Well, I may have been left less than impressed but people are using Google Chrome and so, as a web developer, I need to make sure my sites are compatible.

However, I don’t necessarily want a full-time installation, so someone has kindly created a portable version of Chrome (based on the open-source version, Chromium).

But should I bother testing with Google Chrome? Google say…

If you’ve tested your website with Safari 3.1 then your site should already work well on Google Chrome.

This is based on the fact that it’s built on Web Kit, the same as Safari.

However, they’ve been very careful with their words. Safari 3.1 is not the latest version – that used WebKit 525.13, the same as Google Chrome. The latest version of Safari is 3.1.2 and includes WebKit 525.21, which has a number of vulnerability and general security fixes.

On top of that Google Chrome is using its own JavaScript engine.

The fact that both produce different Acid3 test scores should be the indicator here that they’re NOT the same. I’d therefore say, no, you can’t test your site on Safari and then be confident it works on Chrome.

I was excited. A brand new firmware was available for my phone – taking it from 20.0.016 to 30.0.18. Improvements include…

Nokia Maps 2.0 built-in.
Full N-Gage client.
Nokia Search 4.0 with Google plug-in.
Share online 3.0.
Enablers for Comes With Music.
Download! application updated (v 3.1.50)
Upgrade to Music Player.
Update for Flash Lite 3 (improved viewing of sites like YouTube)
Current consumption improvements (for e.g. WLAN scanning)
New baseline for VoIP (with significant error corrections)
On the desktop there is “share online” option, under WLAN scan.
Added 5th theme, dark one.
BUILT-IN AUTOROTATE. works fine!(You will need to activate it in the settings as it’s left off by default. The setting can be found in Settings>general>personalisation>display>rotate screen.)
Renewed standard icons (some are changed, some – just got smaller)
Some camera improvements. Colours of the picture are closer to original

What was there not to like? So I ran the Software Installer and it warned me to backup up my phone. Yea, ok. It was backed up a few days ago but I wasn’t too worried – accidental wiping off the phone is rare.

So off it goes… it takes about half an hour.

I was then presented with…  a request for country, date and time information. This wasn’t looking good. Sure enough, every thing was back to the base install and my personalisations were missing. Arse.

Thank god for that backup. That backup I made just before I had a tidy up of where my backups were being stored, etc. Yes, that’s right – it was now missing.

I found a backup from a month ago on my work laptop so I restored that. It would appear that the files on the 8GB build-in memory were fine, so they were bang up to date. A swift run of GooSync and Nokia Sync put contacts, events, etc, back too. Still, there’s a lot of tinkering to do to get it back to how it was (if it’s possible – I’ve certainly lost some saved SMS’).

So, moral of this story… backup! Regularly!

Which I’m now doing as I write this. And that reminds me of something else – when I came to use the Nokia Content Copier it complained that..

The connected Nokia device does not have multimedia support installed. Multimedia messages cannot be backed up. View Help to find instructions on how to install the support plug-in.

A quick Google found the answer – you need to re-connect the phone using the “Get Connected Wizard” softwate. This re-installs the required software to the phone.

I thought I’d check out my site stats to see how Google Chrome is doing (now that I know Google Analytics can track it separately) since it was launched on the 2nd.

The least techy of my sites is BMTG, which garners just 1.67% of users from Chrome. Next up, Copy+ is 3.55%. This site is 5.66%. Not fantastic, but not too shoddy.

Other things that came out in this that Firefox is the most popular browser for this site (it’s IE on the others), Chrome usually has similar percentages to Safari (considering Safari is available on both Windows and Mac, I guess that doesn’t look too good for Safari). Opera is usually languishing in 5th place.

So, Chrome isn’t doing too badly, considering it’s shortcomings. But it is fast and simple, which is what many people want. Having said that, the more tech the site is the more visitors appear to use it. Which in my mind doesn’t go – Chrome is a very un-tech browser.

I guess you just have to be geeky to try something else out and not stick with what you know – many of the visitors were probably doing what I did last week and was just giving the browser a test drive. Time will tell – I’ll try the same again in a few months and see if those percentages remain.