'Net Features : chrome

The Web Professional's Productivity Toolbox

Administrator — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 19:21:00 GMT

More often than not, there just aren’t enough hours in the day to complete all of the tasks on your to-do list. Attempting to allot the appropriate amount of time to accomplishing something, and for the countless distractions that you’ll likely face while you work on it, can sometimes feel daunting and futile. That’s why so many of us turn to productivity tools to help us ease the burden and utilize our time more constructively.

And now, just as the Internet giveth, it also taketh away, as yesterday, Google announced that it was going to be doing away with its Google Reader Web feed aggregator. The company cites a declining user base as the reason for the discontinuation, but many Web workers (and media professionals – go figure) that keep up with their Reader feeds all day, every day were incensed. Naturally, they took their outrage to Twitter, but so far, it hasn’t done much to alter Google’s decision.

The death of Google Reader, and the subsequent outcry, shows just how much Web professionals depend upon their productivity tools to accomplish their various daily tasks. Reader addicts will (and probably already have) find a new RSS aggregator, such as Fever or NewsBlur, but there are plenty of other useful tools that they can utilize to increase productivity. Let’s dig into The Web Professional’s Productivity Toolbox to see if we can find what you may need.

Feedly

Feedly is easily the most popular, and best, alternative to Google Reader. This free RSS feed aggregator runs on both Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox browsers and as a mobile application for both iOS and Android devices. Users can save posts, create categories to organize their various feeds and even choose from six different layout options to pick the look that best suits them.

Pomodroido

Even the most successful professionals can get distracted when working on tasks throughout the day, however, Pomodroido aims to change that. This free Android app helps users manage their time better by breaking down work periods into 25-minute intervals, which can be adjusted by the user if desired. Workers take a break after each work period, so that they can start the next interval refreshed and without distractions. Moreover, the app includes a ranking system, which rewards users based on the work that they complete.

Chrome Developer Tools

Web developers that prefer Google’s Chrome browser (and let’s be honest, that’s probably most of them) can use Chrome Developer Tools to gain access to the browser’s internals and their Web applications. The suite is largely based on WebKit Web Inspector from the WebKit open source project, and includes an Elements panel and tools for resources, networks, scripts, timelines, profiles and audits, as well as a fully featured, user-friendly console.

IFTTT

This handy automation tool, which stands for “if this, then that,” allows users to create their own tasks (recipes) by connecting two channels together. Once each channel has been activated, users create recipes by selecting one channel to signal a trigger that results in an action in a different channel. In other words, If This happens in one channel, Then That happens in the connected channel. For example, you can create a recipe to update your Twitter profile picture when your Facebook picture is changed. This recipe helps Web workers maintain consistent branding across platforms with little effort. Users can connect with 59 different channels through the platform, including Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, HootSuite, Gmail and weather.

LiquidPlanner

This online project management software helps businesses streamline their workflows by providing scheduling, collaboration, time tracking, analytics and reporting features. Since it has a particular focus on adding a social element to project management, the platform also includes comment streams for every task and project and the ability to attach notes, documents or images to a task, as well as email integrations that allow users to receive notifications about project updates in their inboxes. Plus, a partnership with Box adds cloud functionality to the solution to make sharing and collaborating on documents easier; the Box integration even provides some advanced document management features, such as desktop syncing, document versioning and access controls for project collateral.

InboundWriter

Anyone who produces content for the ’Net will want to leverage this platform; because it helps writers optimize their articles for better audience engagement. InboundWriter does this by identifying popular topics for your audience, offering keyword data that helps writers create articles that will be easier to find in the search results and suggesting article structure ideas for better readability. In fact, the platform is sort of like an online writing coach that uses real-time search and social data to help writers produce better content.

