

Google Chrome – Why I Hate It And Continue To Use It - jtaby
http://jtaby.com/2011/05/31/google-chrome-why-i-hate-it-and-continue-to-use-it.html

======
wccrawford
1) Downloads - I love the download bar. And the downloads tab lets you view
the progress there, too.

2) Title Bar - You can actually drag using any empty space up there, including
all that space to the right of the new tab button and around the
close/maximize/etc buttons.

3) Massive Preferences List - Sorry, that's a feature. As for being hard to
find what you want, without those options, you couldn't find it anyhow...
Because it wouldn't be available.

4) Favicons - Humans are visual people... It's much easier to determine
location by an icon than text.

5) Search Field - The complaint is that it covers some of the UI and you have
to close it to use the page? Sooo... How does a massive search dialog work
better? I've actually found very few sites that are rendered useless by that
search field, but almost all are rendered useless by the giant box that all
other browsers use.

6) Lack of Attention-to-Detail throughout - Still trying to find the 'broken
gradient'. Everything looks fine to me.

7) Network tab - I find this tab massively useful. It (wait for it) let's me
see what was transferred over the network. Surprise! No guessing if something
munged the HTML or if it was transfered that way. No guessing what parameters
were posted. Etc, etc.

Some of the criticism make sense, but most of it is just preferences or
misunderstandings.

Oh yeah, the thing missing from her list of good points:

1) Stretchable text boxes. I use this all the time now. Especially on HN.

~~~
callahad
_6) Lack of Attention-to-Detail throughout - Still trying to find the 'broken
gradient'. Everything looks fine to me._

It's definitely there. Open the Web Inspector, pop it out into a new window,
focus another window or application.

Edit: Here's a side-by-side screenshot of the unfocused Web Inspector dialogs
in Safari and Chrome: <http://i.imgur.com/WftBr.png> Also, it turns out that
you can make it even worse by focusing the Web Inspector window, then moving
an icon on your desktop: <http://i.imgur.com/WvEIq.png> Safari's Web Inspector
handles both cases properly.

~~~
Griever
Is this an OSX only issue? Just tried this on my Windows 7 box using version
13.0.772.0 and everything looks good to me.

~~~
akdom
Yeah... this one threw me for a loop while I was reading the post... then I
realized it. In OS X the whole top of the window is a continuous gradient (all
the way from the top edge to the bottom of the primary toolbar). So the OP's
complaint appears to be that that the Chrome window renders as though it's in
Window/Linux instead of Mac OS X even though it has the brushed aluminum look.
This also goes for the "Non-native behavior, Native look" point. In OS X you
can drag from anywhere on the gradient, while in Chrome it just "looks" like
it's doing shiny Cocoa things.

------
callahad
There are a couple of things to point out jtaby's critique of Chrome:

1\. _There's no small, unobtrusive way to monitor the progress of downloads._

Actually, in OS X, the Chrome icon in the dock has a small pie chart overlay
during downloads that indicates both the number of pending downloads as well
as the aggregate progress of all downloads. If your dock is hidden, you can
quickly and easily check the progress by hitting Cmd-Tab. In Windows 7, the
"tile" in the Windows "Dock" fills from left to right, like a progress bar, to
show the aggregate status of downloads. You can also click on the in-progress
download, dismiss the dialog, and the file will open once the download
completes.

2\. _The large number of options makes finding what you want hard._

As mentioned, the search feature is handy, but not always sufficient. One nice
aspect that gets overlooked is that the in-tab preferences are fully
addressable: you can actually link to specific pages and panels. Though this
doesn't help you find a preference in the first place, it does make
communicating the location of known preferences much simpler.

3\. _The search field covers the content of the site, if you were searching
and a match was under the field, or you wanted to click a link/button under
the search field, you’re out of luck._

Actually, the search field will intelligently slide out of the way to reveal
matched content that it covers. If you need to click something underneath it,
you can hit Escape to dismiss it, and your previously entered text will be
saved and pre-filled the next time you hit Cmd-F.

