What’s This All About?

If you keep up to date with Tech news you will know there has been a lot written about the impending release of the “Google Browser” Google Chrome over the last couple of days. Well now the Beta version (another Google everlasting beta? ) has been released to the world and ProReviewer has grabbed a copy to see what it does.

Why Would You Want It?

Google have done some clever pre-release marketing and in particular a comic strip talking about what \Google Chrome offers. It clearly takes on may of the great aspects of other browsers such as Firefox, Opera and Safari as well as making sure it has MS Internet Explorer * well in its sights. The particular aspects that appeal to me are the “sandboxing” of individual tabs (well it seems to be websites) so that if they crash or a script won’t complete it doesn’t crash or freeze the browser. A Task Manager for the browser to display information about the individual tabs and allow their termination. Other aspects related to search and history within the address bar or “Omnibar” reflect what the “opposition” is currently providing.

I have very gone through being slightly disappointed to indifferent to quite excited about Google Chrome over the last hour as I have experimented with its capabilities.I still realize that I am, at present, a “Dyed in the Wool” fan of Firefox 3 Portable and it will take a lot of development and add-ons (will there be any? ) to make me consider Google Chrome as my browser of choice. However, if their is a portable version with the current functionality I would certainly add it to my Portable Apps toolbox.

Screenshot Tour

Rather than follow the normal ProReviewer review template this post will take the form of a (similar) series of screenshots with notes.

Click on any screenshot to enlarge if necessary

Installation

Standard installer progress window

Installer Welcome and Customization:

About

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What Does it Do - The Essentials?

There are several websites offering an online web service, one that I have used recently to create the “Favicon” for this website is at RealWorld Graphics. This is a quick way of creating a basic icon (*.ico) file. You can select colours and draw your own icon of you can upload a picture for it to interpret into an icon. I am not saying that this is the best available website for icon creation, but I have tried a couple of others and I found this one easy to use and smooth in its operation. (Any suggestions for better web based applications will be gratefully received in the comments!) (more…)

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What Does it Do - The Essentials?

FlashFolder is a small utility that enhances the common Open/Save File dialog boxes used by windows programs. It sits on top of the dialog box (docks) as shown above (the red border has been added to illustrate). FlashFolder provides several additional functions in the form of a toolbar to help you use and navigate when opening and saving files. I personally think this is a great little program.

Summary:

• Go To Last Folder
• Favorite Folders/Bookmarks
• Last Used Folders
• Resizes Dialog Box
• Positions Dialog Box at Screen Centre (Optional)
• View “All Files” in a folder
• Provides a file/folder path address bar
• Integrates with Total Commander directory menu

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What Does it Do - The Essentials?

PortableApps Menu is a a small utility that sits in the system tray and provides access to a suite of programs contained in the associated folders. It also provides access to a set of folders associated with the portable applications folder to make documents, music, pictures and videos available on you USB Flash drive or removable hard drive. (Or just use them in a folder on your PC - see Why You Want to Use Portable Freeware Applications) PortableApps Menu is part of the PortableApps.com Suite available here at PortableApps.com.

The suite comes in 3 versions:

Basic - PortableApps Menu, PortableApps Backup utility and custom folders, icons and AutoRun

Standard - Firefox Portable Edition, OpenOffice.org, Portable, Mozilla Songbird Portable, Gain Portable, Sudoku Portable and Thunderbird Portable Edition

Lite - As standard edition but replaces OpenOffice with Abiword

No doubt the above applications will be subject to the My Free Review treatment in the coming weeks.

Summary:

• Gives simple access to a suite of portable programs
• Provides a set of portable document and multimedia folders
• Can be set to run automatically at Startup

Pros: What’s Good?

• Freeware (more…)

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This is the main category for software program reviews.

All reviews should appear under the appropriate sub-category, this main category will be used for general comments and news on software and developers.

Technorati Tags: Free Reviews, Freeware, My Free Review, Open Source, Portable Freeware, Portable Applications, Portable software, Portable Programs, Reviews, Utilities, Windows, Windows XP, file handling

Update February 2008

This blog was originally called My Free review and if you look back through the posts for February 2008 you will see the reasons for changing the blog name - Pro Reviewer - It’s Hard to Find a Good Domain Name! . So references to My Free Review in the following text relate to this original name choice.

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Well I have decided that I need to write my own blog, so what made me decide this? (more…)

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 Update February 2008

This blog was originally called My Free review and if you look back through the posts for February 2008 you will see the reasons for changing the blog name - Pro Reviewer - It’s Hard to Find a Good Domain Name! . So references to My Free Review in the following text relate to this original name choice.

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The aim of My Free Review is to provide more independent information on various software programs than may be generally available from most blogs at present.

There are several web sites and blogs that provide descriptions of the programs as they are released or updated but this is usually a brief resume taken from the developers site or “press release”. (Although there are some notable exceptions).

Quite often when a program has been downloaded and installed it doesn’t really quite do what is expected or it may do several useful things that were never even mentioned. So I thought that reporting the details could be a useful guide and time saver for other software “junkies” like myself.

The reviews that will be presented are going to be predominantly freeware and shareware. I will review programs and updates that have been recently released whenever possible. Also there will be reviews on some older favourites that deserve a mention.

I feel that the more commercial programs produced by the big software companies are adequately covered by the mainstream PC web sites and magazines. However, I will try to include some personal comments where they seem relevant as well as reviewing some of the free plugins and add-ons that become available.

I am now a big fan of “portable” programs. That is programs that can be run without touching the registry and therefore can easily be transferred from one machine to another complete with all settings or run from a “memory stick”.

I also have an interest in Firefox add-ons which seem to never be adequately described or reviewed at addons.mozilla.org.

Being something of a gadget freak I also thought I would provide a little insight, where relevant, on some of these. Again this may help others from making bad choices or point to some products that have performed well.

All the reviews will obviously be personal opinions and I will welcome comments and discussion from those of you who wish to add something more, disagree or correct something if it is wrong.

For anyone who is interested a little relevant background on myself can be found at “Why I Decided to Write this Blog”

Technorati Tags: Freeware,Portable Freeware,Utilities,Windows,Windows XP,Open Source,Gadgets,Gizmos,Electronics,Reviews,Free Reviews

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