chrome – The Graphic Mac

How to disable Flash in Google Chrome browser for…

If you’re like me and find Flash to be an annoyance with its constant crashing, slowing down your browsing, security risks, and ramping-up of your Mac’s cooling fans when in use, you’ll no doubt want to turn off/remove Flash from your Mac. If you use Firefox or Safari, you simply have to remove the System Preference Pane item by right-clicking the icon and choosing to remove it.

If you’re using Google’s Chrome browser, it’s a bit more difficult. That’s because Google includes Flash as part of the browser itself. Thankfully, they’ve included it as a plug-in which can be turned off.

Type about:plugins in the URL bar and hit Return/Enter. A list of the plug-ins you have installed is displayed. Note that these are plug-ins, not extensions you install from the Chrome Store. Find the Adobe Flash Player plugin in the list and tick the Disable checkbox. After restarting Chrome, Flash will be off.

The downside is that Flash will be re-enabled the next time Google updates Chrome, which is quite often. You can download Flash blocker extensions, but I prefer to completely remove it and save myself the overhead of having yet another extension installed.

General

Google Chrome now Retina-ready and watching you

Google’s Chrome browser has been updated to take advantage of Retina MacBook Pros. But the more interesting thing is that Chrome can now access your Mac’s camera and microphone natively. Previously, only plugins like Flash were able to do it. I’m not sure this is the best thing for user security, but it’s one more step in a Flash-free world.

General

Google updates Chrome Store, and it looks very familiar

Google Chrome Store — As you surf through the Chrome Store, things will start looking very familiar...

Google recently updated their Chrome Store, where you can download extensions and apps for the Chrome web browser and Chrome OS. It looks really nice, and for good reason. They basically copied the look and feel of Apple’s Mac App Store. Ugh…

Apple | Mac

Save space: search with Google from Safari’s URL bar

One of the things I love about Google Chrome and Firefox is the ability to do Google searches using the address bar, rather than being forced to have valuable space taken up with a separate search box in the toolbar. It’s one of those few relatively minor things that kept me from using Safari for quite a while.

Apparently I wasn’t alone, because a developer has recently released SafariOmnibar (direct download) for Safari for Snow Leopard and Lion. Run the Package installer and you’re good to go. As you can see in the image above, you’ll have the convenience of a single address/search bar.

General

The Graphic Mac Link Box #3

The Graphic Mac Link Box A collection of interesting or otherwise helpful links I’ve come across recently that you may not have seen:

Prepare for Pixelmator 2
For those who want full featured image editing but don’t want the price tag attached to Photoshop, Pixelmator is the perfect app. Pixelmator 2.0 will be available later this summer via the Mac App Store as a free upgrade for everyone who purchased any version of Pixelmator via the Mac App Store. For now, anyone who doesn’t have the app can purchase the currently available version of Pixelmator on the Mac App Store for $29 and receive a free upgrade of Pixelmator 2.0 once it is released.

Control your privacy in Google Chrome
I love Google Chrome, it’s a great Web browser with plenty of features and extensions. The problem is, it was made by Google; so you know they’re collecting all sorts of data while you’re using it. Ahad Bokhari has a great tutorial on how to protect your privacy while using Google Chrome.

Photoshop CS5 vs. CS5.5
If you work primarily in Adobe Photoshop, you may be wondering what the difference between PS CS5 (v. 12.0.4) and PS CS5.5 (v. 12.1) actually is. The answer is: absolutely nothing. John Nack explains on his blog.

Google stands by 15-minute refunds
Google offers a 15-minute time frame to receive a refund on apps purchased in the Android Marketplace. While many users complain that it takes that longer than 15-minutes to download and configure some apps, it’s still better than Apple’s refund time of zero!

View Instagram stream on your Mac
Screenstagram allows avid Instagram users to view their Instagram photo stream as a screensaver on any Snow Leopard Mac desktop or laptop.

40 Online generators for web designers and developers
Web forms, charts, button makers, AJAX plugins, fonts, color schemes, CSS menus, and more. Tripwire Magazine has a list of 40 great generators to save you some coding time.

Apple | Mac

Web browser choices have never been better for Mac…

Popular Mac Browsers — Some of the most popular browsers from Mozilla, Google, Apple, and others

When Apple first released Mac OS X a decade ago, Mac users had little choice in web browsers. There was Microsoft Explorer, and Netscape Navigator, and… well, that was it. Soon after we were treated to a few more options, but nothing like we have today.

With Safari shipping on every Mac, and the world-wide popularity of Mozilla’s Firefox, you would think there wouldn’t be much room for competition in the web browser market. But the options have actually never been better for Mac users. Read more “Web browser choices have never been better for Mac users” →

General

Firefox 4 leads Mac browsers in battery life

Web browser effects on battery life — Firefox 4 is the best battery life browser for Mac users

Microsoft has released a fairly extensive study of browser use on laptop computers and the effects on battery life. Not surprisingly, IE 9 comes out in the lead overall. As far as Mac browsers go, Firefox 4 takes the crown, followed by Chrome and Safari. Opera brings up the rear in the study.