~~~
jtaby
Thanks a lot for your comment, callahad. I'll try to respond to your comments.

1\. You're right, I hadn't actually noticed that until after I wrote the blog
post. I think it's because I hide the Dock by default (still doesn't explain
why I didn't notice it in the app switcher)

My point was, there are three places to manage downloads. I have to manually
close the Downloads bar. Worst of all (and this is something I forgot to point
out in the post) is that closing the downloads bar actually makes the browser
window smaller!

2\. You're right, there are nice parts of having the preferences be in the
tab.

3\. I didn't mean the search field covers search results, it covers the
website's UI. Here's another example of it blocking the UI, this time in
github: <http://cl.ly/1t450T1S0s2J2V0I3O1W>

~~~
treeface
I see your point about #3, but to be honest, I've been using Chrome since v1
and I have never once had this be an issue. Not a single time. There is simply
never a case where what I'm searching for is in the very top right 10 pixels
of a page. In your github example, why would you ever be searching for
"dashboard", "inbox", "account settings", or "log out"?

Also I don't really understand your complaint about the bookmarks bar. Why do
you have it up at all if you don't like the UI? If I want to go to a
bookmarked page, I hit ctrl-shift-b to bring up the bar or, much more often, I
open a new tab. I think the thing that separates Chrome from other browsers is
the huge content real estate, and keeping the bookmarks bar up there takes
away from this in a big way.

~~~
carussell
> There is simply never a case where what I'm searching for is in the very top
> right 10 pixels of a page. In your github example, why would you ever be
> searching for "dashboard", "inbox", "account settings", or "log out"?

I think jtaby made it very clear that he wasn't referring to cases where it
covers search results, but that it covers the website's UI. In fact, those
were his exact words.

~~~
treeface
In that case, I don't really see any validity in the complaint. The search
function is a temporary UI addition with a single purpose that goes away the
moment you hit escape. Better yet, if you hit ctrl-f again, it comes back with
the same text already entered.

~~~
carussell
Okay. These are all facts with respect to the find UI; yes, the things you say
regarding hitting the escape key and the keyboard shortcut to make the find UI
reappear—these are all true, factual things.

But this isn't a concession. You can say these things, but every one of them
is immaterial to point that _the find UI, when present, obscures parts of the
page_ , where potentially those parts are functional UI for that page.

~~~
visural
So? If it doesn't cause a problem... it isn't a problem.

~~~
carussell
This is another factual statement which is also immaterial to the discussion,
in much the same way that "an apple is an apple" is a factual statement, but
immaterial here.

If you think that I'd summarize my comment above as, "there's no problem",
you've misunderstood.

------
redthrowaway
Favicons: This is by far my favorite feature of modern browsers, and I in no
way apologize for loving them. They make bookmarks actually useful for sites
you visit regularly. Take a look at my bookmark bar: [1] The favicons allow me
to fit all of the links I visit regularly in one easily accessible, compact
place. I don't care if they look "tacky", they're incredibly useful.

[1]<http://min.us/l5aGM>

~~~
starwed
I find it weird to even think of a bookmark bar anymore. At least in FF, the
URL bar does such a good job searching history/bookmarks that I have no use
for it, and I thought chrome was now in a similar position?

~~~
redthrowaway
I find Chrome's omnibox better than the address bar in FF, as it
autocompletes. I suppose I could press cmd-L to jump to the box and type a few
letters, but the web is so optimized for the mouse that I usually have my
finger on the trackpad anyway.

~~~
sp332
Firefox has been experimenting with autocompletion, it might make it into a
future version. [https://mozillalabs.com/prospector/2010/10/27/navigate-
the-w...](https://mozillalabs.com/prospector/2010/10/27/navigate-the-web-
faster-with-awesome-bar-word-completion/) You can install the first-party
addon without even restarting your browser. There are other experiments in the
"Lab Kit" [https://mozillalabs.com/blog/2010/11/its-time-to-get-your-
la...](https://mozillalabs.com/blog/2010/11/its-time-to-get-your-lab-kit/)

------
potatolicious
My biggest complaint about Chrome: it's the year 2011 and it still doesn't
support color profiles.

I mean, shit, Safari does, Firefox does, even IE does. As someone who loves
photography and graphics, as Chrome usage takes over, the ability for people
to view these works _drops_.

Why this hasn't been implemented (actually it has, it's been there in the dev
branch since forever but has never made it into the regular release), is
beyond me.

