Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Google Chrome (BETA) for Windows

Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier.

One box for everything

Type in the address bar and get suggestions for both search and web pages.

Thumbnails of your top sites
Access your favorite pages instantly with lightning speed from any new tab.

Shortcuts for your apps
Get desktop shortcuts to launch your favorite web applications.

Check it out Her

News Story explaining what is different about this browser

My first impression - Using now for the last 5 hours.
The Good

it is open source so if it is harvesting data in any way there will be privacy experts all over it within days. The fact that it is open source means it can't hide anything it does.

1) It's Fast
2) clicking on + new tab button gives web history of sites you visited
in thumbnails. Great for going back to sites. Add gives you search bar
for your history.
3) Stable so far 3 hours and dozen's of sites visted including MySpace
and YouTube. No problems.
4) Did I say it is fast! renders pages 2x faster than Firefox 2 and
faster than Firefox 3.
5) Integrated address bar / search bar. Just click in address bar and
type your search criteria and get the standard Google results page.
6) Will import all your bookmarks from IE or Firefox.

The Bad

1) Middle click a link will open to new tab but you have to manually
select the new tab instead of automatically selecting new tab. Hope
they fix this issue.
2) You don't get to decide where it installs. It install in a weird
ass location. "C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local
Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe"
3) No themes or extensions yet like Ad-blocking?
4) It is still Beta tho a very good beta with no crashes yet. Seems to
use as much ram as firefox does. As it generates multiple cromes.exe
as running tasks that add up to about the same as firefox.
5) No Bookmarks management or menu so bookmarks stay on the bar.
6) Expect specially trashy sites like E-Bay and other's to be
problematic until updates roll out.


So far giving it a two thumbs up and would consider it for my default
browser if they clear up my issues with it.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was eagerly watching the press conference and waiting for the download to go live and nabbed it as soon as I could expecting the download servers may be overwhelmed.

Been using it ever since and am very impressed. As a software engineer I was particularly impressed given what is going on under the hood, the JS class system (V8) for example.

To organise bookmarks just drag and drop them between bookmark bar and bookmark folders. Right-click to create new folders.

Personally I prefer browsers to open tabs in the background, that is unselected.

My one real issue where FF wins is having the browser go to the top result in google when typing in the address bar. When I type 'youtube' for example I want the browser to go to google, search for 'youtube' then send the browser to the top result. As it is I get search results. I dare say I'll get used to this.

Overall this is a very fast and stable browser, thanks mainly to it's threadless system of using seperate processes for each tab/window.

Paul Marculescu said...

It seems you liked a lot of things that I also liked, including speed, speed and also speed :)
http://blog.teamness.com/2008/09/google-chrome-cool-web-browser.html

As for the bad parts you mentioned:
1) I like to stay on the same page when opening a new tab. I'll go later there, so I don't consider this an issue.
2) True. Bad ass location. :)
4) I don't see this as a bad thing, if you want more from it, you gotta give.

I think Chrome is the ultimate browser for computer nerds. They seem to focus the attention on technical aspects, as depicted in the comic presentation, so it's a bit hard for me to believe that Google has an early plan to directly get a big chunk of the market.

Anyway, the comic book presents so nicely the cool features, that you feel a sudden urge to install it and afterwards it can become addictive. That's what I did. :)

Anonymous said...

AIUI this new browser collects your browser habits for demograpic selling :(