Chrome is now our primary browser. It's got good developer support and good extensions.

# Install via Homebrew Cask.
brew cask install google-chrome
 
# Add a dock icon.
dockutil --add '/Applications/Google Chrome.app'

• On Startup
  • Continue where I left off
• Appearance
  • Always show the bookmarks bar
• Privacy
  • CHECK Send a ‘Do Not Track’ request with your browsing traffic
• Web Content
  • Page zoom: 125%

Go to the Chrome Web Store to download Chrome extensions.

• CHECK Allow in Incognito
• UNCHECK Show icon on address bar
• Placeholder icon position: Center

• CHECK Allow access to file URLs

Site-specific browsers (SSBs) are special variants of the browser that run a single web application. They simplify the web application by isolating it from everything else. One of the big advantages we find is that we can tab to the application itself, instead of having to find the right tab within the browser.

We use Google Hangouts a lot for remote pair programming and other communications. (We even frequently use it to make phone calls - the sound quality is better than our cell phones.) This is a case where finding the right window quickly is critical. We're often muted, and need to switch from what we're doing to the Hangouts window.

We tried using Fluid to create this SSB, but the video plugin kept crashing on us. So we're using a Google Chrome SSB. It's not nearly as nice to configure, but we haven't had any issues with it.

wget https://raw2.github.com/lhl/chrome-ssb-osx/master/chrome-ssb.sh
wget http://icons.iconarchive.com/icons/martz90/circle-addon2/512/google-hangouts-icon.png
echo -e 'Google Hangouts\nhttps://plus.google.com/hangouts\ngoogle-hangouts-icon.png' | sh chrome-ssb.sh
mv 'Google Hangouts.app' /Applications/
rm chrome-ssb.sh google-hangouts-icon.png

We use Jira as the ticketing system for one of our clients. Again, it's something we need to be able to find quickly, so that we can manage what we're working on. We used Fluid to set this up. (Fluid actually uses Safari instead of Chrome.)