The Hickensian

3.09.08 Initial thoughts on Google Chrome

20 comments

When I wrote the last post, Google Chrome seemed like vaporware, but just as I hit publish, a release time was announced for later that day. Now that I’ve had a chance to have a play with the beta, here’s a brain dump of initial reactions:

It’s fast and nimble. In a Camino way.
It looks like a Fisher Price browser. Simplicity is good, but the style is very child-like, and it makes me worry about the OS X version* (Update: I think the Fisher-priceness is more of an XP issue, it looks much better on Vista). I thought the tab icons were nicely executed though:
The location bar search is much better than I thought – giving solid URLs rather than just a ‘search Google for X’ option. For example, typing ‘Jeremy Ke’ brings up ‘Adactio.com’.
It doesn’t look as if the ‘drawing layer’ in Chrome is quite up to scratch yet. It shows my naivety that I though such things were all part and parcel of Webkit, but it seems not. Text-shadow and border-radius in particular are broken.
It does include the Webkit Web Inspector, so right-clicking reveals the familiar ‘Inspect Element’ command.
I mentioned yesterday about the problem of multiple tabs, and lo, it was a problem. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s a beta, yadda, yadda.
The ‘New Tab’ view is more useful than I thought it would be, with it’s inclusion of history and recently bookmarked and closed tabs.
It does allow the use of other search engines, which is a good sign.

It’s a fairly promising start, but it feels more like a browser I would recommend to my parents than use myself. It also worries me using a Google browser, it feels like too many eggs in one basket. Or too many potentially prying eyes?

*Just found out that Mike Pinkerton, the Camino lead is working on the OS X version as we speak. I feel more hopeful about the OS X UI now.

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No.1

∞ Ben Spencer said 524 days ago:

A good summary. Thanks.

I was just about to say how much better it looks in Vista, but I see you’ve updated your post to reflect that already!

Couldn’t agree more with your point about it being a web browser to recommend to your parents – exactly what I thought after a few minutes.

I noticed that in the Windows Task Manager, each new tab opened results in a new ‘chrome.exe’ instance. Seems a little strange, but like you say it’s early stages.

No.2

∞ Alex Young said 524 days ago:

Did you try the “application bookmarks”? Seeing the favicon of my favourite apps on my desktop is pretty cool, and getting a streamlined window for each app helps me keep focus.

No.3

∞ David Airey said 524 days ago:

Thanks for the summary, Jon. I’ve not tested it yet, and yours is the first review I’ve come across.

No.4

∞ Kyle said 524 days ago:

From this section of the developer documentation for the Chromium source code:
http://dev.chromium.org/user-experience/visual-design

We use a non-native window frame with XP because the existing toolbar did not support our tabs-on-top design – its color and gradients did not support the overlay of interactive graphics, and it did not have the height we required. We use the native frame on Vista, and intend to use the native frame on OS X.

No.5

∞ Steven Garrity said 524 days ago:

Yeah, the use of the native window frame/header looks quite nice in Vista.

No.6

∞ Mike D. said 524 days ago:

The great browser polygamist strikes again!

Poor Jason Sands, by the way. Getting outranked by Stan in autocomplete…

No.7

∞ tusho said 524 days ago:

Ben Spencer: That chrome.exe thing is a feature, the one-process-per-tab isolation.

No.8

∞ Joen said 524 days ago:

I’m loving Chrome already and just hoping for an extension architecture that’s similar to that of Firefox.

By the way, I took a buckload of screenshots on Vista and they’re all Creative Commons’ed.

No.9

∞ Chris Newkirk said 524 days ago:

@Ben Spencer
The multiple instances of chrome.exe is the “sandbox” feature.

http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?answer=95672&hl=en

No.10

∞ tobs said 524 days ago:

I like the browser, but the EULA might keep me from using it: Burned by Chrome

No.11

∞ smeidu said 524 days ago:

Google Chrome for osX – Mockup Design.

I decided to make a quick mockup design of what the browser could look like on osX. I really hope that Google will design the browser in the osX unified look with state of the art integration into the system. So hopefully more the Camino aprroach than the Firefox way.

http://www.smeidu.com/2008/09/04/google-chrome-for-osx-mockup-design/

No.12

∞ Timothy Hatcher said 523 days ago:

If you like Chrome’s stripped down Web Inspector, you will love the original, full featured version in the WebKit nightlies. Cheers!

No.13

∞ Justin said 523 days ago:

Thanks for the review and pulling those links together.

I don’t know if I agree about the ‘browser my parents would use comment’. Native processes per tab (I have lost many wiki entries to ‘bad’ tabs before), task manager, and the new UI (unified address bar with google/bookmarks search and url entry) are pretty cool – even to more advanced users. Also, some nice touches like “Paste-and-go”, etc.

The majority of the comments I have seen around the web today were positive, with the major concern being ‘too many eggs in one basket’ – which is nothing to do with the product. Agreed, that I too get nervous when one company controls too much stuff (Microsoft, and to some extent Apple now, etc). However, Open Source with WebKit makes this a big non-issue for me. We are free to switch browsers whenever we want.

I see this browser as an attempt by google to provide a better platform for the web (and therefore their apps). And they are doing it in a standard and open way. I cannot see the problem it that. Add extensions to chrome, and it might beat FireFox 3.x as my standard browser (a shame but will hopefully make FF better).

No.14

∞ Jon Hicks said 523 days ago:

“We are free to switch browsers whenever we want.”

Not if it drives out competition. Not to say that it will, but the potential is there.

As I said, bar the process-per-tab, there’s no compelling feature to use Google Chrome for yet. Those features are in other browsers and more besides.

No.15

∞ Robin said 523 days ago:

Having tried Chrome on a slow (and I mean SLOOOOW) PC, I think it’s an awesome browser in terms of speed. It opens quickly and it opens tabs quickly. It tends to use a big amount of CPU when loading flash videos though (e.g. YouTube), and it slows down for a few seconds at a time when it does.

I was hoping it has some of the rendering of Safari 3 also, but apparently they use their own rendering engine called Skia (which is also used in Android). This engine seems to have a few bugs, as you mentioned.

No.16

∞ Indianapolis Web Design said 523 days ago:

About the Fisher-price-ness, I’m betting future versions will allow for themes and we’ll be able to trick the browser out however we like. Do you think Google is trying to build an OS-like platform for web apps?

No.17

∞ Q5 Webdesign said 522 days ago:

Never heard of Google Chrome, but looks promising! I really wanna test it! Thanks

No.18

∞ Chris Ivens said 522 days ago:

I think people need to read the terms and conditions before proceeding. Apparently if you were to use it to write your blog, google has the right to reproduce what you have written. Very odd. I need to verify the authenticity of this snippet but this is what I have read:

11.1 By submitting, posting or displaying the content, you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content that you submit, post or display on or through the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

No.19

∞ Jon Hicks said 522 days ago:

Google have just changed that now to confirm that they won’t be stealing your soul. It is very odd though, and after the furore with Google Docs, you’d have thought that they’d be a bit more careful.

No.20

∞ John Fairley said 518 days ago:

I echo the “parents” comment. Chrome seems geared towards people who A) visit the same sets of site very frequently and only, and B) who already just use the google search box as the address bar.

I might use it on my TV-PC as the stripped-down interface kind of works for the lower screen resolution (780p), but it’s not going to cut it for work, and the bookmarking is an atrocious leap back in time.