

Google Chrome: First impressions - alexk
http://www.matthewbuckland.com/?p=521

======
DaniFong
_9\. Choose a new tab and you get option to select from your most visited
sites. Saving me time already. Why didn’t the others think of that?_

Well, others did think of this. In particular, the comic book guy looks like
Aza, and talks like him too. The things Aza suggested are a little more
complicated behaviorally, too; they're context sensitive.

<http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/new-tabs/>
[http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/firefox-google-chrome-new-
ta...](http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/firefox-google-chrome-new-tabs/)

~~~
shiranaihito
Please tell me I'm not the only person on Reddit & HN to have used Opera 9+ ?

The "new tab page" is Opera's "Speed Dial" with a twist.

Does Firefox have that even as an add-on? Maybe they haven't realized it's an
idea worth copying - but Google did.

~~~
unalone
It's available for Firefox. It's slow and occasionally causes crashes.

I love what Aza writes about, but thus far he's shown himself to be much
better at conception than at implementation. Even Songza, which is a neat
concept and works nicely, doesn't fare well against much uglier sites such as
Skreemr. While I read his blog, I do it for his ideas: not because I think
he'll ever implement what he talks about.

~~~
shiranaihito
Judging by his Google Chrome article, it looks like he wasn't aware of Opera's
"Speed Dial".

Maybe his "new tab page" was really an idea he had come up with on his own,
without seeing Speed Dial.

But maybe he had seen it, and just wanted to play a visionary to the Firefox
crowd.

It's mildly annoying to watch Firefox users admire Chrome's version of Speed
Dial.

~~~
unalone
You know, I wouldn't put it past him to have never used the most recent
version of Opera.

It's kind of funny. He's the very definition of a nutty professor. He's
obviously quite brilliant at what he does, and yet there have been a few cases
in which he seems completely unaware of what's going on around him.

He can be forgiven, though, because of Bloxes.

------
iseff
What? Really?

1\. "It's not evil." Okay, because it asks if you want a different default
search engine, it's not evil. You're entitled to your opinion.

2\. "It’s fast, minimalist and clean." Right, but it's not that much faster,
it's ugly, and it doesn't look native to Windows. Why?

3\. "It loads up quickly." I really have never had trouble loading Firefox.
Plus, I do it so infrequently that the startup costs just don't matter.

4\. "It seamlessly and quickly imported my bookmarks and passwords from
Firefox." Every browser should do this. And I believe most popular ones do.

5\. "I love the 3D, industrial Chrome icon and logo." Okay. But seriously, if
the logo is one of the top things you can say about a browser, the browser
might be in trouble.

6\. "You can open a window in incognito mode, just a right click." Incognito
is fairly neat, but really, it doesn't make a huge difference to me. I'll
never use it.

7\. "A quick right click on any area of the page and selecting 'inspect
element' allows you to see the code behind it." As you say, Firefox has this.
One thing that might make this better, which I haven't checked, is if it shows
the _actual source_, rather than a reversed-engineered source based on the DOM
like Firefox does.

8\. "On startup you can set it to open multiple homepages" Firefox also
supports this. Not a new feature.

9\. "Choose a new tab and you get option to select from your most visited
sites." I do like the visual representation -- good feature. Perhaps other
browsers haven't done this because they haven't had Incognito? This feature
might actually necessitate Incognito.

10\. "Task manager pretty cool for the multiple window & tab freaks."
Honestly, I can't even figure out how to open the Task Manager, so I really
have no opinion on this other than it might be neat if I could figure it out.

My guess is there's a lot of Google kool-aid being drunk on this one and that
if it were developed by anyone else, it would be shoved to the bottom of the
news and never talked about.

My opinion? I'll stick to Firefox, thanks.

~~~
unalone
Somebody needs a little sweetener.

1\. What DOES make it evil, then? Frankly, I don't care if it DOES start you
off with Google. I think it would still count as "not evil."

2\. It's much faster at running sites in parallel. It's not ugly. Are you
kidding me? This is the most aesthetically pleasing browser I've used. Soft
colors, emphasis in all the right areas. And it has native open/close buttons.
Windows itself doesn't use consistent design other than those buttons, so it
all works.

3\. Look at the benchmarks. Firefox has had a problem with this. And it's a
problem that's been pretty consistent.

I must ask, though: why the hell are you griping about this? If you like
Firefox more, you can use Firefox. When you respond to a review of something,
it ought to be because you've got important points to make. Like my explaining
why a lot of your points are bogus. Griping for the sake of gripe is helping
nobody, least of all you.

4\. So you're mad at him for saying that he likes things moving seamlessly?
And this did away with the opening dialog box that Firefox and Safari offer on
Windows, so it's slightly improved.

5\. He doesn't rank things. He points out things that he likes. Informally.
Almost like, rather than writing an article, he's writing a sort of log of
points. A "web log."

6\. Again: a lot of people like incognito. Especially single people aged
16-22, in my experience. I also thought the little magnifying glass guy was
cute.

7\. But not out of the box. And having a light-weight checker is always nice.

Also - can't you CHECK things because you write posts like this? Honestly. Do
some firsthand reporting.

8\. No, but Google makes it a lot more transparent. And the blank opening page
is pretty awesome. I'd say it even tops Opera's.

9\. What does Incognito have to do with anything? This is based on Opera's
Speed Dial, but it's a bit more complex.

10\. So, this browser has two buttons - TWO - for opening menus. That's it.
And Task Manager happens to be on the first one, underneath Developer, which
was the first place I checked, because it made logical sense.

"My guess..." etc.

There is no Google Kool-Aid. Most people I know are actually pretty critical
of Google. I've been displeased with a lot of their stuff lately. Doesn't
change the fact that this browser is sublime and better than anything else
currently on the market out-of-the-box. They even topped Safari, and Safari
had a damn good out-of-the-box showing, even on Windows. I'd pick this on
Windows over Webkit on Mac, actually, which is saying a lot.

You can stick to Firefox. This article doesn't talk about how much better
Chrome is than Firefox. You're just acting defensive, because something
groundbreaking just hit. Fair enough, but please do it in private rather than
as a comment. If you've got actual criticisms of this thing, I'd love to hear
them.

------
pqs
One of the best features of chrome is that it is realed in ~40 languages!!
That's great!

------
newt0311
Thing that I didn't like: No linux version.

~~~
unalone
Or Mac. :-(

It's okay. I have faith in Google. They are happy and love me.

