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Google Chrome


sxjthefirst
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Starting a discussion about Google Chrome the new browser.

 

 

I had read the comic they made to announce the release (Google it). I downloaded it earlier today and have been using it for a few hours now.

 

Kudos to Google for:

1. It's a really stable browser for a first release. Hasn't crashed so far.

2. The download bar is tab specific and unobtrusive and neat looking.

3. The search bar is very good and highlights the text that matches the search and the lines which contain matches are colored in the scroll bar. Too difficult to explain try it out.

4. Looks good if you like FireFox 3 you'll like this. See screen shot of new tab.

5. Good tabbed browsing support. Allows both mouse (the + button) and keyboard (ctrl T) to open tabs. Tabs can be dragged out to create a new window. Tabs also open fast.

6. Compatible with most sites including this one. YouTube videos, Google Docs (of course) all sites I visited so far worked with it. Though there were niggling issues with only one ironically enough iGoogle ... google's own home page. Does spell check as you type like FF. As the browser is based on the proven Webkit browser engine it helps with the compatibility.

7. Each tab in the browser is a process. See the task manager screen shot you'll see multiple chrome processes for each tab. (See bugs below.)

8. The browser's own task manager which shows the memory and network usage of each tab is an awesome feature. You can see at a glance which of sites is hogging bandwidth/memory. It also allows you to close a tab but more importantly it allows you to close any plugin which will be run its own process. For example when I play a YouTube video I can kill the video without killing the whole site. Google touts this as a secure way of doing things only time will tell how this plays outside of their labs.

 

 

Google has taken the idea of a secure sandbox from their Google Android project (my previous post) and used it here and used it well IMHO.

 

 

Cons:

1. Each plugin runs as a process but not each instance of the plugin in each tab. For example if I have two YouTube videos playing I will see one Shockwave plugin (which Youtube uses for their videos) process for them. If I kill it both videos and any other application using the plugin will all die. This makes sense in a way because most to the time you will kill a plugin when it's doing something malicious so all instances would have to be killed. Still since they have gone down would be good to have a way to kill with finer granularity. ( Do I sound like a nerdy serial killer?)

2. They have made some major departures from the usual in UI design. No menu bar at the top and the book marks menu is different from what I am used to. This might just be a case of getting used to but novices might think twice before adopting a new browser. As for myself I like the changes - it is roomier.

3. No extensions? themes? toolbars? WTF! I can only guess later releases will address this.

4. No saving of current tabs? No warning when closing a window with multiple tabs? I mean even Microsoft Internet Explorer has that.

 

Bugs:

1. The windows task manager shows each tab as seperate processes however killing one seems to kill the whole bowser. More importantly: If I open two Google Chrome browsers killing one kills the other!!!

 

The real question that needs to be asked is: Is this worth giving up my current browser for?

 

My answer is NO. It's a good browser but I don't see a convincing reason to move from my current browser. It's not just the minor glitches - after all FF, Safari and Internet Explorer all have some - the browser it self doesn't seem to have THAT ONE THING which will tempt people to move. When I first tried Firefox in '04 I was wowed by the tabbed browsing. Then the ease with which you could add plugins, add-ons, themes, toolbars etc etc. Later on was added the ability to save your tabs when you exit. Chrome's best features seem to be under the hood but how good these are we don't know yet. The only documents out there are those created by Google itself which is not a neutral source.

 

 

 

Conclusion: Very good product but I am not going to click on the "Make Google Chrome your default browser" button just yet.

 

 

SHAMELESS PLUG :) : Also posted this on my blog http://sxjthefirst.blogspot.com/2008/09/go...ew-browser.html

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I was skeptical, but after reading the comic I decided to give it a whirl. My beta test lasted about 20 minutes. In conclusion:

 

Uses GoogleUpdate.exe: Boo.

UI: Ugly. Why can't it look like the rest of my apps? Seems to be more noticeable in XP than Vista judging from those screenshots.

Needs plugins. Adblock at the very least.

Tried to download a file from rapidshare. Clicked download button. Nothing happened. Tried again. "You are already downloading a file" Checked Downloads tab - nope, nothing.

Uninstalled.

 

To be fair it's only a beta and the comic did hype up things a bit. Let's see how it progresses though.

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And mine is still running... more than 6 hours of continuous running with intermittent usage. I am actually impressed ;)

 

Update: Now it's been 11 hours. I think on stability at least it's good. The Shockwave plugin crashed without affecting the browser. Maybe that would be the USP?

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i have given it a try as well yesterday for some time... it didnt really cach my eye or anything based on its looks... plus it responded slower than firefox for example in regards to opening yahoo! page for example... Its a good platform for what they are trying to do, which is, creating computer that operates based on the 'cloud'... but i am not sure how soon will we be able to see it come to pass though... reminds me of apple and first iphone that was closed to 3rd party apps in order to force developers to create 'cloud' programs... look what happened, 1 year later SDK is out... plus how fast does your internet connection have to be to open CS3?

 

 

Just my thought...

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I tried it, and I feel it is too simplistic for me. I mean, I live and die with a menu bar.

 

I will stick with my beloved Firefox because I need AdBlock Plus and Foxmarks. But I will leave Google Chrome installed for testing purposes...

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privacy is always a concern with google.

 

If our information is so valuable, why is google not paying us for it?

Because you are accessing others' information for free too.

 

You could always NOT put it on the web. You could also charge for information the way some online newspapers do.

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