I’m not sure about the usefulness of the information, as your use of the browser is only one aspect in terms of how long your MacBook’s battery lasts. And how many people use enough Watts of power just surfing the web? But the information provided is interesting nonetheless.

General

Web developers and designers: How fast does your page…

In a day and age where a good majority of web surfers have high-speed Internet, web developers and designers still must concern themselves with page loading speed. Javascript, JQuery, Java, Flash, and large images can slow the load time of any given page. The best way to test the speed of your web pages is to use an off-site app to test it.

Loads.in is a great site to do just that. You simply type in the URL of your web page and wait a few seconds for the test to run. Once completed, a display of average load times is provided. From there, you can select cities in various countries from a list and retest your page. Additionally, you can choose to use IE, Safari, Chrome, or Firefox to run the test.

General

Google Chrome gets a new icon

Google has dropped the robotic chrome icon in favor of a new, flattened and more balanced icon for their Chrome browser. The open source version of Chrome, Chromium, got the refresh last week, and now the Developer Builds now sport the new look.

Google's new Chrome browser icon

The new logo should work it’s way down into the beta and stable release version soon. While I had nothing against the old icon, the new version is definitely more recognizable in the OS X Dock. The only problem I see with it now is that it looks too much like Google Picasa.

General

Countdown to IE6 extinction: Even Microsoft wants it!

Microsoft is behind the IE6 countdown site, which endeavors to let the world know just how many (or few, as the case is) IE6 users are still out there – which currently stands at a mere 12 percent of the web browsing population.

IE6 use worldwide — IE6 users account for less than 3 percent of U.S. browsers

As a web designer or developer, you’re probably sick and tired of working around the fact that your company wants IE6 compatibility with their website. But my question to you is, WHY do you continue to do it?

Unless your primary audience lives in China (34.5 percent) or South Korea (24.8 percent), you have little reason to care about IE6 users – which are probably people who don’t care about your site to begin with. In fact, half of that 12 percent can probably be attributed to servers or computers not actively used by humans.

Here in the U.S., less than 3 percent of the web browsing population uses IE6, and you can safely assume that those people probably are on dial-up connections, or do little surfing to begin with. After all, wouldn’t you grow tired of seeing all the “sorry, this doohicky site won’t work with IE6” error messages and just click that upgrade button eventually if you had a nice speedy cable connection? There’s most likely a reason they aren’t upgrading.

Just stop worrying about IE6 users and move on. The web browsing public is much more savvy today than they were just a few years ago. If they’re truly interested in your site, they WILL upgrade their browser.

To help encourage browser upgrades, the IE6 Countdown site even offers a simple HTML code you can place in the header of your HTML that pops up a banner encouraging an IE6 visitor to upgrade.

Apple | Mac

Web browsers on the Mac: They all suck, except…

With the recent update to Opera 10.5 for Mac OS X, I decided it was time to take a look at all the major Web browsers for Mac OS X.

I’ve been using Google Chrome (developer builds, not the betas) for quite some time now, and made it my default browser within hours of installing it. Nevertheless, I’m going to remain unbiased in thoughts.

Below is my extremely thorough review and expert advice for which Web browser you should use in Mac OS X.

Chrome (most recent dev build or beta version)

Uber fast to launch. Smokin’ fast browsing speed. Compatibility is nearly perfect, but there are a few sites it doesn’t work with. Expansion via extensions is pretty good, and getting better every week. Frequent updates and improvements make it more fun to work with lately. The clean interface coupled with the speed make this my favorite, and you should use this as your main browser!
Download: Release Version | Beta Version | Developer Build

Safari 4.0.5

Looks great. Quite speedy. Completely lacks any usefulness beyond just surfing pages randomly. With no expansion opportunity beyond a few really crappy plugins, it’s feature-starved. Make it your backup browser though.
Download: Release Version

Firefox 3.63.

Looks clunky. Works clunky. Takes forever and 6 months to launch. It’s fast, but not as fast as Safari. The only real redeeming thing about it is the obnoxious amount of add-ons you can install to do virtually anything – which unfortunately makes it look and work even more clunky. Don’t bother with it unless you’re a geek and want all the extra add-ons.
Download: Release Version | Beta Version

Opera 10.52

Interface lacks polish. Just configuring all the options and preferences can take weeks. Speed ain’t all that. Buggy. It basically sucks and you shouldn’t even bother trying it.
Download: Shipping Version

The Rest of them

They all suck, don’t bother.
Download: Really, don’t bother.