Saturday, September 24, 2011

Chrome(ium) Bits

Yep still here.

Required output at the coal-face down in the mine has come off the rails.  Hours are exceptionally long now and I’ve shifted most of the precious little “me time” left to being present with Lavie and Alvis when I see them.  And de-stressing by visiting Maru ( 私信 ).

The poor “to blog” folder is bursting at the seams and my Firefox JSON folder is ripe for breakdown!

So here are some quick-posts just to release the pressure buildup.

Gentle readers may recall back in my Finally! Time to Post! New material list I had been frustrated by the challenge of updating Chromium.  I had been using a compiled “AutoIt” executable from Caschy to make the process a breeze.  It stopped working. We were sad. It was because the source-folder used had been changed. the Updater got updated. We were all happy again.

Only a few weeks ago, we are all sad again.  Index of /f/chromium/snapshots/Win had a README that told the tale.

your are probably looking for http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-snapshots/index.html

Why yes…I guess I was.

That updated location does contain the new Chromium build sets. Unfortunately, the only compiled New Portable Google Chrome Updater that I am aware of must now be recompiled again (we are waiting) to work for the Chromium builds.

Yes, I can download the latest chrome-win32.zip version each day, manually unpack it, and copy it to my Chromium application folder.  I could even write a script to do all that.

But I’m so tired.

So I checked out the Chrome Release Channels page and read for a while, eventually deciding that the Dev channel for Windows version was sufficiently cutting-edge but stable enough to move to.  As as added benefit Caschy’s Portable Google Chrome Updater tool still works for the Dev channel as that location hasn’t been piddled with.

More Chrome Flavors

Last week I also became aware of an “enhanced security” version of Chrome: Comodo Dragon .  BetaNews has a rundown of some of it’s features: Comodo Dragon: Better browsing security with less bloat

Likewise, SRWare Iron has been kicking around since the very beginning.

If you like portable versions (as I do) then you can check out Iron Portable and Google Chrome Portable both maintained by PortableApps.  Also, during the setup process for Comodo Dragon, it allows you to install as a portable version as well.

Enhancing Chrome’s Search Security

Yes, there are some other good search engines out there, but for plain power, trust, and interface, I still find myself using Google.

Spend any time at all doing packet capture and network HTTP analysis (BTW…NetworkMiner 1.1 Released a week ago) and you quickly find out what happens when users do not use SSL for their searches.

Personally, I now exclusively search more securely with encrypted Google web search.  However, remembering to type in the SSL address for Google secure search is a pain.  So I started to wonder if there wasn’t an easy trick to update the search setting in Chrome…and in Firefox as well.

Yep. Piece of cake, as they say.

How To Make Google HTTPS (Secured SSL) Search Default in Google Chrome? - Mezanul at MyTechGuide.org

Make Your Firefox Search Engine use Google’s SSL (https) Search for Security Reasons - 404 Tech Support

Add Google SSL Search Provider to Firefox Search Box - My Digital Life

So now I’m searching the webs SSL-style by default.

Cheers.

--Claus V.

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