Google Chrome

I've been having lots of problems with Internet Explorer recently. What a surprise!

It takes ages to load and crashes constantly. Using Blogger has been a nightmare for me especially loading photographs.

I had avoided installing Internet Explorer 8 as I had read that people have had lots of problems with it and as my laptop is filling up rapidly I didn't want to use up lots of space with a new download.

I've used other browsers such as Opera, FireFox and Mozilla but didn't like any of them, they were no faster and my computer didn't seem to like them either.

I saw ads for Google Chrome but as I mentioned my laptop is filling up, so I avoided it. However today I have had so many problems with Internet Explorer I thought, life's too short to put up with this dross so I had a look at Google Chrome.

It doesn't take up much space so I decided to go for it. I downloaded it and I have to say that it was really quick.

It was strange at first as you get so used to using one browser but now I absolutely love it. It's so much faster than IE I can't believe it. My home page is the BBC website which takes between 15 and 20 seconds to load in IE. It takes 5 in Chrome!

I then tested loading CBeebies from the BBC site, (grand daughter's favourite). It takes absolutely ages in IE. You have to sit and watch the dreaded green bar filling up at the bottom of the screen. Today it took 25 seconds, some days I have to walk away while my grand daughter sits moaning about it! In Chrome it took less than 5 seconds and I tried it a few times! Wonderful.

I used to have to wait for ages for some people's blogs to load. If you have lots of photos on your homepage then IE used to freeze. So I had to stop looking at some people's blogs. I thought it may have had something to do with my laptop but now I'm not so sure. It loads all the people's blogs I had problems with. It still takes a little while but it's not freezing now and I can see what it's loading, I don't just have the dreaded egg timer. It tells you what it's waiting for in a small bar on the bottom left of the screen. Flickr and play lists seem to cause the problems but nowhere near as long to wait as IE.

Creating posts in Blogger is faster too although loading the large photos still seems to take a while, I assume that's down to Blogger, the small ones loaded quickly.

The screen seems so much cleaner now. The tabs are similar to IE but I like it when you click on a new tab, you see thumbnails of your most used sites so you can just click on the picture. There's also a list of the recently closed urls and another with recent bookmarks. An absolute doddle to use.

Looks like the photographs have stopped enlarging again. I just give up!

Using the address search bar is really good compared to IE where it seems to revert to Yahoo or Dell's searches if I just type in words. Chrome comes up with several options to search including the standard Google, this is where it gets clever and suggests websites in your favourites and in your recent history. Brilliant!

I thought the websites looked small when I was viewing them, I hate small print and have my laptop set to a larger print. However it's so easy to enlarge the page. Just press Control and + and that increases it, press it again to enlarge more. Wonderful for the websites I hate which have miniscule print, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs please take note!

Also great creating my posts now. I know you could enlarge it with IE but I just never got used to it. The option was in the bit that disappeared off the end of the toolbar, I couldn't see a shortcut and I kept forgetting where it was. This shortcut is so much easier than going to the menus.

Another feature I like is the ability to report a broken link or bug direct from the page control menu back to Google. I think you choose this option when you install.

As far as I can see from just the short time I've spent using it today, Chrome has all the features I need from IE and a few more. Best of all it hasn't crashed which IE does all the time.

From what I've read about it Google Chrome is a very secure browser, much more so than IE. Another real plus for it.

I've also read that Google is developing an operating system which will get you online in seconds. It will be free and will have a suite of software like Microsoft Office built in, also free. You would just buy a computer with Google Chrome and that's it. No having to buy that overpriced Microsoft stuff. They would have to develop a customer service and helpline facility which currently Google doesn't have. So no easy job! But if they do, maybe Microsoft is in for a hard time.

As I've said before, me no technical! So if anyone has any comments about it I'd be pleased to hear them from you.

Post 4

Blogger Issues

Have to say I don't find Blogger the easiest of systems to use.

I've used two other website editors and Blogger is definitely the most difficult of the three. It's made worse by the fact that the only support is via articles on the website. If you can't find the information you want there, well that's just your hard luck.

However on the plus side it's free and I've met lots of other lovely bloggers there so I'll stick with it. I assume it will gradually improve. I just wish there was some way you could feed back your suggestions to them to help improve the system.

Back to my current problem of inserting photographs.

Recently I can't understand why my photos never enlarge when you click on them now.
I follow the instructions given on the Blogger website and was sure that I was inserting them in the same way every time. Most of my photographs on previous postings do enlarge when you click them.

Recently I'd also been having a lot of problems with formatting and aligning text and photographs, so I decided to use the centre layout for the photographs on the Blogger upload when I inserted them instead of formatting them later.

(If you find this hard to read you can click on this photo and it will enlarge)

This certainly resolved the problem of the text jumping about and centring when I wanted it left aligned.

However I do have a problem with getting the photos to enlarge on my postings when you click on them. I have searched Blogger and Googled the problem but couldn't find a solution.

In desperation I tried lots of different ways to insert the photos. Now after spending ages on inserting photos and checking Blogger help (no help at all) I think I know what has happened.

