On Google Chrome

Google’s Chrome browser for the Mac and Linux was released to the public in beta form on December 8, 2009. I personally have been waiting ages to get my hands on Google’s anticipated foray into the browser wars.

Since my dark days with Windows, I have been a Netscape and Firefox user… basically any browser other than Microsoft’s, for the most obvious of reasons. I briefly tried the Windows version back when I tried out Windows 7 RC (now long gone on my system), and it seemed to work well.

Switching to the Mac, I have tried again and again to get into Safari, but despite its most recent update, I keep coming back to Firefox.

Although still in its early stages, Chrome is turning out to be a pretty good competitor in the browser market. It’s only been 2 days of me using purely Chrome on my every day tasks… from online banking to maintaining sites under WordPress, but everything seems to be running pretty good.

The Interface

As one can expect with Google, Chrome’s UI is straight to the point. It blends very well with Snow Leopard’s other applications, but still keeps its individuality with its tab placement and minimalist design.

One of the things I discovered about it that I liked is that when you right-click and select a link to open in a new tab, the generated tab comes right after the one the link originated from. There is no need to search for where it actually went, unlike in Firefox.

The address bar functions as a search bar as well, which adds to the minimalism. Unfortunately, I just discovered that if you mistakenly close a tab, although you can reopen it, will take the spot of whatever active tab you have, and not open a separate one ala Firefox. Also, once you have the newly regenerated tab, clicking on the back button of the browser does not take you to that specific tab’s previously visited page, but Chrome’s start page. Firefox gains another point in this area.

Browser Speed

Chrome seems to shine the most (expectedly) when using any of Google’s sites. I knew this even before I installed it on my system, but seeing it for myself surprised me. Other sites I use frequently such as Flickr, Facebook and banking sites seem to work just fine too.

WordPress sites I handle (including this one) loaded pretty quickly, and I don’t seem to have as much issues in terms of lagging and weird button failures as with Firefox. But then again, I did try install gears which failed halfway through so maybe that was the cause of it all.

Amazingly, sites I visit that were notoriously slow with other browsers (cough, EB Games) were somewhat faster. Has Google acquired the recipe for unicorn tears then used it on Chrome? Only time can tell.

As far as I’m concerned, this is still the honeymoon stage. We’ll see in about a month or so, if I am still using this instead of Firefox or Safari.

Related posts:

1. Chromed
2. Geek out
3. The third coming
4. Extensions make the browser
5. The way of the fox

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