Yesterday, I used Google Chrome for a whole day, and got on with it suprisingly well after my opinions yesterday morning. I do agree with Chris though, there are some plug-ins I miss from Firefox:
- Permatabs
- Faviconize Tab (thx to Newboy for those suggestions!)
- Flashblock
- Adblock plus
- Twitterfox
- Firebug
- IETab (maybe we now need FFTab too??)
I also discovered yesterday Google’s attempt at mimicking Firebug. The Javascript console suprised me, and isn’t just a Javascript console, it’s almost Firebug, but it does lack some features I really liked in Firebug, and the most noticeable for me as I use it the most is the missing “Inspect” button. I’m not so sure on the HTML layout/font either at the moment, it’s a bit confusing, but then so was Firebug - but that had the “Inspect” button. The Styles/Metrics/Properties dropdowns aren’t too bad, but aren’t editable. I’m hoping that it’s just an incomplete feature for now, and these kind of things will be sorted. I hope so anyway.
As you can see, a few things are still getting to me, but it’s all been negative in my review so far, so here’s what I like about it:
- It’s without a doubt the most compact and well-laid out non-confusing browser I’ve used
- Options are simple (although missing an option to prompt before closing the whole browser) and self-explanatory
- The password saving feature is pretty smart, but distinctly lacking IMPERATIVE security features such as master passwords. I’d double take if the passwords weren’t stored in plain text either… BIG security flaw in my eyes (although I believe Firefox stores them in plain text too…)
- I sort of like the integrated Google search in the address bar… not sure yet…
- It’s really really quick!!! I am taken aback as to how good the speed is, processing Javascript and just generally loading web pages. I’m not sure if that’s down to Webkit (Safari’s rendering engine), the multi-processedness, or just awesome programming on Google’s behalf. Whichever way, I like it.
- Tabs at the top took a while to get used to - and I had to move Winamp to the other screen, but it’s good - it maximises your browser space, and the lack of Status bar also helps that.
- General look and feel - although different, is really nice.
- It convinced me to move to using GMail properly with my main e-mail account, and even though the Labels concept really put me off, it makes sense and I figured out how it works.
So, generally I really like this browser, and I’ll carrying on using it, but there’s still work to do. Features I’d like to see:
- Plug-ins - Definately. Some things just can’t be replaced.
- A prompt to question wether the user wants to close the browser if more than one tab is open (but make it opt-in perhaps)
- If there is no decent debugger plug-ins, I’d like to see the Javascript Console mimick Firebug better
- A “slow throughput” mode. Chris told us this morning about his slow speeds on his mobile internet connection. We put this down to the multi-process format, and obviously needing more throughput, making Google Chrome actually slower than other browsers.
- A STOP button!! Something I’m guessing has been phased out of browsers, but I still use it a lot - I want it back!
