Well I tried Chrome. Well I guess they have the address entry ok.
Otherwise – nothing too special.
- Awful IE7/vista style corrupted ‘menu-button-in-the-wrong-spot’ system. Why does everyone want to copy the worst aspects of MS’s ui ‘innovation’ like moving menu’s and buttons to unfamiliar places – for no particular reason, and usually to the detriment of the usability. They’ve tried, top-left, bottom-left, and now top-right. You all know what’s coming next …
- Window decorations/borders which don’t honour my ‘theme’.
- More IE7 annoyances – the way tabbing works, i.e. open next, not open at end.
- No advert blocking. No flash blocking.
- Redundant and annoying ‘animations’ like sliding tabs.
- Poor font handling. Not that other browsers are great either, but to make all sites readable I tell firefox to disable all font overrides and set a minimum font size I can actually read. Not this:
The chrome ones were after I set the fonts to the same settings as Mozilla. On further probing if I set the font to some huge value it kinda works – but well, it kinda doesn’t work too. It becomes readable, but unpredictable, and I cannot get the typeface (font + size) I find most readable.
Moving the tabs above the address entry box is neither here nor there, although the overall minimalistic UI is a plus.
Well I guess some enterprising hacker with enough time can address most if not all of those issues (although I cannot see an advertising-revenue driven company putting advert blocking in the official version). However, I think someone needs to mention that right now it is just another webkit browser, light on features, and nothing particularly special. Well, apart from not having crashed so far – which most others I’ve tried do not seem to manage – although there isn’t that GNU version yet either, which seem to be more prone to that type of bahaviour.
Hmm, and here’s a nice headline that makes complaining about free browsers kinda pointless, although I’m sure it needs to be taken with a grain of salt.
“Awful IE7/vista style corrupted ‘menu-button-in-the-wrong-spot’ system. Why does everyone want to copy the worst aspects of MS’s ui ‘innovation’ like moving menu’s and buttons to unfamiliar places – for no particular reason, and usually to the detriment of the usability. They’ve tried, top-left, bottom-left, and now top-right. You all know what’s coming next …”
I’ll agree that it sucks that they’ve moved the menu, but to say this is “for no particular reason” is a little harsh. Their moving the menu bar and turning it into two buttons placed off to the side is consistent with their stated goal of having the browser ‘fade away’ (or something to that effect) and be really minimalistic. This is also the reason why they’ve done away with status bar (it pops up when you actually need it) and title bar.
“Window decorations/borders which don’t honour my ‘theme’.”
Chrome’s window decorations honour my theme perfectly (on Vista). The tabs and address bar are totally inconsistent, however. But Firefox gets it wrong on my system too, so I personally give Chrome a free pass on this front.
“No advert blocking. No flash blocking.”
Remember that Firefox doesn’t have this either (without an extension). Nevertheless, I imagine that once Chrome is closer to 1.0 and they have a proper extension system in place, these will be some of the first extensions to be created.
“More IE7 annoyances – the way tabbing works, i.e. open next, not open at end.”
“Redundant and annoying ‘animations’ like sliding tabs.”
These both come down to personal preference. I’ve become used to the way IE7 handles new tabs now. As for the animations, I don’t find them annoying at all; redundant, however: absolutely.
“Poor font handling. Not that other browsers are great either, but to make all sites readable I tell firefox to disable all font overrides and set a minimum font size I can actually read. Not this:”
Ouch. Those really do look nasty. Do you have ClearType on? Everything looks fine for me.
They’re only unfamiliar to people familiar with current, sub-optimal systems – By that logic, we’d never innovate… Also, just an FYI, the window border/overall look does respect the theme in Vista :) (which Firefox doesn’t even come close to, without extensions)
at least for firefox: For me, I hate when new tab opens at the end, what the purpose of that? I often have tons of tabs open with firefox which is also configured to open a new tab instead of new window if the page wants to open a new window. It would be very annoying to open at the end, and also with lots of tabs, I should always go at the end to see the new, if I open a new tab of course I want it next to the current, since that’s why I press CTRL-T on THAT tab. But I must admit, it’s a kind of taste who likes this way and who doesn’t. Anyway it should be configurable at least. Since the stuff is only the first public version is not so bad, I say. And adBlock thing is usually not implemented by the browser itself, but some kind of extension, like adblock extension for firefox: I am happy if the core browser is not overcrowded by functionalities like this (bloatware), just let me to choose my extensions. Maybe google chrome will support some kind of extension system later too.
