gnapse corner

I was very excited on Monday when I learned that Google was about to release a new web browser of their own, dubbed Google Chrome. It was about time!

But soon after the initial excitement that the announcement comic made me feel, I remembered that for a long time now Google has been blocking all their downloads from Cuba. This includes all their applications (Google Talk, Google Earth, Google Desktop, Picasa, Google Pack, etc.) and every single piece of code available via the Google Code portal. And I did not hesitate a moment before I knew that Chrome was not going to be an exception, not even for the fact that, unlike all other Google applications, Chrome is an open source project. It seems that for Google free software is only for those who are considered to be free by the US state department.

And I wonder how much is Google obliged to treat Cubans this way, when many other companies just as prominent, visible and American as Google is (for instance Yahoo! and Microsoft) are not blocking any of their freeware downloads from this island. And I hope this observations would not lead them to copy Google's policy, but the other way around.

But anyway, I managed to grab a copy of Chrome using unspeakable methods. The simple approach of having someone abroad download it and send it to me via email or something, it won't work. The direct download is just a small program that does the rest of the download itself. And guess what, this program also checks where I am connected from.

But thanks to some hacking (hint: operator) I was able to have it, and test it, and taste it. And as almost anything Google-made (except of course their downloads policy) is delicious. Here are my impressions, trying to focus on the things that have been less visible in most reviews.

An Opera clone?

According to its visual features, yes. Tabs as first-class independent citizens, speeddial-like initial page, UI responsiveness, particularly when switching tabs, are the most prominent features that remind us of Opera. But as Opera's CEO put it, this is flattering for Opera. And it's good indirect publicity too.

But as true as it is that Opera excels Chrome in UI configurability and dinamicity, Chrome has some very good innovations in its inner workings, like separate processes for each tab, javascript-to-native-code, and sandboxing. From a software programmer's perspective I can see that these things are here to stay and even to get into other browsers' design choices in the near future. What's good is good. And maybe someone else (hopefully Opera) can innovate further on these.

Speed-dial, History and Downloads tabs

While not exactly brand new features in the browsers' world, Chrome's implementation of these have the taste of innovation too. Speed-dial incorporates a couple of dynamic components (search boxes and recently closed tabs) and it also has a look that mimics Google websites and pages, making it look like you're already in a website that serves as a gate for other sites. Making it look like you're at Google already.

Similar things can be said of the history and downloads tabs, both having a search box at the top, which mimics those of Google's own web sites. As trivial and simple as this might seem, I find it very important for the overall feeling and taste that this new browser leaves on us.

Minor goodies

I felt amused by the omnibar's highlighting of the domain, leaving the rest of the URL dimmed in a lighter color. For people like me that appreciate knowing in a glimpse where I am standing when watching a page, this is very helpful. I was also worried about the lack of status bar, which lets me know where a link points to before I actually click on it. It turns out that Chrome has a small "status bar" that appears on demand to give us this kind of information, but that silently goes away after a few seconds.

The search feature, the one that lets us search within the text of a loaded page, also works similarly to that of Firefox (but in the top right instead of the bottom). The search box appears when we ask for it (with Ctrl+F) and then it goes away when we're finished. This kind of unobtrusive goodies are some of the things that Opera still lacks.

And I also noticed something that nobody else told me about Chrome in my extensive reviews and reading prior to my own use of it: it has a spell checker! This very post is being spell-checked by it as I write, much in the vein of Firefox's spell checker. Although to be honest, it is still slow, freezing my cursor a fraction of a second just after I finish writing a misspelled word. Sure there's home for improvement here, also allowing bilingual users like me to have more than one dictionary available.

Do's and Dont's

One thing I'd like is something I've been talking about for a long time, and that Opera finally made it real: synchronizing my settings (bookmarks, etc.) with a central store, so that I have my stuff wherever I may use Chrome. This could even be incorporated to Firefox via an extension, so that transition between Chrome and Firefox would be much easier. It would be much better if all major browsers would agree on this, develop a standard for this, and everybody wins (except Microsoft, of course)

On the other hand, among the things I would not like, I would specially hate if they make an extension architecture like Firefox's XUL. It just bloat the whole thing. Remember the KISS principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid!

My overall feeling about it

As a user and crawler of the web myself (albeit a technically inclined one), Chrome is as good as I can expect from a first release, and it already makes me expect new things from other browsers more established in my day-to-day pack of tools. Sure it has some road ahead (which project does not, particularly when it's new) but in the most basic features it is indeed a great new kid on the block.

As a web developer, it's good to have something handy to test my stuff with webkit, since I do not own a Mac but although Chrome has some basic developer tools, it is still light-years behind Firebug. Even Dragonfly is behind Firebug.

