Since launching Google Chrome last September, we received a number of questions from webmasters and web developers about how to make their sites look great in Google Chrome. The questions were very insightful and illuminating for the Chrome team, and I want to respond with a few helpful tips for making your site look stellar in Google Chrome.
Detecting Google Chrome
Most sites will render the same in both Safari and Google Chrome, because they're both WebKit-based browsers. If your site looks right in Safari, then it should look right in Google Chrome, too.
Since Chrome is relatively new, many sites have confused Google Chrome with another browser. If your site doesn't look quite right in Chrome but works fine in Safari, it's possible your site may just not recognize Chrome's user-agent string.
As platforms and browsers adopt WebKit as their rendering engine, your site can detect and support them automatically with the right JavaScript checks. Commonly, sites use JavaScript to 'sniff' the navigator.userAgent property for "Chrome" or "Safari", but you should use proper object detection if possible. In fact, Gmail has been detecting WebKit properly in Chrome since day one!
For reference, here are a few browser releases and the version of WebKit they shipped:
Browser Version of WebKit
Chrome 1.0 525.19
Chrome 2.0 beta 530.1
Safari 3.1 525.19
Safari 3.2 525.26.2
Safari 4.0 beta 528.16
We do not recommend adding "Google" or "Apple" to your navigator.vendor checks to detect WebKit or Google Chrome, because this will not detect other WebKit or Chromium-based browsers!
You can find more information about detecting WebKit at webkit.org.
Other helpful tips
Google Chrome doesn't support ActiveX plug-ins, but does support NPAPI plug-ins. This means you can show plug-in content like Flash and Java in Google Chrome the same way you do with Firefox and Safari.
Recently at SMX West, I gave an Image Search presentation that I'd like to share with our broader webmaster community. The goal of the presentation was to provide insights into how image search is used, how it works, and how webmasters can optimize their pages for image searchers.You'll see more information about:
Some background on the reach of Image Search
Interesting findings on the behavior of image searchers
Our efforts at handling multiple image referrers
How to best feature images (image quality and placement, relevant surrounding text, etc.)Take a look and let us know your thoughts in the comments. We'd love to hear from you.
Improve traffic with Google Webmaster Tools
Welcome to your one-stop shop for webmaster resources that will help you with your crawling and indexing questions, introduce you to offerings that can enhance and increase traffic to your site, and connect you with your visitor.
Making more tools available with just a click
Last July, google launched our Webmaster Tools Access Provider Program and it's been a huge hit. Hundreds of providers have signed up, and thousands of users now access Webmaster Tools via their provider's control panel.
google are launching the Google Services for Websites Access Provider Program which enables providers to offer the following features to site owners:
Enhance their site with Custom Search or Google Site Search
Monetize with AdSense
Optimize for search with Webmaster Tools
How can you get in on this?
Webmasters: Watch to see if your provider join this program, so the next time you manage your site, everything will be all set for you. Better yet, send your provider a link to this post and tell them we're here to help them help you.
Providers: Check out the Google Services for Websites site and sign up today!
And in case you're wondering, providers that have signed up for the Webmaster Tools Access Provider program will automatically be upgraded to the new program. Also, no worries for developers -- the backend Webmaster Tools APIs remain unchanged.