Chrome is an HTML browser program designed by Google to compete with the likes of MS Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera Browser.
I've only just recently installed it on my PC to see how it fares against my current Firefox 5 installation.
So far, seems rather snappy and quite fast at rendering pages that bog down on Firefox. The interface is clean (if a little spartan) and add-on integration appears to work well. Searching is integrated into to address bar. Overall, I would say it is a very focused browsing experience, and if set up well, can make using the internet very efficient.
It may be that I've been using Firefox for too long and my history of browser experience can be traced back to the days of Netscape Navigator 2.0, but I find the uncluttered layout and multifunction widgets a little unnerving. For an analogy, it's almost as if I've stepped out of my 'homely country cottage' and right into a 'fast-paced city apartment'. Sure the latter has everything I need at arms reach, but I can't customise it much, it's cold, and nothing is where I want it.
I get the feeling each time a open a new tab that Chrome wants me to do what I need to do with the page and then close it.
I know that probably countless hours of design and programming have gone into making Chrome as fast and intuitive to interact with but I just don't like it (yet).
The Good:
Fast. Chrome seems to perform better than Firefox in almost all my browsing situations.
Uncluttered. There isn't much on the screen by default so more room for the actual page contents.
Small. The download and setup for it were extremely easy to setup and didn't take long at all. So far, it's been the smoothest browser install/update of any browser ecosystem I've used.
Pretty. There's no other word for it, but the interface is pretty and very easy on the eyes. There are themes that can be downloaded too.
Fullscreen Mode. Fullscreen mode is awesome and switching in and out of it is way slicker than Firefox. It even forgoes the menu when you hover over the top of the screen (which makes sense since there aren't any menus) and this avoids the graphical slowdown present on firefox which annoys the hell out of me on my netbook which is when I am most likely to use fullscreen mode.
Compatible. So far I haven't had any incompatibility with any of the sites I normally visit so substituting for an existing browser is painless.
Memory. Chrome seems to handle memory usage better than Firefox. One Firefox session I had went up to 300+ MB of used memory and I had only a blank tab open.
Management Utils. There are lots of informative windows available once you dig into the Options menu to the right of the address bar. These can show memory usage and active windows and even allow you to kill off any rogue tabs. The memory usage window will even show the memory usage of concurrently running browsers from other companies.
The (in my opinion) bad:
No menu. There is no menu system so trying to find out how to use the program might be difficult as it doesn't match classic windows design.
No bookmarks button. There is no bookmarks drop-down. You can set up a bookmarks bar, but that shows an entire bar and takes up the same amount of screen real-estate. Not a good thing on the netbook, unless you want to go into fullscreen mode...and then out again when you want bookmarks.
Flash installed by default. Normally, I load up flashblock before installing flash. This made it slightly more annoying having to see all those flash ads before I got to install flashblock.
Homepage. I don't like the idea of the Chrome homepage. Security-wise it erks me a little. But sometimes I just want to go to 20 or so of my usual pages. If it only shows 8 that's fine for those 8 but the rest then need a different set of actions to get to them and that makes me angry.
Sensitive zoom. The touchpad zooming in Chrome is extremely sensitive by default. The zoom is also stepped, so it's not the same as on a mobile device like the iPhone. I there is zoom lag, then you can get into all sorts of trouble with buffered zoom commands sending your screen into vertigo mode.
Lots of processes. Chrome opens up several child processes while running. This might be to aid in memory management and cleanup for closed tabs, but is confusing when trying to investigate certain problems or even inspect the Task Manager.
Firefox open concurrently. Trying to install it while Firefox is open in the background (as will happen because the Chrome download page doesn't have a link to an offline installer) will cause the Chrome import function to fail. Trying to continue after closing Firefox will cause the installer to hang. There isn't any fallout from this, but it was quite scary when I couldn't figure out if the installer was still working or not an whether or not it was safe to kill off all those hung chrome
processes.
Conclusion:
Chrome is a great browser. It just does things a little but different to a classical browser and this might divide the target audience. I'm sure with a bit more use, I'll get to know how to do things in Chrome that I used to do in Firefox, and get them done faster.
Score:
7.5/10 (as of the date of this post)
Told you it was better.
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