Browser Wars 2: Electric Boogaloo
So yesterday Google showed us how they would do a web browser. As I’ve said previously, I’m a Safari guy, so with that in mind: here are a few thoughts on Google Chrome.
Awesomeness:
- I will go into detail later, but the “blank state” for new tabs is beautiful and functional.
- The standard “status bar” at the bottom of most browsers is now a there-when-you-need it popup on the bottom of the screen that disappears when unused. Very thoughtful in regard to screen real-estate.
- Speaking of screen size, Google has seeming take Safari’s minimalist approach to the next level by removing even the standard File / Edit / etc fields from the Windows version of Chrome. This probably will not work the same way in OS X considering the constantly available menu bar, but it certainly saves some space in Vista / XP.
- The first thing I noticed when testing the browser from within Windows Vista was that Google, by default respects the users preset preference of search engine. Vista comes set (inside of IE7) to default to Live Search and when I launched Chrome for the first time, I a messaging confirming that similar to what you would see in IE7 when first launching. I would have thought Google would just default to it’s own search engine and allow the user to change, so this was a welcome indication of how Google (might) treat their users.
- Chrome is smoking fast in javascript performance and feels pretty zippy just about everywhere else (launching, opening tabs, etc)
- Chrome uses Webkit, the rendering engine formerly that Apple extracted (and kept open) from KHTML of KDE fame, and used within Safari. This seems like a much more bold decision than Google’s decision to use Webkit inside of the upcoming Android mobile operating system, considering their relationship with the Mozilla organization, but we’ll see as Chrome goes public.
Lameness:
- The fisher price interface that is on display is really painful. Here’s hoping that when the OS X and Linux versions come out they will be substantially different.
- Did I mention that Google launched Chrome with just Windows support? Seems a bit unnatural for Google considering most Googlers probably run a variety of Linux or OS X.
- There are some really terrible rendering issues due to what looks like Chrome’s use of a adjusted version of Webkit.
Overall, I’m feeling very positive about this beta release of Google’s new web browser. There are a few things that I’d love to see get fixed, but enough positive that easily makes up for the bat bits. Congratulations to the Android team, and feel free to report bugs via Chrome’s Launchpad page! 