Google Chrome - First Impressions…
Google Chrome seems a competent enough browser. I loaded it up this morning and put it through its paces and my overall first impression is that it could be here to stay. Of course there are a few little problems with it - not least some website compatibility issues, but overall it works pretty well.
So, here’s the skinny on some of my most used websites (in no particular order):
- Amazon.com -Â no problems I could find
- Mail.live.com - it works, but not very well
- Office.live.com - a big NO - Microsoft doesn’t recognize the Google Chrome browser at all
- Mesh.com -Â no problems I could find (which was surprising considering the problems with officelive.com)
- Zoho.com -Â no problems I could find (although it seemed a little slow on initial loading)
- Gmail.com -Â no problems I could find (no surprises there)
- iGoogle.com -Â no problems I could find
- Google.com/reader -Â no problems I could find
- My.Yahoo.com -Â no problems I could find
- My Banking Site -Â no problems I could find (pleasing)
- Twitter.com -Â no problems I could find
- Facebook.com - a few slight problems with some of the 3rd pary apps. (Enough so that I can’t use Chrome for Facebook at present)
- Microsoft Exchange Webmail - has Firefox compatibility mode only - so no nice split screen previews like in Internet Explorer
- Mail.yahoo.com -Â no problems I could find
- Blog.johncox.com -Â no problems I could find
- Pauldorset.com -Â no problems I could find
- Youtube.com -Â no problems I could find
- Hulu.com -Â no problems I could find
Here are some other impressions:
- There’s slightly more real estate available in your browser
- There is no status bar at the bottom of the browser (when you hover over links the website shows up over the bottom corner of the browser. Likewise when you load a page, as it loads a message displays in the bottom corner of the browser)
- Font rendering is ever so slightly tighter than on my Firefox browser. This can lead to a 1 or 2 line difference over the total height of the browser window
- General toolbar usage and display is less which gives more area to the actual webpage
- Once sites like Gmail are loaded they’re pretty damn fast
- Initial load of some sites seems slightly longer than in Firefox but once they are loaded one time they seem to reload just as quick
- The ability to ‘break out’ a webpage as an application is cool. You get even more real estate this way. I just wish there was a way to mark bookmarks as web applications ‘cos that way you wouldn’t have to store them as shortcuts on your desktop (which I hate doing)
- Add-ons - Of course no add-ons are available at present and so my souped up Firefox is not yet replaceable And no Greasemonkey scripts to give cleaner webpages. And no status bar widgets.
- It’s clean - very clean. That will certainly suit a lot of users
- It’s been well optimized for Javascript - you can tell that. There are noticable improvement in speed once the page is first loaded. It may be just my imagination but heavy Javascript pages seem to take just a little longer to load than Firefox on that initial load
- Lack of Internet Explorer compatibility - this will be the biggest issue for some users. To have a browser available only on Windows at present that cannot display some Microsoft encoded sites is huge. Admittedly Firefox still has a few issues here but at least it can load the sites even if the user cannot get the full experience. Chrome has a ways to go here
- Bookmark features - still a little lacking. I am sure this is one area that will get addressed over time. The ‘omnibar’ is great for getting to websites - but sometimes you just want to use bookmarks and be able to manage those bookmarks - even syncronize them across PCs. You’re certainly not going to be able to do that with Chrome at present.
Apart from all of the above the look and feel of the browser is slightly different. You would expect it to be. Bottom line?
- Is Google Chrome ready for mainstream use yet? Well, it hasn’t crashed on me yet and I guess that’s a good thing.
- Will I be replacing Firefox? Not yet - not even close I don’t think.
- Will I continue to use Google Chrome? I think I’ll keep trying it out and follow its development progress. I’ll probably use it exclusively for Gmail, Greader and Zoho for a while. Maybe even for keeping up my blog
So, that’s about it for today’s review. I’ll revisit this topic in the future.
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:16 am
I found your blog on MSN Search. Nice writing. I will check back to read more.
Eric Hundin
September 10th, 2009 at 6:05 am
Hi! I was surfing and found your blog post… nice! I love your blog.
Cheers! Sandra. R.