<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"attachment_190\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-190\" style=\"width: 410px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scaine.net\/site\/2010\/07\/chromium-take-two\/chromium-set-up-sync\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-190\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-190\" title=\"Chromium - Set up sync\" src=\"https:\/\/www.scaine.net\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/Chromium-Set-up-sync.png\" alt=\"Chromium - Set up sync\" width=\"410\" height=\"407\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-190\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sync Options<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li><a title=\"Flashblock for Chromium\" href=\"https:\/\/chrome.google.com\/extensions\/detail\/gofhjkjmkpinhpoiabjplobcaignabnl?hl=en\" target=\"_blank\">Flashblock<\/a> for Chromium shares its name with its Firefox compatriot, but they&#8217;re by different authors. \u00a0There may be trouble ahead!<\/li>\n<li>Similar story for <a title=\"Adblock for Chromium\" href=\"https:\/\/chrome.google.com\/extensions\/detail\/gighmmpiobklfepjocnamgkkbiglidom?hl=en\" target=\"_blank\">AdBlock<\/a> for Chromium. \u00a0Well, at least it&#8217;s not called &#8220;Adblock Plus&#8221;! \u00a0This has similar functionality to its Firefox big brother, allowing multiple subscriptions to keep the adblock relevant, and it can also be turned on\/off for specific sites. \u00a0It does <em>not<\/em>, however, sport the incredible per-element blocking that made the original so powerful.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<figure id=\"attachment_191\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-191\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scaine.net\/site\/2010\/07\/chromium-take-two\/adblock-options\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-191\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-191\" title=\"AdBlock options\" src=\"https:\/\/www.scaine.net\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/AdBlock-options-640x391.png\" alt=\"AdBlock options\" width=\"600\" height=\"366\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.scaine.net\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/AdBlock-options-640x391.png 640w, https:\/\/www.scaine.net\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/AdBlock-options-480x293.png 480w, https:\/\/www.scaine.net\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/AdBlock-options-768x469.png 768w, https:\/\/www.scaine.net\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/AdBlock-options.png 887w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-191\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">AdBlock options<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>So, what&#8217;s missing? \u00a0Well, FEBE, obviously. \u00a0I still can&#8217;t find an extension which will &#8220;snapshot&#8221; my Chromium install and perfectly restore it on another machine. \u00a0My Firefox browsing history goes back about 2 years, across 4 different operating systems thanks to FEBE. \u00a0However, given that Chromium Sync started off as just Bookmarks before expanding into Themes, and just recently Extensions, I suspect that it&#8217;s only a matter of time before we see History too.<\/p>\n<p>Google Sync puts all your data into a special directory on Google Docs, so I imagine that anything (within reason) could be stored there in future.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_192\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-192\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scaine.net\/site\/2010\/07\/chromium-take-two\/google-docs-storage\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-192\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-192\" title=\"Google Docs storage\" src=\"https:\/\/www.scaine.net\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/Google-Docs-storage-640x468.png\" alt=\"Google Docs storage\" width=\"600\" height=\"438\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-192\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Google Docs<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h4>We Fear Change<\/h4>\n<p>So did I make the switch? \u00a0Incredibly, given my history and love of Firefox : &#8220;Yep&#8221;. \u00a0In February, I bought my Google Nexus One phone and on that day, I suspect that I may just have sold my soul to Google. \u00a0In April, Froyo fever started pitching and in preparation, I started dabbling with Chromium again. \u00a0Finally, after May&#8217;s Google I\/O conference when Froyo was announced, one feature in particular swayed me towards moving to Chromium whole scale &#8211; the cloud sync feature. \u00a0This is where you buy music on Amazon (or <a title=\"Google Music Service\" href=\"http:\/\/www.techtechies.com\/20100707\/technology-news\/android-3-0-google-music-are-coming-to-us-google-music-android-3-0-together-coming-this-winter.html\" target=\"_blank\">Google themselves<\/a> this Christmas, perhaps) and you simply send your purchase to your phone, right from within the web page. \u00a0Or perhaps you&#8217;re on Google Maps getting directions, and those directions are sent as Navigate options to your phone. \u00a0Very sweet. \u00a0But initially at least, I think it requires Chromium.