Dropbox

Don’t let Dropbox’s popularity among Web professionals and everyone else fool you, this is a serious tool that has earned all of the acclaim it receives. While many of its alternatives require a Web browser interface, Dropbox can run natively on almost any PC (even those using Linux), as well as mobile devices that run on either Android or iOS. It will also automatically sync your files with all of your local devices, so you can access them from pretty much anywhere, even if you don’t have an Internet connection.

Sprout Social

Most businesses have a presence on multiple social sites, which can make posting numerous pieces of content daily on each network very time consuming. This is where social media management platforms like Sprout Social come in handy. Not only can this platform be leveraged to schedule publishing times of status updates throughout the day on a variety of social networks, but it also provides analytics and monitoring tools that provide insights to help users better optimize their posting strategies. Furthermore, Sprout Social offers a mobile app, which allows businesses to manage and monitor their social accounts while on the go.

Coolendar

This planning software helps users combine the important dates on their calendar with everyday tasks that need to be completed, which makes it easier to keep up with commitments. Coolendar is available on the Web and on mobile devices so that no matter where you are, you can keep track of your day. The platform provides a simple list of planning entries, offers alerts that find people regardless of where they are (email, messenger, Web, desktop, mobile, Twitter), allows users to leverage tags to stay organized and makes it simple to create group plans.

Yammer

As one of the most popular internal communication tools on the Web, Yammer is an enterprise social network that allows users with valid company email addresses to participate in private company conversations. The Yammer platform allows users to segment employees by creating specific groups (such as sales, marketing or IT), as well as makes it easy for employees to collaborate, whether they are in or out of the office, via the Yammer mobile application for Android, iOS, Blackberry and Windows Phone devices. Allison Howen is an Associate Editor at Website Magazine, writing primarily about e-commerce and social media.

About the Authors

Michael Garrity is an Associate Editor at Website Magazine, focusing primarily on search, design and development and affiliate marketing.

Allison Hown is an Associate Editor at Website Magazine, focusing primarily on Ecommerce and Social Media.

Chrome Extensions for Hyper-Productive Developers

Michael Garrity — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 21:00:00 GMT

One of the fastest and easiest ways to increase productivity and efficiency as a Web developer is to collect an assortment of tools that can help simplify, automate and just generally lessen the burden that different tasks add to your to-do list.

Of course, this isn't news to anyone. What may be useful to know, however, is that the popular Google Chrome Web browser offers a plethora of extensions that could be used to make life easier for developers. If you already use Chrome (and if you work on the Web, you probably do), why not check out these 17 extensions that can help dramatically increase your productivity and, hopefully, get a few extra hours of sleep, as a result.

Eye Dropper
The open source Eye Dropper extension allows users to quickly pick out specific colors from a Web page, advanced color picker or "personal color history" to use in site design and development.

NoCoffee
As a "vision simulator" plugin, NoCoffee allows developers to see how their sites will look for users with a variety of potential vision issues, such as low acuity, low contrast sensitivity, color deficiencies, glare, ghosting, snow or a partial vision block, so that they can then go back and fix their sites to better accomodate these concerns.

jQuery-Injector
With this extension, users simply have to click on their toolbars to have jQuery "injected" directly into the current page that they are working on, and afterwards they can check for successful insertion by running a jQuery command on the page from their JavaScript consoles.

Wappalyzer
This browser extension will "uncover" the technologies used on a website, so that developers can figure out how certain aspects of a site were created. Wappalyzer comes with a list of applications that it detects, which includes content management systems, Web shops, servers, JavaScript frameworks, analytics tools and more.

Code Cola
Developers can easily visually edit a Web page's CSS style with the Code Cola extension. It even comes with a collection of handy patterns to further expediate the process.

ruul. Screen ruler
This is one of those "Why didn't I think of that?" tools that is useful for any and every type of desinger. It is a simple on-screen ruler that helps users line up and measure various aspects of a Web page, including type, line height, strokes and pretty much anything else.

