Chrome flake

Hello readers, seeing as this is the ‘grown up’ version of Stu’s Blog and posts here are ummm a little thin on the ground I thought perhaps a review..no that’s too strong a word, an opinion on the shiny new browser Google are touting as the future might just sit nicely in this non Yahoo portion of my cyberspace.
I downloaded Google Chrome pretty much as soon as it was available, as I like many others had been chomping at the bit (and bytes..groan) to give it a test drive. Ok so I lie, I accidentally found it available to download and I only heard about it on the off chance as I was reading some other boring techy news. However, this gave me a head start as it were on the rest of the amateur reviewing blogosphere as an early adopter and I stuck with it for a couple of days as my main browser to put it through its paces.
So what do I think? Well it’s easy to use, fast to install, its not a humungously large download that is likely to max out your broadband limits, in fact you could probably even manage it on dial up (note a).
The first thing I noticed when using it was that it came up on stat recording sites as Safari…Now before you say anything I happened to be on a site just which had one of these little widgets below on it as I was surfing around and as history etc is all moved over to Chrome when you install one of the first things I clicked on was recent history to fetch up some real world sort of test pages. I may fall into the category of mildly knowledgeable when it comes to computers but don’t peg me with the Klingon speaking, historic battle re-enacting, dungeons and dragons playing types… I do have the big four browsers on my laptop, but this is to help me troubleshoot my own webpages and javascripts… stopping now before I paint completely the wrong impression of myself.
Where was I…oh yes Safari, Chrome apparently is partly Safari, although which part I couldn’t tell you. Considering all the Mac camp hype and general rubbishing of Microsoft from all quarters I personally held out high hopes when I heard there would be a version of Safari for Windows. I thought it would be an insight in to how the ‘elite’, the ‘other half’ live. I reality I don’t like Safari at all, In fact I hate it, cumbersome buggy, big advert platform for Apple products that it appeared to be. (note b). Fortunately Chrome feels nothing like Safari to use so in the browser ranking stakes for me at least that alone is enough to lift it out of last place.
With a definite advantage over Safari then Chrome on my computer is going to have to compete for valuable real estate space on my taskbar with IE and Firefox. Although Opera can be handy for certain things it doesn’t offer anything special that regularly makes me click the icon before the top two.
The popularity of IE and the usefulness in terms of add ons of Firefox make for quite formidable opponents. The apparent importance of browser market share charts suggest to me that it is believed most people use a single browser and there is therefore distinct camps and allegiances a la PC v. Mac when it comes to how they view the web. I would guess though that most people savvy enough to give open source a try are now quite happily using both Firefox and IE side by side.
There’s no doubt about it Chrome is quite pleasant to look at (or through as they like to claim) Minimalistic I believe is the word for it. This I like. The less clutter in and around my interweb screen the better, that way there is more room for the page itself. I can’t understand people who have half a dozen toolbars stacked up top and end up looking through a letterbox...
Chrome’s claim to have loads of separate memory spaces to prevent it failing means little to me, I honestly can’t remember the last time IE7 or Firefox crashed on me. Slightly more useful though and presumably made possible by separate memory spaces is the ability to drag tabs outside the current window and spawn an entire new window. There is also incognito mode which seems to be the equivalent of turning cookies off deleting all history and files automatically and surfing through a web proxy…porn mode in other words… then again anyone savvy enough to be trying new browsers is most likely capable of anonymous surfing should they feel the need
There are unfortunately a couple of things that irritate me with Chrome.
One is the window scrollbar and its apparent inability to scroll back up using the click and drag function on the scroll wheel of a mouse, or the nifty finger slide on the side of my laptop touchpad. On the pain in the arse scales it ranks about the same as trying to get your Venetian blinds to lock in just the right position half way up the window pane. I appreciate its beta and apparently this is a known fault but ffs screwing up such basic interaction with the user? Definite schoolboy error…and remember its first impressions that count. Slightly higher up the P.I.T.A. scale is the bookmarks (that would be favourites to those of IE upbringing). Why so? Well although Chrome is supposed to be intelligent, with 9 of your most frequent pages brought up for your clicky pleasures when you open a new tab (there is no home page as such which in itself I’m not sure if I like the idea of) everything in Chrome is in effect at least one extra click further away than it should be. Bookmarks require you to click before you can get to them…and I mean every time…you can’t leave them hanging conveniently at the side of the window. Ok there is a bookmarks bar on which you can fit a few as buttons but if you are like me with lots of bookmarks organised in folders… I’m also going to have to say that certain websites just don’t look right when viewed with Chrome. This may be the fault of poor css on the part of the sites themselves, like when link colours etc are left in the hands of the browser but when for instance Ebay has text that has you squinting to read because it’s too small…
If you work on the three strikes and you are out principle things certainly don’t bode well for Chrome…
It could do well if Google continue to promote and develop chrome. At one stage it had a money can’t buy download link on Googles famously uncluttered and ad free home page. With exposure like that I can’t imagine anything failing. However being brutally honest, it has nothing more (in fact probably less) to offer than IE7 or Firefox. Considering that IE8 is nearly upon us, and Firefox 3 is now polished and useful enough for the more mainstream user I’m afraid that Chrome needs to be give me something much more spectacular or innovative before I’m willing to even rate it above Opera never mind in the top two.




Note a

Although why you would want a new browser if you are on dial up could be a bit of bit of a conundrum Back to blog.

Note b

Before you Mac freaks jump on me here extolling the virtues of Steve Jobs product lines first impressions count. My first impression when I booted up Safari was ‘big advert for I tunes’…and first impressions I’m afraid count big. And although all things born at imaternity are supposed to be aesthetically pleasing I still look at Safari and think it’s just out of focus…Back to blog.

Certain things

Like it happens to have a built in torrent client…not a lot of people know that but instead of infecting your ‘puter with whatever file sharing software is flavour of the month, point opera at a torrent and bingo instant ENapwire… Back to blog. (these links are probably more helpful than usual if you are reading this with chrome...)