Chrome – first thoughts

google-chrome-icon-logoYesterday Google released Chrome, a brand new web browser onto an unsuspecting internet. You’ve probably been inundated with all sorts of opinions and views on it, but I’m going to give me tuppence as well.

Plus

  • It’s fast. Very fast
  • Webkit – the Safari rendering engine. Not used Safari much but it is well known for being pretty strong, and fast. It seems to be the closest we’re getting to a standard too with software like Adobe AIR using it as well.
  • Tab processes, a very clever idea. If one tab crashes, the rest are left unaffected.
  • No “favoritism”, you can use other search engines/ applications/ whatever if you wish
  • Built in support for turning a website into an application. I now have gmail on my desktop and it couldn’t have been easier
  • Unsecure pages have the https crossed out in the domain name. Plus you get a warning page, and a warning sign in the url bar.
  • Minimal design it’s very easy to use and takes up almost no screen space. I’ve heard a few complaints about the aesthetics as well, but personally I think it looks rather nice. Apparently it looks better on Vista than XP though.
  • Resizable text areas, very handy. From a design point of view it would be nice if there were html properties that restricted the resizing to vertical/ horizontal but that’s not a big issue really.

Minus

  • No ad blocking
  • No extensionsFirebug… where are you? To be dair it does have some dev tools (apparently based upon those in Safari) but they’re nowhere near as good as Firebugs
  • No subscribe to feed button in the url bar (or anywhere else), would have been perfect time to intergrate with google reader (my feed reader of choice), although we do have to remember no favoritism plus from above 🙂
  • No minimum tab width so open a lot of tabs and you will get confused very quickly. Needs some sort of scrolling when there is an overflow.
  • Very slow page rebuffering/redrawing when lots of tabs are used and you switch around. A few times I have had a dozen or two tabs open and, when switching to one of the older ones, I’ve had to wait 4/5 seconds for anything to appear.
  • Very easy to close tabs, too easy even – and I’ve done it by accident more than once
  • The lack of support for the middle mouse button scrolling, specifically when you click the mouse wheel and can then just move the mouse around to scroll wherever you wish. This isn’t something I thought I used particularly but I have noticed it’s “disappearance”

I think the browser is a fantastic first version, and with some additional iteration could do very well. In particular I think it would be a perfect first step for young or less technical users. My Mum currently uses Firefox but I wonder if getting her onto Chrome would be a better idea – something to consider at least.

Was it good/ useful/ a load of old rubbish? Let me know on Mastodon, or BlueSky (or Twitter X if you must).

Link to this page

Thanks for reading. I'd really appreciate it if you'd link to this page if you mention it in your newsletter or on your blog.

Related Posts

03 Jun 2010

CSS Only Button – Redux

The other day, a post was published on Hongkiat showing how to make a button using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) only. However, it was misleading as the CSS-only button also used JavaScript and an image or two. It was actually...
14 Sep 2018

What’s the Deal with Google AMP?

I recently read an article title Google AMP Can Go To Hell, all about how Google AMP is an attempt by Google to control the internet entirely.When I first saw this article I thought it was going to be a...
30 Aug 2012

Internet Explorer 7: Should We Stop Supporting it?

Internet Explorer 6 is finally dying a death. It’s been a really long time coming, but it seems to be widely accepted that we – as web designers – no longer support it. That’s fine, but what about the rest?...
30 Jun 2007

WordPress tips and tricks – Custom Page Templates

Some time ago I posted the first of my tips and tricks for WordPress, and I thought it was about time I posted some more so, to start things off, here is a short tutorial on custom page templates in...
19 Oct 2018

Smashing Book 6 Review: New Frontiers In Web Design

I really like the Smashing Magazine website. Unlike a lot of tutorial sites they don’t keep repeating the same basic content and focus on more challenging and newer things. So when I was contacted by Vitaly and asked if I...