300

Oddly, I'm not referring to the film 300 in the title, but rather, the fact that this is the 300th post to this blog. That's a lot of posts, I think. I had considered, briefly, the idea of making some sort of over-the-top sort of post, akin to dropping balloons on your 1,000,000th customer at the Super Market (how does one figure that out, I always wondered when watching movies and sitcoms that depicted such a thing). I decided, however, just to mention the fact that it is my 300th post, thank those of you that read (however few there are), and move on.


In this case, moving on means that you'll be reading a post regarding the frustration I'm feeling toward Google's Chrome. I've had time to think about things since I last posted about Google's new JesusBrowser. I still feel like Google can do no wrong in my book, yet, I feel that maybe they have.

I refer to the mouse scrolling issue.

This might seem minor, certainly, but it's a big deal to me. There are numerous fixes out there already, for others using different drivers, but nothing for me. Those fixes require you to update something, or remove something, or add Chrome to an exception list of some kind. I've seen fixes for people on XP and people on Vista, people with Dell Mouse Software, and people with Lenovo's. I've read them all, and done my own troubleshooting... But the bottom line is, it should just work, right?

Maybe I'd be telling other people to stop whining, and just move their fingers a few inches over and up to use the arrow keys. Maybe, if it weren't happening to me. But it is. The issue seems to affect primarily those using touch-pads, but also those using certain mouse drivers. It seems that Chrome has taken over the issue of scrolling, deciding that it needs to dictate what happens when I scroll up and down, demanding some different type of communication with the device than most other applications.

The problem is this: Why would you release a browser with this flaw? I mean, I understand that this issue isn't going to affect the majority of your users. However, the reason it's eating away at me is because I have to imagine there was someone involved in either the developing or the testing of Chromium, later Chrome, who must have been using a laptop of some kind (as almost all use Synaptics touchpads, and therefore are vulnerable to the same problems), and fired up the browser and said, with a silly sort of British affectation, "Oi, the damn thing won't scroll up!".

It can't be said they really didn't know about this from the get go. Then, to not list it immediately as a bug? Sure, they released an update today for some security issues, and those are certainly important, but isn't this important as well? (Hell, they fixed a problem that caused the entire browser to crash if you typed about:% into the address bar, not because it was a vulnerability, but because it was 'annoying'.) It has a dramatic effect on the usability of the browser. Sure, for years, I had no scroll wheel. I muddled through life at some point without a web browser, without Google to answer every question I have. There was a time that I had to type every command directly into a command line to make my computer work. Now, however, if I encounter a computer without a scroll wheel on it's attached mouse, I find myself almost flabbergasted. How can one survive without a scroll wheel?

Don't get me wrong, I've been disappointed by Google products in the past. Certain bugs, or flaws that seemed so glaring, so amazing that I could only shake my head in disbelief. This, however, seems... well... it just seems like it's too much. Something that should have been polished before release. I can forgive a page that doesn't render correctly, that's a given. I can forgive lack of customization this early on. I can forgive missing features, things that just haven't been implemented yet. But, for a company, that has released enough software at this point to have the basic functionality of a windows application figured out, to allow me to download and install a product in which I cannot scroll web pages (of course, I can scroll the options pages), it actually makes me mad.

I imagine they'll get it sorted out. I'm sure it won't be long before they do something about the problem, and I'll be able to happily use their product. However, it will be tarnished (and I really don't mean to make a Chrome pun there), because I'll know they brought it out far too early. Sure, it's my fault for expecting something better, because of course it's a beta. However, everything Google does is beta, and I'm really beginning to thing they either need to just completely re-brand themselves as GoogleBETA, or start releasing functional products, even with frequent updates, that don't need to hide behind the 'BETA' tag.

Still, I love Google, and I know they're just trying to do what they need to do to make the money that pays the people that do the things they're trying to do. But, it really seems like it's time for them to start owning up and just releasing things when they're ready, or at least near ready.

By the way, if I don't ever post again, you'll know it's because the Google™ Hit Squad(BETA) took me out, if not efficiently, at least eventually.