I just read a bit about Chrome and it sounds like a good thing. I’ve had a pretty positive outlook on Google in general, and want to put this on my machine. Anyone been using this and had any problems, or discovered that it’s the most wonderfullest thing evar?
I’ve been using it the past day or so. The only problem I’ve encountered is when I told it to install the flash movie plugin. I started getting some “invalid entry point in dll” errors in Windows (even outside Chrome). Rebooting fixed the issue. That might’ve been more a problem with Flash than with Chrome, though. It also only happened on one home machine (running Vista). Other machines (XP) didn’t have any issues with that plugin.
Nice things:
[ul]
[li]Quick install. From clicking the download link to browsing in Chrome is a matter of a couple of minutes.[/li][li]Pages load pretty quick.[/li][li]Reports indicate that JavaScript execution is screamingly fast compared to other browsers (although I haven’t really gone out and tested it myself).[/li][li]Dynamic “home page” is pretty neat.[/li][li]Can “rip” tabs off into their own window.[/li][li]I like the streamlined UI.[/li][li]It auto-detects sites with internal search (like wikipedia and imdb), and allows you to set keywords associated with that site. So I can type “imdb Pineapple Express” into the Omnibar, and Chrome goes right to imdb’s search results for that string. [/li][/ul]
Could be better:
[ul]
[li]Install location is pre-determined. And it seems to be a user-specific install: it lays down files in “Documents and Settings{username}\Local Settings\Application Data”. So if you have multiple logins on the machine, each person will need to install it separately. On the other hand, it’s a pretty small footprint; the application folder is only ~45Mb.[/li][li]Google updater is a mandatory component.[/li][li]Bookmark management leaves a lot to be desired.[/li][li]As far as I can tell, there’s no “always allow pop-ups from this site” option.[/li][li]I’ve heard reports of memory leaks if you leave it up and running for a long period of time.[/li][li]Scrolling with a mouse wheel is jumpier than in IE or Firefox.[/li][/ul]
It’s pretty decent, feels fairly similar to firefox so far.
Javascript execution does seem a little faster, but on my <1 year old laptop the main bottleneck in sites like google maps or gmail is the speed of my wireless connection, not execution speed.
Streamlined UI is nice, but I’m still not used to it yet. For example, open file is ctrl-o, but I don’t know where that is in the GUI. Also, I still can’t find the option to turn off image scaling to fit the window. Then again, it took me more than a few minutes to find that option in Firefox, so perhaps I’m not looking hard enough.
On my install there was no need to install any plugins to watch flash movies, perhaps because it found the one I had already installed with firefox/ie.
One unexpected perk was that it imported not just bookmarks and history from firefox but my saved passwords as well, making migration pretty painless.
Other unexpected perk: I can resize text input windows, such as the one I am typing this reply in right now. Pretty cool.
I’m using it now.
I like it a lot. The tabs work well and I do like their variation on Opera’s speed dial (I prefer Opera on that, but Chrome is much easier to use).
Like most other browsers, they take the best features developed by Opera and use and popularize them.
Disadvantages: I don’t see any way to use RSS feeds. Also I can’t get onto certain websites where different users have different logins. The java doesn’t work for certain pages, and there are no customization options at all.
If I were rating it, I’d rank it as such:
[ol]
[li]Opera[/li][li]Firefox[/li][li]Chrome[/li][li]MSIE[/li][li]Safari[/li][/ol]
And I think it has the potential to be better than Firefox and even Opera.
I find it noticeably faster than Firefox, maybe twice as fast, but I have really loaded the fox down with plugins and extensions, so it may not be a fair comparison.
Though, it is also significantly faster than an unladen IE7. Further, it loads almost immediately. As perhaps expected, it seems to load google docs, calendar, and mail exceptionally well.
Downsides: I am very dissapointed with the lack of a google bookmarks integration. That basically kills it for me, for now. Also, I am noticing some issues with javascript behaviors basically just not functioning, without any warning or notice at all. An example is the “search” dropdown on this very page.
