

Four years with Google Chrome, and I'm never going back - rainmaker23
http://betanews.com/2012/09/03/four-years-with-google-chrome-and-im-never-going-back/

======
poblano
What boggles my mind about Chrome is how terrible the location bar
autocomplete is.

At least, that's how it seemed to me for ages when I switched from Firefox. I
mean, I would have just visited a page with "foo" in the URL, and I would type
"foo", and that recent page simply would not appear. But a page I visited two
months ago with "foo" somewhere in the URL (or worse, somewhere in the page
content) would appear.

I haven't noticed this so much recently -- maybe it's gotten better, or maybe
I've just gotten used to it.

I've been shocked that I haven't heard many other people complaining about
this. Maybe it's just me?

~~~
diminish
Chrome location bar autocomplete is unable to recognize my history and
bookmarks.

Can it be that google does not want users to do bookmark or history search,
but rather prefers us to do a google search instead for data mining and ad
monetizing reasons? Or can it be due to an Apple patent?

~~~
Lexarius
My Chrome location bar autocompletes my bookmarks just fine. It usually only
takes a few characters for the bookmark to be the top result, and I can tell
it's the bookmark since I changed the label.

~~~
bsphil
Chrome seems to want to give preference to any random page I visited once
rather than my bookmark. And the list is so short - if it's not in the ~6
items you just can't get to it. And you can't just trim the list like you
would in Firefox by hitting delete on entries you don't want to be in there.

I'd go back to firefox if their sync system was improved since I last used it.

~~~
StavrosK
I don't know when you last used it, and I don't use Firefox, but their sync
system strikes me as pretty good. It even encrypts everything client-side
using strong cryptography and you have to share the keys by opening another
browser, I found it pretty great.

------
ngokevin
Internally, there's no such thing as the browser war. It's just something the
media hypes up and something nerds argue about. Google used to contribute to
Firefox before they went into their caves to give birth to Chrome, and the
relationship is still symbiotic. Vendors are happy with the fact that the web
is actually progressing now with competition spurring it unlike when Microsoft
stopped working on IE in the olden days. Most browsers today are modern and
well-kept, even IE10. You'll be fine with whatever modern browser you choose,
everyone likes their own little idiosyncrasies found in their browser of
choice.

~~~
pjscott
Google _still_ contributes to Firefox, in the form of about $300 million per
year.

~~~
Jyaif
Does anyone know how they use their 300 million? They could have a thousand
software engineers working on their product, which is probably more than what
Google/Apple/MS uses on their respective browsers.

~~~
ngokevin
As a non-profit, the large focus would be on growing to further their mission.
Of course, they're not simply just going to hire a thousand engineers in a
weekend. Recruiting takes a lot of time and manpower. Mozilla is currently
around 600 employees and projected to double within the next year. And only a
portion of actually work on the Firefox platform, Google and MS throw
multitudes more engineers at their browsers.

~~~
zobzu
There's also the facilities, advertising, etc. 300mi seems rapidely small at
this scale.

Firefox for Android did progress enormously as well.

I'm not sure all the other decisions were good tho (Firefox OS for example,
even thus it makes sense mission-wise, it probably not the best idea for the
money)

------
zobzu
"I can say with a certain amount of confidence that I no longer derive any
personal identity from the browser I use."

"Four years with Google Chrome, and I'm never going back"

The irony.

------
benologist
Chrome's launching speed was _amazing_ before SSDs made it so even Adobe
couldn't completely fuck that up, and it's update mechanism is still great
today. I'm ready for something new though.

These days the back button often seems to mean "redownload the whole page"
which shits me just about every time I have to use it, and the address bar
likes to just erase everything I've typed when I hit enter and then a few
seconds later after it's done some stuff it'll put what I typed back.

~~~
vegardx
The first releases for OSX was the exact opposite. It took ages to start up,
and still, to this day, Chrome just feels more "right" on Windows than on OSX.
Things are way better now, but the start up speed is still not on par with
Linux and Windows, for some reason. Not that it actually matters, I rarely
restart my Macbook.

I have the same frustration with the back buttom. I get it in the case of
POSTed data, but couldn't they just differentiate on it based on current
situation?

------
fauigerzigerk
It's amazing how bad browsers still are for some of the most frequent tasks.
This isn't directed against Chrome specifically.

I just realize how much time I spend looking for windows and tabs. I use three
different browsers for no other reason than to get different entries in the
Cmd+Tab application list so I can switch back and forth between them.

I have tried every tab switching plugin on the planet without much success.
They're all buggy or slow or just don't do the right thing. And it's really a
problem of browser/OS integration, nothing a plugin can or should solve.

I also tried OS X Spaces to mitigate these issues. I had to give up because
the animation causes nausea and the switching behavior is nonsensical (e.g.
switching back and forth between two windows in different spaces is
asymmetrical). That's not the browsers' fault of course.

When will browser and OS makers realize that web applications are applications
that need their own icon and entry wherever other applications have their own
identity?

~~~
sallubhai
>When will browser and OS makers realize that web applications are
applications that need their own icon and entry wherever other applications
have their own identity?

(If you're using Chrome) Wrench > Tools > Create Application Shortcuts >
Choose any of Desktop, Start Menu or Pin to Taskbar.