Page Ruler
Sort of like ruul, Page Ruler is a Chrome extension that allows developers to draw a ruler directly on a page in order to discover an area's pixel dimensions and positioning, as well as other page elements.

JSONView
With this extension, developers can rapidly view and validate a page's JSON documents with increased efficiency.

Resolution Test
As the name implies, this extension helps developers test the pages they're working on in various screen resolutions so that they can make any necessary adjustments. It even comes with an option that allows them to define their own resolutions.

Web Developer
An extension with a name like "Web Developer" has to be good, right? This will add a button to the top of a user's toolbar in his or her Chrome browser that features various tools for Web developers, including color, resizing and image tools.

YSlow
This performance tool from Yahoo will make your Web pages faster by analyzing them, grading them on one of three predefined (or user-defined) sets of rules and then suggesting ways to improve their performance based on the results.

Ripple Emulator
Ripple Emulator provides users with a multi-platform HTML5 mobile environment emulator that allows them to test the performance of their websites across a variety of mobile devices, thus reducing the challenge of trying to design for the multitude of available mobile platforms after the initial Web-based site has been created.

Python Shell
The Python scripting language aims to emphasize code readability, making it a favorite among many Web developers. With this extension, they can test Python code or regular expressions; they can even use it as a calculator.

Microformats for Google Chrome
Now, developers can easily display microformats right on their Web pages thanks to this handy extension, which supports hCard, hCalender, hReview, hReview-aggregate, hRecipe and geo.

jQuery Debugger
Working with jQuery has never been easier than with this Chrome extension, which features a Selector Inspector panel that will, not surprisingly, inspect a page's jQuery selectors and watch their matching elements as they're displayed on any website. In short, this extension was designed to help users easily understand even the most complex selectors.

DevTools Autosave
This incredibly useful little extension will automatically save any changes in CSS and/or JavaScript that were made with Chrome DevTools, meaning you'll never have to worry about losing your work again!

960 Grid System Overlay
Technically, this is an "unoffical" tool, but it still rocks. This extension allows users to overlay a 960.gs guide over a Web page that is using the 960 Grid System by simplying right-clicking on the "960" icon in their browsers. They can even change the default colors of the overlay.

DejaClick Supports Performance Monitoring in Chrome

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 20:55:00 GMT

The Chrome Web browser is absolutely kicking the virtual snot out of every other browser (unless of course your brand caters to an aging, anti-Google audience).

Google's Chrome has grown by more than 25 percent globally, and among the more technically savvy is approaching 50 percent penetration. Where there is greater demand, developers have to react to ensure a consistent, optimal experience in their applications.

Website performance monitoring tool Alertsite, for example, just announced that it now supports playback of its Web recorder, DéjàClick™, for the Google Chrome Web browser. If you're interested in ensuring user's experience is of the highest quality, in-browser monitoring is the way to go - just make sure that, like Alertsite's Dejaclick, it covers the major browsers (or at least those used by your audience).

“Delivering high-quality experiences to online visitors using all major browsers is an absolute imperative today, and SmartBear makes it easy and straight-forward to understand both functional website availability and Web performance via Chrome as well as Internet Explorer and Firefox,” said Ken Godskind, VP Monitoring Services at SmartBear Software, makers of Alertsite.

“This recent upgrade with AlertSite represents what is happening with the use of browsers in the market today. Regardless of the browser used, AlertSite provides businesses with the valuable insight into the online experiences of their users."

Browsers: Chrome Rules, IE Steady, Firefox Falls

Pete Prestipino — Sat, 11 Aug 2012 19:30:00 GMT

According to recently released data from traffic measurement service provider StatCounter, the Chrome browser now accounts for more than one-third of the browser market worldwide.

Statcounter is reporting Chrome's global market share to be 33.8 percent, up from 32.8 percent fin June and from 22.1 percent July 2011.

Despite Chrome's continued rise, IE remains strong with a 32 percent share of the browser market. Firefox however didn't fare so well in July. The browser is losing ground and now accounts for 23.7 percent. Apple's Safari browser came in fourth with 7.1 percent global market share.

