The climax of the three-month business class I've been teaching this summer is a presentation exercise in which my students will form teams of two or three to try to impress their managers with how much they have improved their spoken English - by giving a PowerPoint-assisted lecturette on some topic at least loosely relevant to their work.
Since they work for an IT company, one group has chosen to discuss the competition in the Internet browser market. I learn from them that over the past 8 or 10 months, Google Chrome has really been kicking Firefox's arse, gobbling up its market share, mainly on the basis of its supposedly much greater 'stability'. Well, that was indeed why I made the switch myself about 4 or 5 months ago.
Then, of course, by one of those taunting cosmic coincidences, the very day after my students have treated me to this illuminating presentation on the virtues of the Chrome browser.... it has started crashing every time I try to use YouTube.
Sigh.
Is anyone else having this problem?
I don't want to have to go back to Firefox or IE; but I fear I have no choice.
10 comments:
There are always Opera or Safari to give a go too. I mean someone should give them a chance right? Guys? Anyone?!
Safari seems to be the default option for Apple users, but I'm not sure if it's even compatible with Windows.
I'd never heard of Opera until my students did their presentation (it was included in all of their graphics of performance data, but they didn't mention it!). It looks like a decent alternative. I may have to look into it.
I rather suspect, though, that YouTube (or one of the programs it uses, like Flash?) has just tweaked something that's going to cause problems for all browsers. Hopefully, they'll all be able to patch it soon.
Apple started offering Safari to Windows users in 2007; it completes the line-up of the five core browsers for that operating system (all other browsers available run one of those five's underlying technologies with their own custom interface, add-ons etc.).
YouTube shouldn't be causing crashes with any modern version of any browser; this sounds like a problem at your end, I expect from one of the Great Firewall vaulting techniques you're using. It wouldn't hurt to update your Adobe Flash installs though (there are separate ones for each browser, so inefficient!). The easiest way to do this is to browse to Adobe's site with the browser you're using and download (and then install it) from there. The only exception to this is when using Google's Chrome browser (or one of its variants). Chrome's a bit different from all the others in two ways- a) Flash is included at installation & b) There are FOUR versions of Chrome being available for use at any one time. First off there's the stable build, the regular one you see when you visit Chrome's website. The rest are pre-releases at progressively advanced stages of development (and therefore are progressively less stable although more feature rich). I might suggest that you try the Beta version (the second release up let's say) but I wouldn't recommend going any further unless you're really interested, which I doubt. The Beta version may fix the problem you're having but I don't know, they all look the same to me...
Failing all of that, more tweaking might be involved or you may be due for a complete system overhaul if you reckon things are a real mess on your machine. There is always Linux as an alternative too.
Sorry for the long, hopefully not too complicated comment but there really is no briefer way to explain everything!
The Missus is en route to pick me up, so I don't have time right now to say much more than: Firefox losing ground in a lot of people's estimations. Chrome not quite there yet (although I too have been favoring it recently). Safari works with Windows. Opera is fine but (I find) VERY... well, odd, interface-wise.
The Chrome/YouTube problems you're having sound very strange (especially since Mother Google has them both under her wing now).
Well, touch wood, resolved now.
The problem had seemed to coincide with my installing RealPlayer for the first time (which I discovered I apparently needed to play some mp4 music files a friend had just given me), but uninstalling it didn't help.
But after a couple of days, YouTube seems to be stable and glitch-free again. Odd.
My pal Crazy Chris has just recommended I try a browser called Comodo Dragon.
Its website describes it as "aesthetically minimalist" - which immediately appeals.
Comodo Dragon is a project fork of Chromium (itself a derivative of Google Chrome). I'm not sure entirely how Comodo differs from Chromium (both browsers seem to have a similar (neurotic IMHO) philosophy but Comodo Group are a security firm so either it has "bonus features(!)" or is just the exact same with a brand logo slapped on it.
I've never personally had a problem with RealPlayer, ever (in fact I've had a small soft spot for it for what I used to use it for) but in the general Internet circle it's a notorious problem maker and has been so for many years. Many other software packages can play MP4 files (it's a very common container format these days) and a list of those alternatives can be found here- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_video_player_software#Video_format_ability My personal choice for Windows? VLC, not that I like to give bias; I truly believe in the user finding their own way and learning from their own experiences, not being 'recommended' by others who don't have enough of those things.
Thanks, John. Very useful technical input there.
Sorry your comments fell afoul of the Blogger spam filters for a while.
Actually, I already have VLC for playing video downloads, but - of course - Windows doesn't recognise it as being available to interpret mp4s for me.
Must have been all the times I wrote Falun Gong.
If you want Windows to associate MP4s with VLC then you have to tell it to ;) No really, either:
1) Open VLC, click Tools -> Preferences, scroll down, click the Set up associations... OR
2) Select the video you want to watch (click on it), either right click on it to bring up a menu or use those on the taskbar, either way you want to find Open With (if it doesn't show hold down Ctrl, or is it Shift or Alt? One of those), choose VLC from the menu, to make the selection permanent check the box, click OK.
These instructions are for XP but I recall them being similar for Vista and 7. Option 1 is preferable as the application deals with it rather than Windows which uses a quick-fix method instead which incidentally can be used for almost any file type and software package. The problem with 1 is figuring how to do it for each package and it takes longer, the results are usually tidier though (you only notice these things if you spend too much time with computers as I do).
VLC asks you what files you want to open with it when you install it as does most software these days (as did RealPlayer I expect). Most people either find the options daunting or can't be bothered with them so leave them all at the default options; then they wonder why their search engine and home pages have been changed and suddenly files don't open like they used to. These companies will catch you unaware if you let them so consider unticking boxes before clicking that Next button.
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