~~~
ryandvm
I'm sure it's a big deal for you, but surely you understand that this is a
feature that only 0.5% of the population cares about. Most people are happy to
watch 4:3 television stretched to fit their wide screen TVs and you can't
believe that Google hasn't implemented color profiles?

~~~
potatolicious
Considering this has been standard is _every_ single browser, major and minor,
and Google is the sole standout... yes.

And color profiles aren't some obscure thing that only graphics people care
about - there are a _lot_ of photos online right now where people look like
zombies (or tomatoes) because the embedded profile isn't being accounted for.

If you Google for it, there are plenty of complaints from non-techy people who
are confused why their pictures look fine from Windows Explorer/Preview, but
look completely different when uploaded to Facebook.

~~~
scott_s
Which is a fair point, but I had to just Google "color profiles" to figure out
what you're talking about.

~~~
potatolicious
Most people who have problems with color profiles don't know their problem is
color profiles.

More commonly, people blame it on Windows, OS X, Photoshop, or a litany of
apps. Funnily enough, unless they are in the know, they don't blame the
browser.

It _is_ a very common problem though, and for people generating content it
makes their lives doubly tough. The average quality of your computer display
is depressingly low (TN LCD panels can't reproduce a color correctly to save
its lousy life), add this to outlier apps like Chrome messing up the
experience for users, and you'd _never_ know how your content is going to show
up on the end user's machine.

------
code_duck
These are odd and rather subjective complaints. I see the author acknowledges
that in the conclusion. I agree with the good part points, following are my
opinions on the 'bad'.

I rather like the downloads UI - I was just wondering why Safari doesn't have
a downloads tab like Chrome does. The separate window is a little clunky for
me, esp. since OSX doesn't make it easy to cycle through tabs of a window with
a keyboard shortcut (that I know of - Cmd-Tab does applications, Ctrl-tab does
Safari tabs. How do you get the Download window with a keyboard shortcut?).

Preferences: what? Too many? I see Chrome as minimalistic in that area. IE,
Opera, Firefox and Safari all offer just as many preference options or more.

favicons in the tabs: Is a bunch of text or icons a better solution for tiny
tab markers? Icons make much more sense to me there.

The search field is superior to modal windows. I don't think it's better in
Chrome than Firefox or Safari, but it's not worse. If you don't like it being
over the content, close it.

The new tab page: isn't much different than any other browser, except for
Firefox which lacks on entirely.

The tab bar: after complaining about favicons, now text in the tabs is labeled
a problem: what's better?

Loading UI: Should we put a 64x64 animated icon in the upper right of the
browser that cycles when the page is loading?

"Non-native behavior, Native look" : Why would you expect to drag anywhere
other than the toolbar on an OSX window?