What purpose does this information serve? Designers and developers in particular pay close attention to these types of reports as it enables them to understand global browser usage so design changes can be prioritized. For example, reading this data, a designer might opt to fix bugs in Chrome first, then IE and Firefox.

Forget Docs - Zoho has Arrived on Google Drive

Michael Garrity — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 15:27:00 GMT

When Google Drive was announced, it was clear that the company had every intention of keeping it closely aligned with its Google Docs office suite. Fortunately for those of you who aren’t too keen on Docs, Zoho is now offering an alternative.

Thanks to an integration using Google Chrome extensions, Zoho is able to tap into Google’s cloud storage service to offer users its Writer, Sheet, and Show products with Google Drive integration, making it available to all of Zoho’s over 6 million customers.

Many users take umbrage with the fact that Google forces them to use all of their products in order to access one, as everything in the suite is so closely integrated. One can click on an attachment in Gmail that will automatically open with Docs. Likewise, files saved in the cloud will be automatically saved to Drive. All of this is useful to a hardcore Google consumer, but for those who don’t necessarily want to use all of these services, it can be a major annoyance.

The downside to this integration is that Zoho users will have to access each package separately in the Chrome Store. Here’s Zoho Writer, Zoho Sheet, and Zoho Show.

Google Dresses Up Chrome OS with New Hardware

Michael Garrity — Thu, 31 May 2012 02:00:00 GMT

Google appears to be giving another big push to the Chrome operating system, known mostly for powering its Chromebook venture.

Google and Samsung showed off a newly revamped Chromebook laptop and announced the Chromebox, a desktop computer that also runs on the Chrome OS.

The new Chromebook is a 12.1-inch Samsung Series 5 550, and comes with an improved webcam and track pad, as well as a video port that works with HDMI, DVI and VGA cables. Meanwhile, the Chromebox makes no bones about being somewhat stripped down when compared to other desktop computers (the $330 price-point should be a distinct giveaway), but it offers three display and six USB ports, making it rather useful as a device for media consumption.

Perhaps most notable are the changes to the Chrome OS software, which now offers a taskbar and window management. While the focus of the OS has always been on connecting users with the cloud, this most recent update (number 19) is working to improve offline file management.

In fact, Google Docs developers are currently working on a seamless offline mode that would make the OS more useful to everyday consumers. Plus, it can now handle more file types than ever.

Five Productivity Apps for the Chrome Browser

Allison Howen — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 23:00:00 GMT

Apps are hard to escape these days.

Not only do they take up the screens of our smartphones and tablets, but they can also be downloaded on social networks and browsers too.

And finding really useful apps can be like digging for gold. So we decided to do the digging for you.

Check out this list of productivity apps for your Google Chrome browser:

BookedIN Appointment Scheduler

This is an appointment scheduling app for small businesses. Users just need to sign up for a free account and list their business' services. Then, BookedIn advertises the services on a public webpage that is created for the participating business. Clients can then book their appointments online. Features include a free public webpage for booking appointments, an online calendar, a client database, appointment reminders, a BookedIN button that can be added to websites, and more.

Screen Capture

The name of this app pretty much says it all. It can capture visible content from a tab, a region of a webpage or a whole page, and save it as a PNG image. Users can also edit the captured image before saving it, by adding highlights or text. Furthermore, the app recognizes horizontal scrolls and detects floating objects so it can avoid capturing them multiple times if the whole page capture requires scrolling.

SlideRocket

This app allows Chrome browser users to make presentations. The presentations can be accessed anywhere, including from iPhones and iPads because the software includes an HTML5 viewer. Slides can include audio and videos, and can be shared through links or embedded on a website or a blog. Additionally, users can measure impact and audience engagement through presentation analytics.

