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Xero on Chrome

10 comments

Published in Business on 3 September 2008 by Craig Walker

Is Xero the first accounting system in the world to work on Google’s new Chrome browser? We think/hope so:)

As Google Chrome is based on Webkit, the core engine under Safari, it seems to work fine. The browser detection objects we used haven’t been updated yet so we had to do some tweaking to allow users to log in from Chrome. We’ve updated BrowserHawk settings to pass Chrome through as Safari 3.1.  (You can check your browser here:  http://help.xero.com/browser)

We thought that some of our geek fans would be all over Chrome today and want to test it with an application that uses ajax and javascript heavily.  Let us know what you think of performance and any issues you find. 

 

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10 comments

Stewart
3 September 2008 #

I’m reading this Blog using Chrome. Its working fine, indeed, it is very fast.

Great work Xero! at diversity.net.nz
3 September 2008 #

[...] to read that Xero have checked and corrected this anomaly. So here it is – (BTW Xero you weren’t the [...]

Ben Kepes
3 September 2008 #

Great work guys – but no you’re not the first – I’d logged into Saasu as well

Julian Stone
3 September 2008 #

So far today I’ve uses BNZ, Westpac and 2Checkout online banking as well as many other apps.

Checked our project management software http://www.proworkflow.com as well and that worked all fine.

So as far as I can see, nearly everything should work fine on it – It’s just another browser – just a bit quicker.

Cary Thomson
3 September 2008 #

iPayroll works well in Chrome too (we had to tidy up a couple of minor glitches), so between both of us there is an integrated Payroll/Accounting solution working on Chrome too.

Peter McCaffrey
4 September 2008 #

It’s nice, but i’m still hanging out for Opera support.

Xero is the only website I use that doesn’t support Opera.

Craig Walker
4 September 2008 #

@Peter: we only officially support browsers that have been completely signed off by our quality assurance team. Reliability, performance and security are very important to us (which is why we’d like to see everyone on IE6 upgrade as soon as possible) and if a browser does not complete our test suite with a 100% pass mark then we block it by default. Opera is a great browser however in our testing of it so far we’ve come across some issues and so cannot say we support it.

We do actually have some people using it (by masking the user agent) however we cannot guarantee the user experience we can with the likes of Safari or Firefox (the only reason we can support Chrome is because it’s a WebKit-based browser and so is essentially a Safari clone).

A lot of development and QA time is spent testing on all our supported browsers. We do actually have some testers that test with Opera – we’re just not completely there yet. (IE8 is another to add to the mix: Beta 2 of IE8 has just been released and will require some work).

Daniel Mettler
7 September 2008 #

Craig, I think I could quickly login a couple of days ago using Chrome, but know it says:

“Sorry. Before you can login to Xero…
You will need to access Xero in a supported web browser. Please login to Xero using one of the following standard browsers.” etc.

Did you find any incompatibilities?

Craig Walker
7 September 2008 #

Sorry about that – our browser detection system gets updates regularly and has blown away my changes to allow Chrome. Fortunately I’m releasing a new version of our login tomorrow that fully supports Chrome so you’ll be able to access it then without any further problems. However for the next 12 hours you’ll have to use Safari :)

Daniel Mettler
8 September 2008 #

OK, looking forward to testing it tomorrow! Thanks for notifying me through Twitter!

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