Google Chrome Rules

I love Google Chrome. There are so many things about it that are just so nice, but I just found a new one and felt like blogging it. This ties in with Vista (64 bit) and Apple annoyances. Ever since I switched to Vista, my experience playing MP3 files through the browser has been awful. For whatever reason, Quicktime is the default player for MP3 files in the browser and for whatever reason it shows up black on black. I have no idea what's going on, I just know I hate it. The controls exist, they just can't be seen. I'll show you what I mean:

Somewhere in that ugly black bar is volume, play/pause, time and... whatever else. I don't know.

So... how long have Vista and Quicktime been around? Does nobody else use them? I just don't get how this could go unfixed. Speaking of which, Photoshop files have no preview in 64-bit Vista. That one's even worse, in my opinion. Are graphic designers supposed to prefer a 32-bit OS? Really? Like they're keen on limited RAM?

So anyways, back to Chrome. I noticed recently that when I played an MP3 file in Chrome I not longer got the crap-ass Quicktime Bar of Blackness. I got to see something exciting and new! Here it is:

Okay, so it's not the most exciting thing in the world. But if you're like me and you preview dozens of MP3 files a week, the Quicktime Bar of Blackness gets pretty annoying quickly and something as minimally impressive as this can bring a lot of joy.

What seems to be going on is that Chrome converts the plain MP3 file to the brand new HTML 5.0 video tag:

<video controls="" autoplay="" style="margin: auto; position: absolute; top: 0; right: 0; bottom: 0; left: 0;" name="media" src="http://dashsignature.com/mp3/harp_is_what.mp3"></video>

Nifty!

Random note added to end: In making this post I did some screen captures of Firefox and Chrome. To make things nice and small, I removed all my extra toolbars from Firefox. In that process, I accidentally removed the Menu toolbar! Oops! The question was, how do I get it back? It's via the Menu toolbar that you show or hide the toolbars! I had to do a little searching to find it, but find it I did: ALT-V-T-M

Versions used:

Google Chrome 4.1.249.1021 beta (40167)

Mozilla Firefox 3.6