Today I got an email from Google because I use their Google Apps, and I was surprised, but kind of happy to read the email they sent.  Below is it's contents in entirety. 

NOTE: I have highlighted the interesting parts, or at least some.

Dear Google Apps admin,​

In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology.  This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5.  As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.

We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010.  After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.

Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.

Starting next week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser.  We will also alert you again closer to March 1 to remind you of this change.

In 2009, the Google Apps team delivered more than 100 improvements to enhance your product experience.  We are aiming to beat that in 2010 and continue to deliver the best and most innovative collaboration products for businesses.

Thank you for your continued support!

Sincerely,

The Google Apps team

Email preferences: You have received this mandatory email service announcement to update you about important changes to your Google Apps product or account.

Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

I hope someone else finds this interesting.  If not, no worries, but if you did and have comments, please feel free to post.

There was an announcement yesterday about Google's new browser called Chrome.  I went through three different emotions upon hearing about this new browser.

1. I felt a quick kid like excitement.  I was rushing to download it and try it out.
2. Then I felt a feeling of worry when I thought that I now had yet another browser to test all my websites against.  So at that point I went to the Chrome site and started to read the little comic they have to explain their new browser.  As I read I found that there was a lot of good sound things about Google's new browser.
3. Lastly my feeling was amusement and curiosity as I started to realize just how good the browser was.  Here are some of the things I like about Chrome.

Things I like

• I was happy to see that it passed all the CSS3 tests on the CSS3.info site.  This is encouraging to me and it will be GREAT to test CSS3 stuff and know I have a playground that supports all of CSS3 and not just a little bit of it.
• I was happy that each tab is it's own process.  That way when a site goes mad and freezes, I don't loose what I was doing on another tab.
• It is very lite looking but pretty browser.  (ya I know I am a professional and that shouldn't matter.  But it does.)
• The search bar is the address bar.  I think that is how browsers should have all been made.
• Most visited sites page.  Kind of cool, but I want to see it in action a couple months from now.
• Load times are pretty darned fast.

Things I don't like

• When I was using Chrome on my Vista PC disc bullets were displayed with white corners which made the bullets look like stars at certain sizes.
• I don't like what it did to my favorites.  It imported my favorites from IE7 and then tried to logically sort them.  I can't find anything anymore.  I wish I hadn't imported them.  My advice is do NOT import favorites.
• The "Inspect Element" is a nice try but it isn't as good as IE8's Developer Toolbar or Firefox's Firebug extension.  I can't get to a mode where I can hover over the page and click an element I want to inspect.  I can go through the markup and eventually find my element by watching what lights up.  But it just isn't as good as I would like.

Well I think that is it for now.  I am going to use this browser a LOT in the next couple weeks to test things out.  I know I will be able to soon ad much more to both of the above lists.  I can't wait to find out what cool tools Google has added to the browser.  I also can't wait to see if I can take some things off my "Things I don't like" list when I get to know the browser a bit more.

Well thanks Google for giving me more work to do.  The good thing is that I really like my work.

~Mike