Google Chrome
Published Thu, Sep 4 2008 9:45 PM
Technorati Tags: Computers and Internet, Cool Stuff
I both like and dislike this browser. I downloaded it yesterday and I've been trying it out at home. I've been using Firefox 3.0 for a while now, because it's far superior to any of the versions of Internet Explorer that I've tried. I don't know if I'm ready to switch permanently yet, but so far I haven't found much not to like (other than the reported security vulnerabilities, and the initial license agreement).
One of the things that I think is really cool is how this browser handles things like the TEXTAREA HTML element. There's one that appears in the comment form. On every browser that I've used (until now), you can't resize the text area, so if it's too small to be usable, you're out of luck. This is one of the deficiencies in my comment form that I haven't bothered to fix yet.
I was reading some of the recent comments on the site and noticed something odd about the comment form while I was using Chrome. It's there in the bottom right hand corner of this image…
So I moved my mouse over that little triangle of dots and clicked and dragged. The text area changed size! That doesn't happen with Internet Explorer or Firefox! I don't know about you, but I think that's a pretty cool feature.
I wonder what other gems I'll find while I play with this new browser.
Oh. I found one thing I definitely don't like about it. Brinkster's live chat doesn't seem to work too well with it. It seems that the text window in that application hangs from time to time. I still like the resizable text areas though.
All in all, not a bad Beta, for the most part.
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Perri Nelson responded with:
 | Well, I think I've decided. I'm going to stick with Firefox. The resizable TEXTAREA elements are nice, but I simply don't trust Google. |
David responded with:
 | I think I'll give it shot in a VM--it's not available for Linux yet, and I don't want to mess around with it in a Windows machine I can't easily just scrap.
Funny thing (yeh, I do these stupid things so you don't have to): I decided to run an alpha, then early beta of Opera 9.6 as my SOLE Opera installation on my main machine.
Nice. But.
Plenty of gotchas I hope the next weekly will fix, otherwise, it's going to mean a complete uninstall (after saving my .adr and wand.dat files) and installation of the stable 9.5. Oh, what's the prime "gotcha"? Random browser crashes (something to be expected from time to time as weekly builds progress... and regress).
So, feelin' a tad adventurous but not enough to hazard a non-VM Windows machine on a browser with proven security issues. Off to boot a WinXP VM and DL Chrome... |
David responded with:
| OK, gave Chrome a few hours in a WinXP VM. Impressions:
The minimalist interface has some appeal, but I'm used to more control over my browser interface.
Like you, I like the resizable TEXTAREA stuff, but it's not cool enough to compel.
Displays pages nicely. About as well as Opera and Firefox. Better than IE, even in its v7 iteration.
Tabbing not bad, but no mouse gestures. Won't live w/o those (can but won't).
The idea of dragging links to a toolbar ( which cannot be moved) is OK at first glance, but numbers of bookmarks spill over to a quasi "folder" so... notso. (I do that sort of thing already with a very, VERY FEW links in Opera. Very few because I have a large bookmarks folder and Speeddial for my 20 most visited links.)
Can't move toolbar(s). That just seems weird to me. I want to put things where _I_ want them.
Handles zooming better than most other browsers, save Opera.
Still, fast navigation, decent page rendering, better than most zooming. It might have a place for folks who find its minimalist, dictatorial approach appealing. |
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