Also, the comicthat Google released explaining all of the thought that went into it was lovely, simple, and thoughtful bit of writing. I really do like the way that Google deals with the public and with their user base.
I’ve downloaded it and supposedly “installed” it, but I can’t get it to launch, nor can I uninstall it. I’ve tried a number of things they’ve suggested in the Google Chrome Help Group, and still absolutely nothing. One of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen. It’s like it’s there, yet not there. I’m using XP Pro, SP3.
I like it a lot. It takes a very long time to install - it seems to hang when it’s importing bookmarks and I had to leave it and came back after 15 minutes or so to find it done - and it installs in the wrong place (the user’s profile when it should be in Program Files), but it’s much more CPU friendly than IE or Firefox. No 64 bit version, either.
One thing I really like about the it is the design philosophy: they’ve taken security as the top priority but they’ve also been sufficiently sanguine to realise that they won’t catch everything, so they’ve taken steps to isolate as much as possible to minimise the consequences.
And it really exposes Flash as a CPU hog.
It certainly doesn’t kill it for me, but I’m just puzzled why Chrome won’t bring over the Google Bookmarks. Google Notebook does integrate with Google Bookmarks, so I have the bookmarks in two places anyway (Notebook and Google Toolbar on Internet Explorer). My work machine isn’t XP or Vista so I can’t load Chrome on it, so I must keep the bookmarks in Toolbar.
I’m using it. Just like Firefox, the font is not easy on the eyes. Maybe it’s not the font, but the resolution.
If I mouse over a thread on the SDMB, the font in the moused-over part is beautiful and lovely. But everywhere else it’s crappy.
Anybody know how to fix that? I’m really bad at that kind of stuff.
Looks nice, but not a patch on Firefox (and not even up to Opera standards).
- It looks nice.
- It’s pretty fast (but I can’t see a world of difference compared to Firefox).
- I like the task manager option to kill individual tabs.
But:
- It needs to be a lot more configurable. I mean a lot more.
- Fonts are too big or too small. No concept of a minimum size.
- No ad blocking.
- No mouse gestures.
- Text selection for spellchecking in text boxes keeps going haywire.
- Has hung three times in three hours for me, on fairly simple websites.
- No “undo close tab” option that I can see.
- No custom user CSS support (even IE allows this, sort-of).
- Doesn’t seem to work with rich text in the old version of Gmail (UI-1).
Some of the gap may be filled with plugins, but until they’re available I’m not switching.
Trying to read SDMB threads: ads are inserted just after the OP, before the answers. It’s f… crappy. I hate to use this kind of language, but I’m going to dump Chrome if there’s no way around it.
Uh, those ads are there for me even when using a different browser. It’s only because I have decent ad blocking in Firefox that they’re unobtrusive.
What ads? I’m using Chrome and don’t see them. This might be a board configuration issue: I’m listed as a Charter Member and you’re listed as a Member. Do you see the ads in other browsers?
ETA Crusoe, you’ll get them because you’re a Guest.
Ah, that would explain it. I wondered why they’d suddenly appeared.
I’m not using Chrome as my regular browser, but I am using its Application Shortcut feature to make Chrome my Gmail and Google Docs browser. That is a nice feature.
I’ve been trying it out, and I like it. Considering that it’s being compared to browsers that have been under development for years, it’s an impressive beta release.
The main thing keeping me from adopting it as my primary browser is the extension library available for Firefox. If I had to choose between a plain-vanilla Firefox installation and Chrome, I’d be tempted to go with Chrome. But the Firefox extensions make it, overall, a much better choice for me.
That’s a problem with the new SMDB software, not Chrome, I see it here in FF 2.x.
The ads that are at the very bottom of the threads when I use Firefox.
Strange, but today those ads don’t show in the “Advertisements” space in FF. Instead I see “Address not found”. First time I notice that.
And so there’s discrimination on this board ? 
I’ve read this thread on Google Chrome again and now the ads are at the bottom of the thread.
They heard me when I cussed !