Aviary Image Editor

This photo editor allows anyone to change-up photos, from basic edits to complex effects. It includes more than 30 rich editing tools, a large database of image effects, blend mode, layers and more. Users can utilize this tool to create business cards and letterheads, build a PowerPoint slide background, create unique labels, crop photos or craft designs.

Spur

This app allows its users to critique their own, or someone else’s Web pages. It features tools for analyzing the gray scale of a site, intersections of a site, the color contrast of a site and more. Although this tool isn’t nearly as effective as testing different design elements on your page through A and B or multivariate testing solutions, it can, however, provide some insight into classic design principles.

Leave Explicit SERP Feedback for Google

Administrator — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 04:00:00 GMT

Google is on the hunt for content farms - sites with shallow or low quality content - announcing the release of an experimental Chrome extension for people to block sites from appearing in their Web search results.

In addition to blocking the site from appearing, the extension also sends the blocked site's information to Google. Should Google opt to use the feedback as a ranking signal in the future (since they will have the ability to analyze that feedback individually and in aggregate), those responsible for SEO are going to want to keep an eye on the impact.

When users block a site with the Chrome extension, they will not see the results from that domain again. Site blocks can be revoked at the bottom of the SERPs, and lists of the blocked sites can be edited.

The extension is currently available in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish.

The Browser Wars Get Bloody

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 17:30:00 GMT

The reason that it is important to pay attention to browser usage amoung Internet users is that it ultimately influences how Web professionals design and develop their Web properties. For the first time that I can remember, one of the old standby's is on the ropes.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) browser has fallen below 50% of the worldwide market for the first time according to StatCounter. The company’s research arm, StatCounter Global Stats finds that Microsoft IE fell to 49.87% in September followed by Firefox with 31.5%. Google’s Chrome continues to increase market share at an impressive rate and has more than tripled from 3.69% in September 2009 to 11.54% in September this year.

“This is certainly a milestone in the Internet browser wars,” commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. “Just two years ago IE dominated the worldwide market with 67%.” Cullen added that Microsoft’s agreement with European Commission competition authorities to offer EU users a choice and menu of browsers from March may have tipped IE below 50% globally.

In Europe, IE market share has fallen to 40.26% in September this year from 46.44% in September last year. In North America IE is still above 50% at 52.3% followed by Firefox at 27.21% and Chrome at 9.87%. The rise of Google Chrome in North America has also been impressive and in June it overtook Safari for the first time.

Chrome Passes Safari; You Go Chrome

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 13:52:00 GMT

Web analytics provider StatCounter is reporting that Google's Chrome browser has overtaken Apple's Safari in the US for the first time. Research is from the firm's StatCounter Global Stats report for the week beginning June 21.

Chrome with 8.97% took third place in the US browser market ahead of Safari with 8.88%. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer still dominates the US Internet browser market with 52%, followed by Firefox (28.5%).

“This is quite a coup for Google as they have gone from zero to almost 10% of the US market in under two years,” commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. “There is a battle royal going on between Google and Apple in the internet browser space (Chrome v Safari) as well as in the mobile market (Android vs. iPhone)."

The data is based on an analysis of 3.6 billion page views (874 million from the US) for the week 21 to 27 June 2010 collected from the StatCounter network of over three million websites.

23 Must-Have Chrome Extensions for Web Professionals

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 20:00:00 GMT

As I was running some analytics reports early this week, I checked in on the number of visitors with the Chrome browser. Much to my surprise, the percentage has nearly tripled year over year to nearly 10% of all unique visits. That's pretty impressive, and its relative success could in part be attributed to the activity in extensions, which provide users with more features and functionality to the browser (just like Firefox add-ons).

While you may not be a Chrome user today, perhaps the extensions below will help change your mind. Let's look at what we consider to be 23 must-have Chrome extensions for Web professionals.