Overall, I am happy to have a new contender that re-ignites an already active browsers war. Competition and innovation in the end are good for us internet users. Let them compete to gain our preference. Sit back and watch the fight!

Today is a very sad day for Cuba. It is sad because unfortunately our baseball team lost yesterday to the Japanese, who played a better game last night. But although the day is sad, in the end, very deep in the end, we feel the joy of having our team finally breaking the myth of the major leagues. Yes, we can beat them, just as easily as they can beat us. Cuba is a great team and now most people acknowledge this fact, that Cuba can play with anybody.

Congratulations to Japan, indeed a great baseball team that deserved the victory just as much as we did. They played well and they got the trophy. Two island nations rewriting a game invented in North America, and giving a lesson of courage and team work.

Baseball needed this classic and we fans appreciate it. I really hope that plans for future editions of this tournament won't be dropped. It certainly proved to be the best international event of this beautiful sport, and the success and popularity of this first edition proves that baseball is good entertainment.

As for Cuba, we'll go for the title in 2009.

¡Cuba Campeón!

Some friend of mine told me about a possible situation between Cuban blogs and Blogger, of which their authors were being banned access to view and update/modify their content.

I immediately decided to try and see if I was still able to access my old blog at blogger, which I maintained before continuing my personal blog in the web site of the Opera Web Browser, and you can see that I was able to update it as I wrote this bilingual post about the situation. Nevertheless this doesn't prove anything, since Google may have blocked some and not all Cuban blogs. I am not aware of any Cuban blogger in a situation similar to the one described above.

I am enormously happy today. I found that I am not alone blogging in this beautiful island. I suppose that my feelings must be similar to those of Robinson Crusoe after he found a fellow man one Friday. He even called the guy that way: Friday.

And coincidentally, today is Friday. I swear I didn't hold this announcement to provoke the coincidence. I just happened to check out my account news and messages today, and I had a comment in my previous post (the fourth comment actually) from one such fellow Cuban blogger, a Cuban lady called Dayana. She was the one who found me. She's currently not in the island, she's abroad working at some university in Quito (Ecuador) temporarily, so I count her as blogging from Cuba. It's not the same as some Cuban people blogging, but actually living abroad permanently; like those who left the island forever.

Well, as she found me, I'm the one that should be called Friday. But the joy is greater because Robinson Crusoe found just one friend, and I found three. Through the blog of Dayana I heard about the blog of Belkys, who is more or less known here because she works on TV as a journalist. And it turns out that Belky's daughter, Patricia, has a blog too. Both blogs started recently, but are already active enough, and I expect them to keep going. On the other hand Dayana's blog is older. Actually a little bit older than mine.

I haven't been able to check all these blogs in depth, but I can make some little reviews. Dayana's blog is called Confluencias (Confluences), and is more like a personal diary with bits of Cuban present reality. It was quite interesting at first sight. Belkys' weblog is called Proposiciones (Propositions), and is more about current Cuban affairs, and talks very favourably about our present reality as a country. I do not agree with several of her points, as far as I have read at the moment, but I respect her opinions and I am glad anyway for having her along. It seems that the concept of Cuban blogger is not that weird after all. And last but not least, Patricia's blog is amazing. This wonderful little girl with just eight years old is capable to write about her reality very naturally. She seems to be a fairly good chess player for her age.

By the way, I forgot to mention that all these blogs are in Spanish. Sorry, but in fact the weird guy is me. I'm Cuban so I am supposed to be writing in Spanish too.

Hurricane Wilma destroyed the coastal area of the city of Havana. I live less than three hundred meters from the coast, and the flooded waters reached as far as four hundred meters. This was the worst flood that can be remembered, not just for the height of the waters, but also in terms of the enormous length of the seashore that was affected.

I visited yesterday the shore area, which is crossed by the Malecón Avenue, and I had the sensation that it was a bombed area in a zone of war. Gigantic gaps in the street were common. I directly saw a cavity which was 20 meters long and 12 meters across. It was irregularly deep, but the interesting part is that, being placed in the middle of the street, it had communication with the sea under the sidewalk.

I just created an album of photographs taken from the flooded street and from my house, which is safe in a second floor, thankfully. You will see in the album a heavily flooded street, and even boats navigating. I promise to publish some more photographs from other parts of the city, as soon as I can.

Many people lost all their belongings. Never the water reached that far. As these people didn’t take the necessary measures, also many businesses did wrong too. Several stores, gas stations and hotels were severely damaged, and looting was as common as swimming. Great efforts were made to help out those who were affected the most. Free food, water and soft drinks were being distributed among residents of flooded areas, which were still without electrical power and fresh water. I am still affected in some ways. I already have electrical power since yesterday late in the night, but the water in my cistern was contaminated, thus we’re emptying it to clean it until is able to be used again.