Monday, September 08, 2008

Google Chrome

Google has come out with their own web browser, Google Chrome. I was going to resist it until they had a Mac version (currently they only support Windows), but I've heard enough about it now to make me think I should try it.

I've been using it for all of 5 minutes or so and I have to say I love it. It's very clean and very fast. Cool stuff includes:
  • No search box. If you want to search just type your query into the address box (where you type in the url). It will try to predict what you're typing (be it url or search query) and make suggestions.
  • Clean interface. There's not a lot of buttons across the top, just what you need.
  • Did I mention it's fast?
  • Each Tab is it's own process. This means if one of them has an issue and crashes you can just close that one Tab and leave everything else untouched. I haven't personally confirmed this yet.
Now, Google has said it is very Beta. I think they're using Beta in the traditional sense (rather than Beta as in gmail is still beta). If you rely on lots of plugins then you may want to wait. There's no Diigo plugin, for example, and I rely heavily on Diigo. But, the Diigolet for Firefox works fine in Chrome. 

I figure for now I'll primarily use Chrome when I'm using Google products (Apps, Docs, gmail, Sites, Blogger) and still use Firefox for my day to day browsing. But, that said once Chrome is available for my Mac I may jump over to Chrome as my primary browser.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It's bugged, and it's bugged a lot. It's almost official - http://www.votetheday.com/polls/googles-chrome-173/
I'm disappointed in Google - yeah, it's beta, but remember, how Gmail beta looked like... Looks like guys had to deliver it till deadline (10th birthday, maybe), and they were obviously short of time...
It's better than IE, but FF will live excellently long until Google fixes everything and makes enough plug-inns and versions for Mac/Linux...