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Some Chrome Extensions for Web Designers

You might also want to check out how your site design appears for those using advertising blockers such as AdBlock or AdThwart. Checking a site for how it appears to users with extensions like FlashBlock (which automatically blocks flash content on web pages) is important as well.

It's not just the ads that users might be blocking. IE Tab by Blackfish Software displays web pages using IE in a tab and is another must-have extension. Great for web developers who want to test the IE rendering engine, users who visit sites with ActiveX controls, and those who want to use the explorer view for local files (i.e. file:// URLs). Another of my favorite design-related extensions for Chrome is Webpage Screenshot which lets you save JPG screenshots of a whole Web page. Another option is Aviary Screen Capture which lets users take a screenshot of a webpage and edit it directly within a browser with Aviary.com applications.

Social Sharing Extensions for Chrome

The Google Share Button enables Web professionals to share web pages to social networks, emails, etc. using the click-to-share button. Again, nothing really groundbreaking, but certainly useful. If the thought of having one Google product embedded in another Google product is too much for you, check out the virtually identical Shareaholic. While those are two excellent extensions, I still prefer this Ping.fm extension myself.

Should you keep your social sharing to a minimum, there are some extensions for individuals sites. The official Digg extension for Chrome shows the Digg count for any URL (displayed next to the address bar). Clicking the icon displays the title and comment count for the URL and provides a button to Digg it remotely. The Delicious for Google Chrome extension lets users keep, share and discover sites using the Delicious Web service. If you are only looking for a URL shortening service, consider the Bit.ly extension.

Perhaps the best of the social sharing extensions for Chrome is the Social Graph Analyzer, which lets you discover profile pages whose owner is simular to the page you are currently browsing.

And of course, no article would be complete without at least a few Twitter extensions worked in for good measure. Chromed Bird is an extension that allows you to follow timelines and interact with your Twitter account plus quite a few additional features including previewing. Another excellent and very powerful Twitter client to consider is Chrowety.

Chrome Extensions for Developers

Speed Tracr is another official Google extension for Chrome that helps web developers identify and fix performance problems in applications such as JavaScript parsing and execution, layout, CSS style, network resource loading, DOM Event handling and more. This is perhaps the best extension currently in the market for developers. Another exceptional extension for Chrome is Firebug Lite, a tool that allows for the editing, debugging and monitoring of CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page. This is an unsupported port of Firebug Lite for Chrome.

I am not really sure where to put this next extension but under the "developer" category is probably as good as anywhere. Proxy Switchy is an advanced proxy manager for Chrome that allows users to manage and switch between multiple proxy profiles.

Chrome Research and Writing Extensions

The Google Similar Pages extension could prove to be useful, as it shows pages similar to the one being visited. Couple that with the Zemanta extension for Chrome and access contextual suggestions, affiliate linking support, re-blogging support, and filtering of suggested images for copyright. Another extension that facilitates greater productivity in content development is the Evernote Web Clipper, which lets users save content they see while browsing the Web and access those clips in the cloud.

Editors Note: Another Chrome extension that we overlooked (and that is definitely worthy of a mention) is Surf Canyon. The extension automates the discovery of relevant information in search results on Google, Yahoo!, Bing and Craigslist.

SEO Extensions for Chrome
Chrome SEO is an extension that offers some good SEO tools and resources, including how many pages are indexed in current search engines, the number of back-links, current traffic and rankings, bookmarks, cached versions, domain details and a lot more. Chrome SEO has over 100,000 users, making it one of the most popular extensions in the market. Another extension to provide some useful information on search engine optimization is SEO by Sean Bannister, who also created the Chrome SEO extension. The SEO extension is really just a rewrite of David Naylor's SEO Playground tool, released as a Chrome extension.

Cool Productivity Extensions for Chrome
Mouse Stroke has to be the most brilliant of those featured in this article. The extension enables the use of mouse strokes as gestures in the browser. For example, designate a squiggly line to be the back button (or use the list of built-in strokes on the options page) on your browser. Another very strong contender among mouse gesture extensions is Smooth Gestures.

