I recently switched browser preferences from Firefox to Google Chrome.  I was forced to make the change by a lack of RAM — the software development tools I use eats up most of my RAM, and Firefox has become so bloated over time that it wants 300M of its own to display a few tabs.

It was hard to give up all of the Firefox plug-ins that I had grown accustomed to, especially XMarks and, ironically, the Google Toolbar.  However, I love the fact that Chrome opens in seconds and uses about 1/3 the RAM of Firefox.  I’ve yet to come across any web pages that Chrome can’t render, and it has never crashed.  I like the concept: a relatively thin, fast and stable platform for web content.

However, having decided to commit to Chrome as my browser I was surprised to find Chrome wouldn’t accept me!  When I tried to set Chrome as my default browser, I saw the following: no “Default Browser” button.

OK. Now what?
OK. Now what?

This doesn’t seem to be a widespread problem.  I found a reference to a long-fixed incompatibility with Vista (one of the smart things about Chrome is is automatically updates to the latest version), and a suggestion to run Chrome as an administrator if the Default Browser button wasn’t displayed.   However, I am an administrator, and I run XP.   Freaky.

I still don’t know what the problem is, but I stumbled across a solution.  It seems that the Default Browser button is there somewhere, lurking off screen.  You can’t get to it by clicking, but you can by tabbing.  So:

  1. Click the Default search combo so that it has the focus (i.e. it is highlighted in blue, as in the screenshot below).
  2. Press Tab.  The focus should move onto the Manage button.
  3. Press Tab again.  The focus highlight will seemingly disappear.  It’s actually on the Default Browser button.
  4. Press Enter. This will trigger the off-screen button, and you should see the message change to “The default browser is currently Google Chrome”.
Together at last
Together at last

Talk about playing hard to get!