~~~
papa_bear
Cmd-` (tilde key) cycles between windows of an application

~~~
code_duck
I knew there had to be some trick to it... thanks for the tip.

------
d0m
I really don't agree with the author's complain. Particularly the download
window. I _HATE_ when a new window popup when a download start when I use
firefox. The chrome's way is so much better; you can easilly see the progress,
click on it to open and even drag it. If you don't want to see that, you just
close that bottom dialog. In fact, I really rarely use the download tab; only
when I'm searching something I've downloaded.

I have to agree about the developer tools though, it's really not as polished
as the rest. Probably because only developers use it and they don't mind as
much? Or the product manager doesn't use it? I can't say.

------
FilterJoe
Chrome has been my primary browser for the last year and I have not noticed
the majority of issues discussed in the post. Great eye for detail but I
suspect most people won't notice most of these issues. I've found that Chrome
easily beats Firefox and IE8 for the one thing most people care about most:
Get right to work while the browser is not in your way. It's fast and
uncluttered, and is more secure than the competition out of the box (though
Firefox can be made more secure with extensions).

2 minor points:

If you don't like seeing favicons or other UI elements while reading, hit F11
for full screen mode. All browsers have this except Safari.

Put things in the "other" folder by dragging and dropping the favicons from
the bookmarks bar. Useful for decluttering the bookmarks bar.

I wrote a detailed comparison of the 5 major browsers, here:

[http://www.filterjoe.com/2011/03/15/best-
browsers-2011-best-...](http://www.filterjoe.com/2011/03/15/best-
browsers-2011-best-browser-for-you/)

My take is that the latest version of all 5 browsers are very good, so it's a
matter of finding the most suitable browser for each user. Based on the issues
discussed, I suspect Opera might be preferred by the author.

~~~
jtaby
Thanks for the comment. I agree with almost everything you said, but I would
add that Safari doesn't suffer from most of these issues, though it suffers
from other problems.

------
thisisblurry
Feel free to let the Chrom(e|ium) authors aware of all of these "bugs" and
"issues" here: <http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/list>

You might help yourself out if you increase your browser window's width beyond
500px. Sure, you did that for screenshot examples, but that's far from real-
world usage (this is coming from someone who shuffles dozens of tabs around
all day).

------
nevinera
>Notice that “Other Bookmarks” button? It’s empty. there’s the “»” button next
to it, that shows me the “other bookmarks” which I can’t see because they
don’t fit, but “Other Bookmarks” appaarently means something else. I assume it
means regular bookmarks (not on the bookmarks bar), but I couldn’t figure out
how to add a page to that list.

It doesn't appear to be very complicated. Control-D, or click on the star in
your url bar (which means 'bookmark this'). Now change the folder dropdown to
'Other Bookmarks'. That's how you put stuff in the 'Other Bookmarks' folder. I
can see how you'd have trouble figuring that one out...

------
aerique
I think the title bar issue is actually more of a window manager issue: I
always use Alt+mouse movement[1] which has the added benefit that I don't have
to move the pointer over to a special dragging area. I realize this is more of
a Unix thing and not necessarily available on OSX.

Same goes for resizing in Awesome WM, which is well... awesome: WM key[2] +
right mouse button + mouse move to resize. Written down it looks cumbersome,
but it actually works really well.

[1] I think I use the WM key nowadays, it's muscle memory I can't actually
remember! :-)

[2] One of the 'Windows' keys.

~~~
carussell
> I realize this is more of a Unix thing and not necessarily available on OSX.

I bought a Macbook a month ago, and window management being more cumbersome
there when compared to properly-configured window managers from the rest of
the world of Unix clones is pretty surprising and the third most annoying
thing to me about my Macbook experience. (Where the second most annoying thing
is the ~half second delay between lifting my finger from the touchpad and the
actual release during a drag operation, and the first most is the lack of an
equivalent for middle clicks.)

~~~
Yoshino
Fortunately there are a number of utilities that make window management on OS
X more tolerable.

Off the top of my head, try looking at Cinch, SizeUp, MondoMouse, or Divvy
(there are definitely more out there that I can’t remember). I’ve set
MondoMouse so Fn-Shift drags a window, and Fn-Ctrl resizes a window. It really
helps.

Sure, these hacks are shareware and aren’t as elegant or infinitely
configurable as tiling WMs for X, but they’re pretty close.

------
akkartik
_"..if you have a lot of tabs open, you end up having to hunt for the tab you
want.."_

But that's true in any browser, no?

