Google Chrome
Chrome is the new browser from Google; yup, the same people who
have the number one search engine in the world. And talk about a fast launch; the rumor came out Monday late morning that it was
in the works, then a cartoon came out showing
what it was going to be about, and maybe an hour later Matt Cutts, who works for the Search Quality group at Google, announced
that not only was it true, but that it would be launched on Tuesday, September 2nd, which was the next day; wow!
Talk about the speed of information! Google had just signed an extension of an agreement with Mozilla to continue with
Firefox for another three years, that the earliest it would be
coming out would be a year.
So, Chrome is out, the beta version, and I had to try it out. The download was something in and of itself. I can’t remember
the last time I saw a download have an EULA (end user licensing agreement) beforehand; I think it was the first time to
tell you the truth. The download took some time before finally deciding it wanted to be on my computer; I assumed it was because
many people were trying to download it, which I had confirmed later on.
The installation took some extra time also; I wasn’t sure if it was going to load properly. It took much longer than Mozilla
ever has, and at least Firefox waited until it had loaded and one was trying to launch it before it started asking for internet
access. It finally loaded and wanted to move all my bookmarks and passwords from my Firefox browser, but couldn’t because I had
Firefox open. I could have closed it, but I was in test mode, so I didn’t need that to occur.
It took a long time to load anything; I was kind of stunned by that. I’m not sure what was going on, but it said it was
having problems with Shockwave Flash; according to the cartoon, that problem was supposed to be easily solved. I read another
review where the person said he had problems with Adobe’s flash plug-in, which opens every time we watch a video
from YouTube. When things finally did come up I tried a few websites,
including CNN, and it was horrible. A couple of sites it couldn’t even load, including this one. Then, of all things, it
crashed; weirder still.
I know it’s beta, which means all the bugs haven’t been worked out, and since it created a quick launch icon, I opened
it up again, and this time it went much faster, so I could take a good look at it. The look is somewhat different than what
I’m used to. It offers much more visible screen, mainly because it starts with no toolbars. Well, that’s not quite accurate.
It does have the address bar, which doubles as the toolbar, but I couldn’t find any options to add any more toolbars except a
bookmarks bar. If you want to save a page, you can click on the star in the address bar, though Ctrl-D also works. The browser
is also almost pure white reminiscent of the Google homepage; I guess that’s to be expected, but I was hoping it would adopt
the colors I use for the rest of my Windows programs. Hopefully, later on, they’ll allow the colors to be changed, or for
themes to override his bland look.
It has tabs just like Firefox, and if you open new tabs you’ll see screenshots of past pages you’ve visited, which is
interesting. The reload had it running much faster than the first time around, which is a good thing, but not faster than
Firefox, though some of the people testing other sites said they saw it working faster. It does another interesting thing
with the addresses. If you look at pages within a site, you’ll see the domain name in black, but the address of the extra
pages in red; another nice little feature that looks good.
Still, when all is said and done, what one misses, at least for now, are the add-ons that Firefox has that Chrome doesn’t
have, which makes Firefox so customizable. Cutts said it was going to take time, because they first want to make browsers that
are compatible with both Mac and Linux before going back to add extra functionality. Chrome is very clean, and it’s not bad,
but, in my opinion, it’s not better than Firefox and therefore just okay. It’s not bad; I’ve seen some worse browsers to be sure.
And, still on the horizon, is the beta version of Internet Explorer 8, which supposedly is going to not suck up resources the
way Firefox 2 does, and the way Firefox 3 wasn’t supposed to do, but I’ve still noticed it does.
Google’s Chrome isn’t a bad first effort, but it’s not complete. It needs to be just a bit more stable, a bit faster, and
customizable so that people can add all the types of things they want to see, ala Firefox. And, if the IE buzz is correct,
it’s going to need to reduce the amount of resources it eats up.
