On uninstalling Google Chrome

I finally gave up with Google Chrome on my laptop. Here's what popped up when I completed the uninstallation process, with my answers:

Google Chrome has been uninstalled.

Thanks for trying out Google Chrome. Please help us improve Google Chrome by telling us why you uninstalled it. Your feedback is much appreciated.

Which of the following best describes you?
I am uninstalling Google Chrome for now, but I may try it again in the future
I am permanently uninstalling Google Chrome
I am only uninstalling briefly. I am going to reinstall straight away (e.g. changing computer, upgrading operating system)

Why are you uninstalling Google Chrome? Please check all that apply
It doesn't load some web pages properly (please list any examples below)
It's missing some features that I use (please provide detail in the box below)
I'm concerned about privacy (please provide detail in the box below)
It seems to slow down my computer
It crashes too often
Other (please provide more details in the text box below)

Please provide any additional detail on your reason for uninstalling:

There are too many Firefox add-ons that I have come to rely on and using Chrome just leaves me "naked" in comparison. I blogged about this potential problem when Chrome initially came out: http://oliiscool.blogspot.com/2008/09/world-in-verdana.html

I first installed Chrome when I heard Gmail and Google Reader had exceptionally good performance in Chrome. This was true, but as soon as I clicked a 3rd-party link from within either, I felt I was abandoned and frequently would end up copy/pasting the URL into Firefox and continue from there.

I definitely appreciate the engineering skills and value of having a process-per-tab kind of browser, but that functionality alone is not sufficient for a heavy add-on user such as myself. In fact, I have checked the "slow down" checkbox since that model seems to in fact be a liability when viewing YouTube videos: I definitely notice much higher CPU usage from Chrome when visiting a site containing an embedded video than visiting the same page with Firefox.

Perhaps not all is lost: the process-per-tab model could still be applied to Firefox and a "Chromium Tab" Firefox add-on that worked similarly to the "IE Tab" add-on (in that it would enable the Webkit/Chromium engine on a per-tab basis) would be fantastic in my books.

So maybe I'll eventually re-install it. There's definitely value in the "application mode" as well, which hides the address bar and makes a "tab" its own window using the site/application's "favico" as the application window's icon, but that breaks quickly - as I described above - when you need to go outside that site/application. That "application mode" would also be a neat add-on/extension for Firefox. :)

The world in Verdana

OK, by now everybody and their cat has heard about Google Chrome. The general buzz on Slashdot and blogs seems to be "it's not Firefox" and, more specifically, a general lament of the chicken and egg problem surrounding the release of a new platform when there isn't any software (in this case "plug-ins" or "add-ons") to run on it. Well, OK, there are some Chrome plug-ins available, but Chrome extensions are currently NOT supported. On the other hand, the source code is out there and given that it has the "Google brand", it won't be hard to find motivated geeks hacking some neat software to [eventually] bring Chrome on par with Firefox, with said geeks' hidden agenda of being noticed by Google and be offered a nice googlejob where they get to sit on their googlechair, etc.

It's technically not such a bad chicken-and-egg situation, with the massive and thorough testing Google [claims to] have performed. Plus, the browser is more than a fine replacement for users of Internet Explorer or plain, out-of-the-box Firefox, thus making all us geeks appear crazy when non-techies ask us why we're not using Google Chrome, when we use everything else Google throws at us.

Anyway, I didn't set out to write yet another review, but to post solutions to problems I encountered:

Installing Chrome as a non-administrator

I hit issue 119 ( Install Fails on W2K8 with low-rights user ) when I tried to install on my computer as a non-administrator and got the following:



Thankfully, the work-around by stephen.oakman in comment 6 worked and I found the elusive chrome_installer.exe in a folder matching the pattern C:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Update\Download\[guid]\chrome_installer.exe and was able to install it successfully.

Setting the minimum font size

I also had the same accessibility lament about minimum font sizes and font family overrides. For example, here is the Getting Started page in Firefox 2, with Verdana @ 14pt bliss:



...and this is what Chrome gave me with the same page:



OK, yes, the Firefox version looks weird with the title text not lining up with the logo, etc. but all the content is perfectly legible, which is more important to me. Well, more legible than the fonts picked by the web developer.

Thankfully, I have solved the first half the problem with a few quick searches in the source code and now my C:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Preferences file contains this little gem:

   "webkit": {
      "webprefs": {
         "cursive_font_family": "Verdana",
         "default_fixed_font_size": 14,
         "default_font_size": 14,
         "fantasy_font_family": "Verdana",
         "fixed_font_family": "Courier New",
         "minimum_font_size": 14,
         "minimum_logical_font_size": 14,
         "sansserif_font_family": "Verdana",
         "serif_font_family": "Verdana"
      }
   }

...which gives me a slight improvement in readability in Chrome:



You can find out what the names of the [other] supported hidden preferences are by peeking into chrome/common/pref_names.cc and cross-referencing with WebContents::GetWebkitPrefs() in chrome/browser/web_contents.cc. In particular, you'll find (as of this writing) that the other half of my problem is already identified in a comment:


// User CSS is currently disabled because it crashes chrome. See
// webkit/glue/webpreferences.h for more details.


...with the more details being:


// TODO(tc): User style sheets will not work in chrome because it tries to
// load the style sheet using a request without a frame.
bool user_style_sheet_enabled;
GURL user_style_sheet_location;


D'oh. Maybe this will inspire someone else to fix that part of the code or otherwise provide the elusive "let me choose my own damn fonts" setting that I rely on for keeping my sight and posture in good shape.