Faster Chrome/Chromium JavaScript and the Crazy GMail Signout Link!


It looks like the people at Google have been very busy working on both Chrome/Chromium and GMail. First the good news. Since all the other browsers like Firefox 4 are working on speeding up their JavaScript engine so they can claim vast performance improvements, well the Chrome folks have done so too. Since I always just use the latest release of Chromium on my Ubuntu desktop, I checked my version I just updated to using apt-get today and see that I am now using Chromium 11.0.676.0 (75353) which I am guessing is using the updated JavaScript engine as used in Chrome 10 (still in beta). Frankly, I cannot tell much difference since Chromium was already pretty darn fast. Perhaps at some point it just does not make any difference anymore.

What concerns me more are the little pesky changes they do that annoy people. For example, last night my son demanded he had to use my laptop so he could more properly play Minecraft since he was done with all his homework and his own laptop was too slow. So I decided I would be nice and let him use my laptop and I would log out of GMail and log out of my account (since I would never trust him logged into my account.) So I looked in the upper right hand corner for the "sign out" link and noticed it had disappeared. Instead I had to click on my name to get a drop down menu with a single option to "sign out". What a pain! I then proceeded to sit in a comfy chair and finish reading "Stop Acting Rich" by Thomas J. Stanley while my wife was checking her GMail nearby on her own laptop (hey, we are a geeky family.) Several minutes later I heard her say "Hey, where is the sign out link?" It seems like everybody has noticed it has moved and nobody is very happy with it! Why did Google do this to us? Someone must have thought it was a good idea so they could later add other items to the drop down menu. In any case it was a bit annoying, but I suppose I will get used to it. Too bad I had not discovered this on a free Cr-48 netbook Google never sent me which I had requested. I am sure mine was lost in the mail or something.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

BMI & BMR Calculator (Body Mass Index and Basal Metabolic Rate)

Image
My wife has been researching type 2 diabetes and recently checked a book out of the library which included a body mass index (BMI) chart much like the one pictured here. Whereas it is fairly easy to follow, I, of course, think it must be converted to an online calculator! However, when I checked the Internet, there were already a billion of them so I had to make one that was different. So my lovely BMI BMR calculator accepts either inches or centimeters for your height and pounds or kilograms for your weight and calculates not only your BMI, but also your BMR (basal metabolic rate) which determines how many calories you should consume! So I made a spiffy "all in one" healthy body indicator calculator which not only determines how underweight or overweight you are, but also tells you how many calories you should consume to maintain or improve your ideal weight. 
Read more

Trying out the L'Ecole Culinaire Presentation Room restaurant

Image
We had been seeing the ads for the restaurant at L'Ecole Culinaire and since we live so close by we thought we would try it out. We had always enjoyed dining out at cooking or hotel schools like the CHIC in Chicago and the Statler at Cornell where we went to college. Since we still love to go out and eat here in St. Louis , we ventured over to their restaurant on the first day they were open for lunch. The first thing we noticed is that they do not have much parking! They really need to let patrons know where they are supposed to park. The restaurant itself is small but very well attended. There was one fellow who kept straightening all the centerpieces and place settings on the tables, and we always saw one or two student workers milling about. The lunch menu was small and the choices did not appear overly "gourmet". The special of the day was a bison burger stuffed with cheese, and other choices picked by my group included a club sandwich, a "margherita" pi
Read more

Not all Frosted Window Films are the same!

Image
We live in an older home with a lot of issues and one of them concerns our back door to our patio from our sunroom. The door has double paned glass on it, but unfortunately the seal has broken so you can see moisture collect inside of it. We decided the easiest way to "remedy" the problem was to cover the window with some "frosted" film so we did not have to see the moisture condensing between the panes. But the question was, what film? There are a bunch of them available so we had to select something to try on the door. The first place we tried was our nearby Lowe's store which had a bunch of Gila brand film. We selected what seemed like the typical adhesive based door sized  film that cost about $25 after tax. We thought it could not be that hard to put up and look nice on our door. So one day my wife ran out and purchased it at Lowe's and we commenced to install it on our door window. We made our own soapy water solution and followed the directions
Read more