I downloaded Chrome beta after having read a bit about it on Digg.
The general consensus on Digg is that it sucks. So far I have to agree
with them for the most part. It has a few annoying problems and what
I have to call design flaws. These may only be typical beta problems
but they still might discourage a user from dropping IE or Firefox in
favor of Chrome.
Installing it went fairly quick and smoothly except for a hiccup that required
me to shut down Firefox so it could import my settings, bookmarks, and other
information from it. It did offer the option to not import any or all of my
information from Firefox but I wanted to see if it would do it and get
everything right, so far so good on that point.
Several people have commented on Chrome’s UI (User Interface) as being
very clean. It is clean, a little too clean if you are used to having all the
options and normal buttons and tabs readily available. The site tabs are at the
very top but it has only back, forward, and reload buttons next to the
search/address/bookmarks bar. You do have the option of adding the home
button from the options menu under the wrench icon. It allows you to
set a home page or you can just use the default new tab page.
The bookmarks can be a pain in the butt to get to where they are located
if you are used to being able to quickly navigate around your favorite sites. You
do have the option of adding a bookmarks tab to the browser but it is located
to the right side and that is not where most people look for their bookmarks
as far as I know. It will also allow you to drag and drop your most used bookmarks
to the left side but it still leaves a lot of room for confusion until you get used
to the lay out.
It also lacks a constant status bar. This is replaced with a fading tab that
shows you where links lead and if a page is still loading. While this may not
be a problem a lot of the time it is still a minor distraction if you are used
to glancing down and seeing the status bar. Their pop up blocker notification
bar will also display here when a pop up is blocked.
As far as I have been able to determine, the beta version does not support
RSS or ATOM feeds and I have seen no buttons for any kind of feeds. I am
hoping this will be corrected in the final version.
I also noticed that some sites that use a lot of widgets that are dependent
on Flash and Quicktime seem to hang up or drag when trying to scroll. This may
only be a problem with the beta but it does tend to make me want to go right
back to Firefox. On most sites the scrolling is very quick and smooth though.
One other problem I noticed was that if you have only one tab opened and
accidentally close it the entire browser will close.
And finally I will address the incognito window they have come up with
for more private surfing. Personally, I can’t see any real need of it since
you can just as easily clear your browsing data from the controls under the
wrench icon.
In closing, I know there are a lot of things I haven’t addressed but these
are the things that drew my attention. It may be a good general purpose
browser after it’s final version is released but I think Google still has a lot of
work ahead of them if they plan to give Internet Explorer any serious competition.
If you would like to try the beta of Chrome visit:
Google Chrome Beta download
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