I've been using Chrome for a day now and I have to say... so what?
The UI is a bit cleaner, but it lacks basic functionality. I am sure Google would call that 'streamlined', but I call it boring.
There's a few things that I do like about Chrome's user interface. I like the fact that they've minimized the Title portion of the window. That is wasted space, so reducing it is a good thing.
The first time I saw a tabbed browser, I thought it would make more sense to put the address bar and the forward/back buttons on the tab and not above it. All of that really applies to the current page in the active tab. I really like that they’ve put it there. (It also solves a minor gripe I have with IE… if you start typing a URL in the address bar and switch to a different tab, you lose what you’ve typed. Upon return to the tab that was active when you started typing, you see the URL for the current page. It’s not something that I do a lot, but on the occasions that I have run into it, I’ve found it annoying. Firefox doesn’t suffer from that problem either.)
I also like the idea of the thumbnails on the new tab. IE8 adds more to their new tabs, like displaying a list of windows that we open when you last closed a browser and a list of accelerators, but in all, it isn’t as useful as Chrome’s new tab.
I find it especially annoying that you really only have a single search option. Sure I can set what the search engine is, but then I'm committed to that engine. In both IE and FF, I can install a search provider for Google, Live, Wikipedia, Amazon, etc and I get a drop-down that allows me to determine on any given search which engine I want to use. In Chrome, I'm stuck with whatever I set as my search engine. Of course, from Google's perspective, why would you ever want to access to a different search engine?
Where's my bookmarks list? Do I have to turn on the bar just to get at it? So, let me get this straight... Google creates a browser that simplifies the UI by removing the bookmarks menu. Instead they require me to turn on a toolbar and then click a button to get to my bookmarks? Wow, that's a real innovation! (The bookmark import seems to have failed miserably, but I'll let that slide since it is beta software.)
The ability to create an “application link” is a ‘so what’ in my mind. Just because it’s Gmail or Google Docs or GKitchenSink doesn’t mean I need it in its own top-level window. I am perfectly happy keeping it in the browser as a tab.
The zooming functionality isn’t as nice as IE8 or Firefox. They don’t scale the images, so pages start to fall apart sooner on pages with tiled images.
The one thing that I’d miss now that I’ve gotten used to it is IE’s ‘Quick Tabs’ pane with thumbnails of all of the open tabs. Google would probably classify that as ‘bloat’ but I like it.
In IE, you decide when you type a password if you want it saved by checking a checkbox on the username/password dialog. The other two have you decide after-the-fact by showing the info pane at the top of the page (ala IE). That’s a bit lame. All three browsers open the username/password dialog even if they’ve saved the information. Why is that? Do they really need me to click an OK button before retrieving a secured page?
One thing that Google Chrome included that I think is a HUGE mistake is the ability to view the actual password that has been saved for a given website. Wow. I don't think I've ever seen any application expose that kind of information. If I can walk up to your machine and pop open a dialog and flip through your passwords, I can not only then go to a different machine and log in as you, but I can learn all kinds of things about what types of passwords you are using and whether or not there's any pattern. That is about the poorest security decision I've seen in a long time.
Chrome seems to have forgotten the cancel button on their Options dialog. C'mon. Is it really that hard to implement a cancel button? I know there are Mac applications that do this too, but really, how is that improving the user experience? I think most people can handle choosing between OK and Cancel.
What about Silverlight? It isn't immediately obvious if it's Google's fault or Microsoft's fault that Silverlight content doesn't work in Chrome, but I leaning toward Google here. Afterall, Silverlight runs just fine in Safari, which is based on the webkit, just like Chrome. At very least, I am betting that Google didn't lose any sleep over getting that one worked out. If Microsoft were to provide a beta that didn't support Google Gears, I am sure the Anti-Microsoft Consortium would be screaming anti-trust and preditorial monopolist behavior and corporate conspiracy.
The ONE thing that Chrome does better is it is faster. That one I'll give them. FireFox and especially IE8 have plenty of room for imporovement there. There's absolutely no reason that it should take 3 seconds for IE to create a new tab.
In all, most of the significant stuff that Chrome offers is available in IE8 beta2 (that's why they rushed out a beta of their own.) InCognito browsing, separate processes to prevent crashes... IE8 did it first. Of course it is Google, so there's plenty of fans stroking their ego, and saying what a wonderful browser it is and how it will change the world. Me-- I think I'll stick with what I've got.