Also, kinda big bad thing with chrome was the localization. Never during the download process i was asked which language i would like to download so i thought it was configurable option – but in the end it wasnt. And i got localized version =(
What is “redundant” or “annoying” about the way the tabs slide about?
The way they slide when you drag them about is great feedback (and the webpage image when you drag them off the tab bar is also a good way of letting the user know what is happening).
It’s hardly perfect but what browser is on the day of it’s first public release? At core it seems to have some good ideas.
To be honest, the thought of Chrome “respecting” my Windows XP theme makes me cringe. I probably have been desensitized from using Windows too long (where most things look like a mess), but I’d much rather use a very well designed interface than a merely consistent one. If both can be combined that’s a plus, and when what Chris says is right they seem to do so on Vista. It will be interesting to see then what they do on Mac and Linux.
I also see no reason to promote the application menu as such a central interface element, when the interface is so simple. It works perfectly where it is, and I’d love to see other browsers try to limit themselves to two small menu categories… Often I get the impression that applications put a lot of items in the menus, just so they don’t look so empty.
I really disagree about the animations being “annoying”, I find them very subtle and pleasing to the eye. They hardly went overboard with it.
Chrome might also be the first browser I really enjoy out of the box, without doing any tweaking at all (including font settings), which is a big plus in my book.
No ad blocking will be a bummer for many people of course, but lately I’ve become more interested in seeing sites “as they are” anyway, so it’s not an issue for me. I’m sure there will be an extension or modification for it in not too long.
Downloaded and installed in less than 2 min.
Chrome is so much faster than ie7. One big problem, I can’t log into my excite mail account. while loading I get an excite error msg “unable to obtain registry information from server fatal error will terminate
What are your thoughts on their Javascript engine (V8), the per-tab process separation, the privacy mode special tab…?
Well, I’m writing this reply with a webkit-driven epiphany. It’s working quite well, with GTK widget, tabs are not working very well, and some sites have problems. But it’s really better than the previous version I tried (with no scrolling support :p).
And the font looks really good :).
I’m not an expert but the new V8 javascript engine, the sandbox and the way Chrome manage the processes sounds like great innovations for me. What do you think about these? Are real innovation or just some google advertising?
V8 – it’s just another javascript vm? Yay? Yes it’s nice and fast and all that (apparently), but really, a better implementation of a basic component is just that – a better implementation.
Threading – I hadn’t realised that firefox’s javascript was single-threaded until after that post (well I read something to that effect, but who knows on the internets what is true). Actually trying to address that is noble, but again, not innovation, it’s just fixing an obvious design flaw, if that is the case. On the other hand, i’m not so sure about the NxM process model, although I see why google did it – i.e. replace desktop applications with hybrid applications. But to me a browser is a browser, not a virtual os, as it is to them. (but i digress – as a luser none of this really means anything other than fixing a bug).
Anyway, it was mostly just a small impulsive rant against what I see – as a luser – that I don’t like, and a chance for some negativity from someone who doesn’t fawn over everything google (or anyone else) does, just to balance the many others that seem to (mind you, I do fawn over a lot of their stuff). I’m sure it’ll get better, and it’s free software, so anyone can make it better (awesome, etc), and it’s only a beta release anyway.
So, *I* don’t like the way IE7/office-whatever changed the whole menu metaphor around – nor anyone copying them – even tho the windows/x menu metaphor is pretty crap to start with, at least it was consistent – but now everyone else will copy this shit and we’ll be stuck with it forever (and while gnome and everyone else scrambles to copy the `new black’, apple merrily sticks to the same basic system they had over 20 years ago). Just like *I* don’t like the way windows 95 fucked up the window gadgets for every desktop since in the same manner. And *I* don’t like pointless animations which add *nothing* to the functionality of the application (thus, making them pointless and redundant). I also do not like every app having it’s own custom look and feel, changing the way basic features like title bars, tabs, and so on work as well as look.
I still stand by ‘it’s just another wekit based browser with limited features’ – **not that there’s anything particularly wrong with that**, as I said, I would switch away from firefox in a minute if it had the font thing and ad blocking (built in preferably – not a fan of plugins), as I don’t particularly care for firefox and have already sampled some webkit browsers and have been waiting for one that worked well enough for me, on my chosen platform. (I only use windoze at work, so I can’t even use chrome yet, even if i wanted to).