Do you have a favorite Chrome extension that we didn't cover? Or a Firefox add-on/extension that you'd like to see ported to Chrome? Share your comment below now!

The Most Popular Browser... in the World?

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 19:00:00 GMT

NetMarketShare, which monitors market share and usage of major Web browsers, has released their January 2010 report.

They report reveals that IE (holds a solid 62.12% of all browser usage) followed by Firefox (24.13%), Chrome (5.22%), Safari (4.53%) and Opera ((2.38%). Do note that all versions of browsers are included in NetMarketShare’s report.

Google’s Chrome Browser gained 0.6% of global usage share in January at the expense of both IE and Firefox, which both lost share during the last month. Our own anaytics reveal that Chrome is the only one of the browsers listed to have gained significant share. Chrom usage on our own site is up to just over 8%.

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Google Chrome Browser Market Share - Finding an Average

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 13:10:00 GMT

It's been over one year since Google launched Chrome and quite a bit has happened since: 51 developer releases, 21 beta releases or updates, and 15 stable releases or updates, Over 20,600 bugs filed, 50 Chrome Experiments, and of course a whole lot of chatter on its importance (now and in the future) in the competitive browser market.

But what is the state of Chrome today? Last year around this time we asked what Chrome's market share was and today we're wondering how it has changed. Last year at this time Chrome's market share was 2.7% according to analytics service GetClicky and Website Magazine users' Chrome usage was eerily in line with that at 2.73% in November 2008.

As it stands today, Website Magazine users still seem to prefer Firefox (45.34%), followed by Internet Explorer (38.81%), Safari (8.27% - bolstered perhaps by the Website Magazine iPhone app) and finally Chrome (5.32%). Chrome has nearly doubled its market share (at least for Website Magazine readers) but keep in mind that this is only one sample of a vastly larger audience. Michael Aulia posted that 8.7% of his users were using Chrome and that's just the beginning of the variation.

So we ask you; what is your site's browser share and where does Chrome fit into the mix?

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Firefox With 20% Market Share In November (2008)

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 15:02:00 GMT

Net Applications reports that for the first time ever, the Firefox browser exceeded a 20% share for a full month. Microsoft's IE still led the way with 69.77%. Firefox at 20.78% was followed by Safari (7.13%), Chrome (0.83%) and Opera (0.71%) for the top five browsers.

According to Mozilla CEO John Lilly, ""Reaching 20 percent worldwide market share is a significant milestone for Firefox and Mozilla. It's a huge achievement by the global Mozilla community, one that just a few years ago most would have considered impossible. The open web is more vibrant than ever, and the thousands of Mozilla contributors around the world have played a major role in making it that way."

Net Applications analysis highlights four potential reasons for the increase, including the U.S. election (usage increased in the days surrounding November 4), Thanksgiving (Firefox share increase starting on the 26th into the next month), extra weekend days (November had ten weekend days instead of the average 8.57), and higher unemployment.

Cross-Browser Testing For Chrome

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 16:19:00 GMT

Application experience management service Gomez announced that cross-browser testing for Google Chrome and Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 is available.

Using Gomez's Reality View XF service, developers can now visualize how new and existing web applications will appear and perform when rendered in the Chrome and IE 8 beta browsers. Best used during app development and deployment, Reality View XF delivers screen captures of how web pages render and load over 500 combinations of browsers, operating systems and devices.

"The recent proliferation of web browser platforms has put many Internet application providers in an unenviable position," said Daniel Golding, vice president and research director at Tier1 Research. "In addition to three different versions of Internet Explorer, two versions of Firefox, and Apple's Safari, now developers must test against yet another platform -- Google's Chrome. That both Chrome and IE8 are in beta -- subject to rapid change -- makes matters worse. Web application developers are in dire need of powerful, web-based software quality assurance capabilities."