Google Chrome not yet ready for Autodesk Labs SaaS yet

Earlier this week Google announced availability of a BETA of their brand new Chrome browser. I immediately got a question from a Mr. Richard Feder from Fort Lee, New Jersey:

Is Labs testing any of the existing Software as a Service (SaaS) applications with Google Chrome?

So I downloaded the Google Chrome BETA and visited some of our SaaS services.

1. Project Showroom
   Project Showroom faired quite well.
   
   I did notice that the updating indicator that the browser plays while the Project Showroom server does its computations seemed to rotate more slowly.

2. Project Draw
   I navigated to Project Draw. I had previously installed Google Gears, so I assumed I was all set. Chrome put up a dialog box:
   
   
   I indicated that I trust the site, navigated there, and the Project Draw menus were scrambled - much like eggs:
   
   
   
   Although Chrome outscored Firefox and IE on the Acid3 test, it looks like there is more work for Google Chrome to support services like Project Draw.

3. Project Freewheel
   Google Chrome displayed the Project Freewheel HTML content just fine, but the menu icons and 3D suspension design were missing:
   
   
   
   Google Chrome needs to evolve a bit more for it to support some of the elements of Project Freewheel.

I routinely use Internet Explorer 7. Many of the developers use Firefox 3. Some of our QA staff use Firefox 2 and Internet Explorer 6. This way we routinely get exposure and coverage. After testing with Google Chrome, I fired up Internet Explorer. My blog is one of my home pages in case I need to respond to comments made on one of the postings. My blog would not load. It was as if Internet Explorer realized I had been cheating on it. Alas it turned out to be:

I was relieved. My browser infidelity had gone unnoticed. :-) We will continue to monitor Google's progress on Chrome to see how many of these issues get fixed on the browser side. As it matures, we can consider making changes on our side to support Chrome in a future release.

Keeping abreast of browser technology is alive in the lab.