It will open somewhat like a native app.. no tabs/address bar etc

~~~
fauigerzigerk
So does that give an individual browser window its own identity and icon in
Cmd+Tab switching? I'm asking you because my Chrome on Mac doesn't have the
menu items you mention.

------
Ogre
There's really only one extension Chrome needs to get me to switch. Currently
that extension is called Roomy Bookmarks Toolbar in Firefox. There have been
variations on the theme like Smart Bookmarks Toolbar and others, which may or
may not be broken in current versions of Firefox (something FF is awful about
- extensions seem to break way too easily, but in this case at least they
exist!)

All it does is hide the names of bookmarks on the toolbar so all I see are the
icons, until I hover over one of 'em. It seems really minor, but I really
don't want to give up my little row of icons, nor do I want to delete the
names of all them (which I used to do, long before smart people wrote
extensions to hide the names)

The closest thing I can find on Chrome is "Iconized Bookmarks Bar", which
simulates the same idea, but the implementation is terrible. Instead of an
actual toolbar, it inserts a little HTML thing at the top of every page. It
works fine on 90% of the web, and causes various levels of havoc on the other
10%. For example, it made it impossible to log in to Amazon last time I tried
it because the hover logic on the Login menu got screwed up.

I assume that the functionality I want is simply not possible in Chrome at
this time. I haven't actually looked into doing it myself though, it's just
not that important when I've already got a browser I like just fine.

~~~
aboodman
This would be really easy extension to create with the bookmarks API:

<http://developer.chrome.com/extensions/bookmarks.html>

You should give it a shot!

 _Edit:_ It wouldn't be able to do the 'until i hover over it' bit. If that's
important to you.

------
dm8
I for one never thought Google Chrome would win the "browser wars". I used
Opera and Firefox regularly and I was very much satisfied with them. But I
have to admit Google Chrome team has outstanding job and Chrome is my primary
browser.

Any idea how many people working on Chrome team? And why Mozilla remained so
indifferent speed when Chrome was beating big time?

~~~
Ygg2
To paraphrase a police chief fro The Wire: "You can't turn your ship on a
dime". Sames goes for any large endeavor.

When Chrome came out it's focus on speed/usability was new to the browser
landscape. It took some times but FF is catching up in almost all aspects of
it (speed is up, memory usage has been reduced).

For me FF always was unbeatable for its slew of plugins. The plugins and their
intergration can't be matched by Chrome.

------
nfg
Without TreeStyleTabs à la Firefox [[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/)] I can't switch, it's indispensable when
dealing with 100+ tabs (which I find myself doing a lot as crazy as it seems).
Besides that the "AwesomeBar" in FF seems to work more effectively than
Chrome's when digging up old pages I've visited. There're also a few
extensions I'm probably forgetting, SessionManager comes to mind. I've given
Chrome a more than fair shake, and still use it on a near daily basis, but
I'll stick to FF on my own box.

~~~
darklajid
Same here. Whatever the machine, be it netbook, thinkpad or dual screen
desktop workhorse, I have more space horizontally than vertically. Tabs belong
to the left.

The added benefit of having a _tree_ of tabs (usually most of the nodes have
HN as a root for me..) is something I wouldn't want to miss again, ever.

And FF Beta on Android still beats Chrome in terms of usability for me
(talking about both rendering speed and nifty things like addons).

I open Chrome Canary every once in a while, out of curiosity. But day to day
it's not for me.

~~~
morsch
One of the biggest benefits of a tree of tabs is that it makes it easy to get
rid of a group of them. You can double click a root tab to collapse its tree
-- that's super useful right there; when you then close the root tab, all the
tabs in the tree are closed, too. Makes it incredibly quick and painless to
clean up after a prolonged research session, which in turn encourages
judiciously opening tabs during research.

------
oceanician
Never say never.

I'm sold on Google Chrome at the moment also, but found Opera to be the best
for developers for years previously.

They'll be another awesome browser. Just like they'll be another search engine
we all use one day.

------
afhof
It was a grim realization that I am not the target audience for Chrome. All
the stylistic features I like about Firefox seem deliberately left out of
Chrome. What bothers me more though is that Firefox along with the rest of the
browser market are aggressively trying to become Chrome, leaving me out of
luck.

------
mitra
I can't seem to find HTTPS Everywhere or smooth gestures, two of my most used
extensions, anywhere on the new chrome web store. It looks like a new walled
garden approach to something that was working well the way it was.

~~~
aboodman
HTTPS Everywhere:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gcbommkclmclpchllf...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gcbommkclmclpchllfjekcdonpmejbdp/details)

Dunno about Smooth Gestures.

------
benjaminwootton
Never say never. I said that about Firefox after leaving Internet Explorer.

------
Tichy
I use Chrome for sites that require flash. What I still don't get: how do you
get by without tags on bookmarks and the awesome bar? Is there some equivalent
for Chrome?

------
EricDeb
I still prefer Firefox for firebug and some other extensions but Chrome just
blazes in terms of JavaScript rendering

~~~
mappu
I use Chrome developer tools as my main testing environment - every time i
check out compatibility in other browsers, Firebug ranks in slightly behind
IE's built-in support for me.

You still change frame contexts with cd()?

~~~
masklinn
> I use Chrome developer tools as my main testing environment - every time i
> check out compatibility in other browsers, Firebug ranks in slightly behind
> IE's built-in support for me.

Wow, somebody has drunk way too much koolaid.

