Google Chrome: Time to switch browsers?

By Josh | September 4, 2008

I’m sure you’ve heard of Google Chrome by now, if not then you should google it. I’ve been using it the past couple of days to see if it is something that I want to use all of the time or if I think it will flop. I actually had started to use Linux again, and then I noticed that Google Chrome hadn’t been released for Linux so I switched back to Windows.

My First Impressions

It’s clean. I’m so used to a messy browser since I have all kinds of addons installed in Firefox. It’s refreshing to see a very clean layout. The tabs are part of the same bar where your window buttons are located. There isn’t a typical status bar on the bottom of the screen either. The only time you’ll see something similar to a status bar is when you hover over a link.

It seems to be faster. When I first installed it on the computer that I use at work, I definitely noticed a difference in speed. However, when I am using it on my personal computer I don’t seem to notice too much of a difference in loading times.

Better memory usage. I know a lot of people are complaining about Google Chrome not being much different from any of the other browsers, but what is really keeping me interested in the development of Google Chrome is how it handles each tab. It doesn’t handle the whole browser as one process; instead it handles each tab as a separate process. That way, if one tab crashes, the whole browser won’t crash. In fact, they have even included a task manager into Chrome.

Some Downsides

The first thing that I started to miss was the lack of addons. I like addons like the Delicious bookmarks addon and Firebug. I also like to download different themes (although there do seem to be some themes arriving already for Chrome). It seems weird not to have these in my browser, but after using Chrome for a while I really find that I don’t need them.

Another minor issue is the scrolling speed. I don’t think it is affecting everybody, but the scrolling speed on my computer is way too fast. Adjusting the mouse vertical scrolling speed on my computer does nothing either.

Of course, Google Chrome is still in beta, so that is also sort of a downside. We probably won’t be seeing the final release of Chrome for quite some time either since Google likes to keep things in beta for a long time.

Conclusion

I’m not really sure if I want to stick with Chrome as my main browser or not. It really is a nice browser, and I’ll definitely be using it some more to compare it to Firefox/IE. Once addons are finally released, I’m sure I’ll be downloading and testing them too. There’s also a couple of issues that I’d like to see worked out, such as having Java support. I read somewhere about getting Java to work, but it didn’t seem to work for me.

I wanted to mention that there is a really nice Google Chrome forum that has already started up at ChromeSpot.com. They have some nice tips and tricks already if you’re interested. Also, I included a short screencast below of Google Chrome. It’s my first screencast, so don’t expect too much.