 _"..and you can’t read the title of the tab you’re on."_

This part is true. I love how my firefox looks lately:
[https://profiles.google.com/u/0/akkartik#1104401391899068610...](https://profiles.google.com/u/0/akkartik#110440139189906861022/posts/7PAcecp9KYf).
I think it's taken all the good stuff of chrome's tab bar without the bad.

~~~
masklinn
> But that's true in any browser, no?

Safari will not lower the width of a tab under a preset size, the rest is
moved off-bar. You can always see at least half a dozen characters of the
title.

------
nhebb
For me it's the password manager. I still have Firefox installed to navigate
to certain secure sites because Chrome just doesn't seem to remember the
passwords. Oh, and Chrome needs a search field on their password form (I've
heard they're good at that sort of thing).

The font rendering in Chrome must be a Mac compatibility issue because side by
side, Chrome renders text much cleaner than FF or IE on Windows. HN on FF
looks murky by comparison.

~~~
RobAtticus
You mean the Saved Passwords page? Ctrl+F for the domain/site works pretty
well for me.

~~~
nhebb
_Ctrl-F_

Good point, but the UI's still inconsistent. If you open Options there is a
_Search options_ box. The passwords screen is modal, so that search box isn't
accessible and you have two methods of search - a search field for Options and
Ctrl-F for password. The other issue is that Ctrl-F doesn't consistently
scroll to the highlighted item. When doing a Ctrl-F I often have to use the
scroll bar to find the highlighted phrase.

~~~
RobAtticus
Yeah, it's definitely imperfect. It's easier than scrolling through
everything, even if all Ctrl+F does is highlight on the scrollbar where it is.

------
natmaster
Have you tried using Firefox?

Everything you like about Chrome is in Firefox (ok, you'll have to use Firefox
5 beta for the tab closing behavior) if you install two extensions (for the
expose and unified search).

Seems like most of the things you hate about Chrome are at least better in
Firefox as well. (Though to be fair, they could be a much different experience
on a Mac than I am experiencing on Windows.)

------
memetichazard
> Massive Preferences List - Looking at that screenshot, the list doesn't seem
> massive. I seem to recall Firefox (or maybe Opera, this was a while back)
> having a large grid of options that was several pages long.

> Other Bookmarks - I don't have that on my current Chrome. I think this is
> because this is a folder that comes with the default install - if you go to
> the bookmarks manager you should be able to remove it.

> Status Bar - I kinda like it - you don't want the status bar popping up and
> hiding your cursor. Except in your video it's a lot more erratic than on
> mine at the moment.

> Favicons/Too many tabs - Favicons help when there are too many tabs. A
> common problem for me.

> Can you tell at a glance whether this site is loading or not? It's loading -
> the icon next to the URL is an X and not the reload icon.

There are some things that bug me, like broken pdf support - the built-in pdf
viewer doesn't support rotation, for instance.

~~~
pdubroy
The behaviour of the status bubble that he shows in the video is a known bug
in the Mac version (<http://crbug.com/76590>) which should hopefully be fixed
soon.

------
masklinn
If the only thing you want of Chrome are the improved developer tools, the
same tools are in the Webkit nightlies ( <http://nightly.webkit.org/> ).

The tools UI also does not have issues like broken gradient or draggability

~~~
boucher
Absolutely not true. The most interesting features in the Web Inspector are
Chrome specific, largely because they are V8 specific for the moment.

~~~
masklinn
I am interested in which features whose would be. From my experience with
both, I have not used anything in Chrome which was not available in webkit's
nightlies.

------
intranation
My biggest annoyance: open an incognito window (perhaps to do some Internet
banking, or to log into one of the Google Apps accounts I've got); switch to
another app; see a link in Twitter, email, or IM and click it; and it opens in
the incognito window. Surely all new window events from other applications
should go to the primary non-incognito window? Or at least you should be able
to define the behaviour.

As an aside what I'd really like is sandboxed incognito tabs, so I can run
multiple accounts on the same service (hi Google multi-accounts!) in the same
window in different tabs without colliding cookies.

------
atacrawl
The one feature that Chrome doesn't have that Safari does (which therefore
keeps me a satisfied Safari user) is one big difference he doesn't mention --
the Cmd-1 through Cmd-9 automatic key commands for one-off bookmarks in the
Bookmarks Bar. If I want to resize my browser window to the size and location
I like, I hit Cmd-1. For my local traffic map, I hit Cmd-9. (And so on.) This
is so convenient for me, and I've devoted so much muscle memory to these
commands, that switching to Chrome is a non-starter.

