3rd
Google Chrome Browser - What I think
Ok I have read about Chrome on about every major blogs. There is no version yet for Mac, only for Windows. I still decided to download and install it on Windows under the virtual machine Parallels.
What is my first thought about it? IT’S FAST, BLAZING FAST. Just starting the browser is amazingly fast, less than 1.2 seconds! Just their I was convinced that Google is on something big.
Then I tried loading intensive AJAX web apps, all at the same time, in different tabs: Gmail, GCalendar, Docs, Picasa, Facebook and Netvibes. Again BLAZING FAST and stable.
They have place the content as the center of the experience, minimizing the interface to its minimum:
- The navigation is minimized to back, forward, refresh, the address bar, control and options.
- The taps are over the address bar and not under it, making more sense as each of them as kind of its own address bar.
- Each new tab presents your most visited pages in thumbnails view.
- Your bookmarks bar are located in the content area, you simply need to open a new tab to have access to it (if desired, you can make it permanent and attach to the browser interface with a simple option in the preferences).
- The address bar is merged with the search box to form a single bar that Google call the Omnibox. You simply need to type your query or URL directly in the bar to get directly to the search result page or to the desired domain name. You also can achieved that with Firefox with a little tweak.
After all, having a browser clotted with links bar, search bar, tools bar, navigation bar, status bar and whatever add-on bars make no sense. You are using your browser to mainly read content and use web apps.
As I said back in a comment, too bad Chrome is not offered on Mac yet and does not integrate the add-ons of Firefox, because I already had switch to it.