I discovered that when I inserted photographs, if I didn't choose a layout and centred it afterwards, I could enlarge the photos on my postings by clicking on them. Eureka!

(If you find this hard to read you can click on this photo and it will enlarge)

I had the problem with left aligning the text again but at least the photos now enlarge. Why on earth is there a difference and why doesn't it give you any information about this anywhere? What a weird system Blogger is!

Update - The plot thickens!

I posted some information about this on my other Blog and Myra got in touch. She said she uses the centre layout to insert the photos and they always enlarge. So I tried a test posting and used the centre layout to insert a photo and guess what! It enlarged.

What a weird system this is. Why didn't it enlarge the photos last week when I did my posting on Michelle's Mailart. I also had to re insert every photo on my Rhodes Flora posting when they wouldn't enlarge.

Just disregard all the instructions above. I give up!

My other problem is that if you insert the photos after you have written the text the formatting goes absolutely daft. I get huge spaces all over the place. I think I'll try inserting all the photos in the correct order when I start a posting and then put the text in later.

I'm considering learning html as I do everything with the Compose tab and not Edit Html. At the moment I haven't the time to explore what this involves.

If anyone has any advice about inserting photos and easy ways of formatting text I'd be really grateful.

Post 3

Holy Moly!

Jesus and Satan were having an ongoing argument about who was better on the computer. They had been going at it for days, and frankly God the Father was tired of hearing all the bickering. Finally fed up, he said;

"THAT'S IT! I have had enough. I am going to give you a test that will run for two hours, and from the results, I will judge who does the better job."

So Satan and Jesus sat down at the keyboards and typed away. They moused, faxed, e-mailed (with attachments), downloaded, did spreadsheets, wrote reports, created labels and cards, created charts and graphs, did some genealogy reports and basically, did every computer job known to man.

Jesus worked with heavenly efficiency and Satan was faster than hell. Then, ten minutes before their time was up, lightning suddenly flashed across the sky, thunder rolled, rain poured, and, of course, the power went off.

Satan stared at his blank screen and screamed every curse word known in the underworld. Jesus just sighed.

Finally the electricity came back on, and each of them restarted their computers.

Satan started searching frantically, screaming: It's gone! It's all GONE!!" I lost everything when the power went out!"

Meanwhile, Jesus quietly started printing out all of his files from the past two hours of work. Satan observed this and became irate.

Wait!" he screamed. "That's not fair! He cheated! How come he has all his work and I don't have any?"

God just shrugged and said,

"Jesus saves ..."

I got this from a religious website LIFE 4 Seekers so hopefully it won't offend anyone.

Post 2

Me No Technical!

I’m no techy, I’ll be the first to admit that and on occasions computers drive me potty!

I decided to create a separate blog for my computer witterings, not everyone is interested in them and I also wondered whether someone more technical than me could maybe give some advice on occasions. The Blogging fraternity is a very generous one.

So here's the first posting and my most recent computer frustration!

Computers were a major part of my job when I worked in the Careers Service as we recognised how important they would be in the future for everyone’s jobs. However I’ve been left work for over two years now and I’m obviously lagging behind with my knowledge as I’m on my own now, no technical back up available.

My latest problem occurred just before I went on holiday in mid May. My grandson and I were both on the Internet when suddenly we were disconnected. Now this has happened before and it usually comes back again within a minute or so. It's irritating but it just comes and goes sometimes. Not so this time! I tried again and then later that night and the next day with no success.

If I had been the only one on the Internet, I would have assumed it was my computer at fault. Well it’s getting on a bit now, three years old and in lap top years that quite aged. However it’s working quite well, just not as fast as my husband’s new one which my grandson was using when the Internet went down.

Next day it was the same story so I checked with a friend who uses the same Internet supplier. She said she had no problems but we could possibly have been using different servers. When things hadn’t changed the following day I decided to get onto Tiscali who provide my Internet connection.

Yes, I got an awful answering system to plough through. I kept getting part of the way and then being left on hold with a message every now and again suggesting I use their website to solve the problem. What a bunch of wassocks! I wouldn't have bothered phoning if I could have done that. Eventually I did get through and the chap was very helpful. He talked me through the problem and how to fix it.

It turned out my wireless router had to be reset and the settings reconfigured on both computers. Also the WPA Key Number (whatever that is) was incorrect. When I asked how this happened he suggested I had done something to the computer. I assured him I hadn't and that the system regularly disconnects and reconnects. He finally admitted that their server had gone down on the day I lost connection and they had a lot of these type of calls but he didn’t know how the WPA Key Number had been changed. Must have been the gremlins. So I’ve kept a record of how to reset the router and the WPA key number.

So this was not the computers to blame, nor me, it was Tiscali, but I had to sort this problem out. Goodness knows how much the technical support calls cost as I was on the phone for ages. The company didn’t contact me but then again even if they had, I couldn’t have accessed the email. However they might have notified us later that their server had been down out of courtesy. No, no, no, I’m just being stupid there expecting them to do that!

Post 1