<\/p>\n<h4>Pros<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li>Start up hasn&#8217;t changed in 9 months &#8211; it&#8217;s still blindingly fast.<\/li>\n<li>The Javascript engine is famously fast and <a title=\"Chromium Experiments\" href=\"http:\/\/www.chromeexperiments.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">sites<\/a> <a title=\"Mr Doobs Cool Stuff\" href=\"http:\/\/mrdoob.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">like<\/a> <a title=\"Google V8 Benchmark\" href=\"http:\/\/v8.googlecode.com\/svn\/data\/benchmarks\/v5\/run.html\" target=\"_blank\">this<\/a> will prove that very effectively. \u00a0Perhaps Firefox 4 will close the gap here though.<\/li>\n<li>Extensions install instantly. \u00a0They un-install just as fast. \u00a0Their options pages are web pages, which makes for a very integrated, natural feeling.<\/li>\n<li>Chomium Sync, despite being Google-only, will rock your world if you use Chromium on more than one PC.<\/li>\n<li>The &#8220;Awesome Bar&#8221; doubles as a URL entry location and a search bar in one. \u00a0I think this used to be offered in Firefox, then reverted. \u00a0The latest rumours I&#8217;ve heard suggest that it&#8217;s heading back to one-bar for Firefox 4.<\/li>\n<li>Did I mention that start up?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4>Cons<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li>In order to take advantage of the speed of development, I&#8217;m using the daily build PPA (details below). \u00a0This means two things. \u00a0One, you&#8217;ll be prompted to update every day by your package manager. \u00a0Two, many banking websites won&#8217;t entertain you. \u00a0Here in the UK, I have one account at the RBS and they block beta builds. \u00a0Interesting actually &#8211; even a user-agent switcher doesn&#8217;t fool their website, so they must be fingerprinting another way somehow.<\/li>\n<li>In the short term, a few things will have moved around and will take getting used to. \u00a0Nothing major, but here&#8217;s an example : right clicking on a link in Firefox, &#8220;Open in New Tab&#8221; is the third option down, but in Chromium it&#8217;s the top option. \u00a0There&#8217;s a few little gotchas like this.<\/li>\n<li>Bookmark organisation isn&#8217;t quite as slick as Firefox yet. \u00a0You can&#8217;t grab tabs and create shortcuts from them &#8211; you must still use the favicon logo to the left of the URL. \u00a0If, like me, you keep multiple folders on the toolbar, you&#8217;ll find that you \u00a0can&#8217;t re-order the bookmarks inside these folder using drag-and-drop. \u00a0You have to right-click, open the organiser and do it there. \u00a0Finally, I&#8217;m not convinced by &#8220;Other Bookmarks&#8221;. \u00a0It gets cluttered very quickly and takes up valuable toolbar space if you don&#8217;t use it.<\/li>\n<li>Downloads are pretty intrusive, with a big bar appearing at the bottom of the browser whenever anything comes down the line. \u00a0You have to manually close it after each download. \u00a0I couldn&#8217;t find a way, extension or otherwise, of changing this.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4>Install<\/h4>\n<p>I use the daily builds (<a href=\"https:\/\/launchpad.net\/~chromium-daily\/+archive\/ppa\">https:\/\/launchpad.net\/~chromium-daily\/+archive\/ppa<\/a>), so in order to install, just pop these commands into a terminal<\/p>\n<pre style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">sudo add-apt-repository ppa:chromium-daily\/ppa<\/pre>\n<pre style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">sudo apt-get update<\/pre>\n<pre style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">sudo apt-get install chromium-browser<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It was September last year when I last properly tried Chromium in Ubuntu. \u00a0Back then, there was no bookmark sync, extensions were a glint in the dev&#8217;s eyes and GTK theme support was a new feature. I didn&#8217;t particularly elaborate in that article about why I didn&#8217;t make the switch back then. \u00a0In fact, I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,4],"tags":[22,21,26,28,24,25,27],"class_list":["post-187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-software","category-ubuntu","tag-adblock","tag-chromium","tag-febe","tag-firefox","tag-flashblock","tag-google","tag-syncplaces"],"mb":[],"mfb_rest_fields":["title"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scaine.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scaine.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scaine.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scaine.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scaine.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/www.scaine.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":315,"href":"https:\/\/www.scaine.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions\/315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scaine.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scaine.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scaine.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}