~~~
jtaby
I thought of writing about that but felt it was all subjective and that I
couldn't make a UX argument for why it is objectively better.

~~~
intranation
One reason is using things like the Instapaper or Pinboard bookmarklets
without showing the bookmark toolbar. I guess you're supposed to use
extensions, but I prefer a "fire and forget" approach to bookmarking (i.e I've
pressed something once, leave me alone after that).

------
anigbrowl
I disagree with most of these, but on the other hand I don't use a Mac;
perhaps Chrome's UI is more consistent and coherent from the PoV of a Windows
user.

However, he's right about the font rendering/antialiasing. It doesn't bug me
too much on web pages, but I read a _lot_ of densely-typeset pdfs, and Chrome
unusable for anything longer than a few pages.

------
paxswill
My biggest peeve with Chrome on OS X is the nonstandard behavior for clicking
on the Omnibar. Normally, a single click places the caret, double clicking
selects the word, and triple clicking selects the whole field. Chrome reverses
this for its bar, and it's jarring me every time I do it. While they explain
why they did it, it feels 'wrong' that the majority of the Mac users
commenting on the issue [1] were against it, but the UI design team felt it
was better.

[1] <http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=24349>

------
hollerith
Something I hate about Chrome not mentioned yet is that when the text is
sufficiently large or the window sufficiently narrow, it flows over the right
end of the window, with the result that to read it, you have to scroll
horizontally back and forth for every line.

Note that this happens for ordinary <P> elements, not just for <PRE> elements
and other odd things.

That is something that never happened to me in the first 16 years of my use of
browsers. It now happens occasionally in Firefox, but it is much worse in
Chrome.

------
mcantor
The "redundant favicon" complaint is somewhat mitigated by the "Pin Tab"
feature. Right-click any tab and select "Pin Tab". I no longer browse with my
bookmarks bar displayed because of this feature!

------
wickedchicken
> the effective draggable area in Chrome is a thin 10px strip at the top of
> the window.

Weirdly enough, if you use a tiled window manager
(<http://awesome.naquadah.org/>) this is a feature instead of a detriment. On
my netbook pixels really are at a premium and chrome is admirable in its
space-saving efforts. I wish they would fix the download bar thing, but
they're aware of that and I believe it's a priority for some of the next
releases.

~~~
carussell
> if you use a tiled window manager... this is a feature instead of a
> detriment

Isn't it a detriment for tiling WM users, too? Since Chrome tries to eliminate
the title bar, it requests for the WM to not put a title bar on it and then
tries to fake a smaller, kind-of title bar. So it's still allocating _some_
space--more than any traditional application; since X apps normally leave the
title bar drawing up to the WM, traditional apps should have their inner UIs
flush with whatever your tiling WM puts around it, while Chrome's still got
that sliver.

------
dsadsa
This article is a waste of time. Don't read it. Just a whine drop.

~~~
bimbly
But if you zoom all the way into the Hacker News image it doesn't implement
anti-aliasing! Lol, that was my favorite complaint on this article; talk about
digging for an excuse.

~~~
callahad
That's a legitimate complaint. The text was anti-aliased in the first image,
but it was only done on a whole-pixel basis. Adding a background color
apparently convinces chrome to switch to subpixel antialiasing.

