I am using Google’s browser Chrome as I type. At first it was a bit weird for me cause I am so used to the clutter of toolbars. I opened up chrome and I thought to myself “WHERE ARE ALL THE BUTTONS?! I NEED MY BUTTONS! OH GOD WHY!”. After the panicking stopped, I managed to setup my bookmarks that helped me calm down greatly.
(click on images to see full size)
Now for the good and bad section.
The Good
- The page loading times do seem a second or two faster.
- Pages do not seem to lock up as much when it comes to scrolling
- The actual default page viewing dimensions are so big, it made me feel like my montior grew an extra inch.
- The loading animations in the tabs area are slick.
- Download manager seems to be pretty smooth and not annoying.
- Incognito allows you to view pages without saving history.
- The design is extremely lite and easy to read (history pages and such, not the UI).
- Element inspector is a good tool from a web developer standpoint.
- The Chrome homepage captures your history and post actual images of recent sites you have visited.
- The words chrome make me want to use it because I chrome everything I own.
The Bad
- The bare UI is bad for those who might need help setting up their browser tools. Icons aren’t for everoyne. Old people like words.
- No first time start up walk through.
- No search engine bar at the top.
- I don’t see any popup blocker.
Being that it is BETA, there are no plugins available from 3rd party developers. Plugins are an essential tool for my day to day browsing, but I am sure developers are already drooling at Chrome and we will soon see what wonder it truly holds.
For now, I would say that Chrome isn’t my 1st choice of browser due to lacking everything besides basic browsing and enhanced browser features. I will still rock on with Firefox, but I can see Chrome replacing that some day if it plays it’s cards right. Just wait for developers to start adding useful tools, then we will have something worth using.
Download the Chrome Beta by visit the Google Chrome page here.