Whole pixel anti-aliasing looks bad and is inconsistent: both with other parts
of Chrome, and with the rest of the broader operating system.

~~~
joshuacc
Perhaps this a Mac-only issue? In Vista and Windows 7 Chrome seems to use
subpixel antialiasing. See here: <http://screensnapr.com/v/nSW3Zz.png>

------
ivankirigin
Favicons in the bookmarks bar are great! You can remove all the text and have
just a bunch of favicons for lots of sites.

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/uofn7m4kbppks5v/kirigin%20%3C3%20f...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/uofn7m4kbppks5v/kirigin%20%3C3%20favicons.png)

------
unicornporn
This page crashes the default browser on Android 2.2, every time.

------
ChrisNorstrom
"Massive Preferences List"? Are you serious? You sound like a stereotypical
mac person who ventured out in the real world.

(and I sound like an ass for saying that but anyway...)

\- The favicons over text in the title bar are no different than icons over
text in the OSX Dock, yes?

\- Also, I LOVE that the options and downloads open in a tab and not a new
window. It keeps everything chrome related in a contained environment. I HATE
managing windows, managing tabs however is easier and faster for me, you can
also just drag out the tab and it'll become a window.

------
pasbesoin
MRU tab order. (I know, I've read the developer comments and it's not going to
happen.)

Pernicious browser caching. (Just when _will_ you update that edited favicon?)

Continuing assault on the address bar. (First they came for "http", then they
came for me.)

Crappy session management, restoration. (Is there a clear leader in the
extensions that add better support? I find myself much less able to rank
Chrome extensions that Firefox extensions, based on community signals.)

EDIT: To be fair, a relative's 10 year old laptop still runs acceptably (sans
video), due in good part to Chrome's dramatic performance improvements.

~~~
treeface
_Continuing assault on the address bar. (First they came for "http", then they
came for me.)_

Could you please explain why this is an issue to you?

~~~
kbatten
The only issue I have with the missing http is that when you copy the link, it
automatically adds in the http. Most of the time when copying a link I either
don't care if the http is there, or I specifically don't want it (for example
if I am sshing into a box.)

If they stuck with "copy what you see", at least for me, it would resolve one
of my biggest peeves with Chrome. The other being useless tab text if you have
too many tabs open (and I don't really like the side tabs.)

~~~
pasbesoin
There's my own convenience. I want to see where I'm at. The address also often
contains information not reflected in/on the page itself.

Then there's the average user. They don't constantly, instantly adapt. It's
taken us time and effort to train our parents, friends, coworkers, etc. how to
examine addresses for useful clues. E.g. Is my connection secure? Is this
really the server I want to reach?

There are security paradigms that have taken considerable time and effort to
establish in the public's mind.

Now some designers decide they want -- need -- to toss this for the sake of 30
pixels and a notion of "visual purity". Without, in Chrome's case, even an
option to make the control visible if we so choose. (Although, as I understand
the current situation, it will still appear in some kind of hover
presentation.)

Some may think it looks all shiny. For me, it makes my life harder.

EDITED: For (somewhat) less grumpiness.

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georgieporgie
Ctrl-Tab behavior frustrates me pretty much every day. Add-ons to work around
it are really kludgey.

~~~
erikig
Thanks GP, I think this is my biggest peeve as well.

MRU CTRL-Tab is a well established Windows UI paradigm, don't ask power users
to change without offering a way to disable this.

Also, while I really like searching from my location bar, I'm also not a big
fan of the way the Google Omnibar Search retrieves history items using parts
of the URL you visited. I much prefer the Firefox/Awesomebar method.

That said, I <3 Chrome because Chrome <3's Me

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Kwpolska
In terms of the search field, you're terribly wrong. If there's a match under
the search box and you hilight it, the bar moves away.

~~~
jtaby
From my response to callahad above: "I didn't mean the search field covers
search results, it covers the website's UI. Here's another example of it
blocking the UI, this time in github: <http://cl.ly/1t450T1S0s2J2V0I3O1W>

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jdrama418
TL;DR

