>Not because it was a superior product, not because of technology but because everyone was anti IE.
>>>I think that's rather revisionist.
I agree with the sibling comments that remembered the past differently: Back in 2008, Chrome was actually the superior product -- for both users and developers.
- Chrome had a better partitioned process for each tab. IE and Firefox 3.x didn't so they often crashed on buggy web pages or bad Javascript. In Firefox, that would also take down all the other tabs one had open which obviously frustrated users.
- Chrome with V8 had the fastest Javascript engine at the time. This translated to faster UI on Gmail, Google Maps, Google Docs, etc.
- Chrome had a built in PDF viewer which was convenient. In IE, clicking on a pdf link triggered a disruptive "Save file as" prompt or if one had Adobe installed, it would launch Adobe Reader which was a jarring UI experience. (Also add that Chrome included ability to print to PDF. To duplicate that functionality in IE required buying the full Adobe Acrobat Professional for $300 or installing a similar PDF printer driver such as Bullzip.)
- Chrome had very good dev tools included. With Firefox, you had to install the Firebug plugin which was slower and buggier
It's fascinating how Google's recent controversy has caused widespread amnesia of Chrome browser's real technical advantages in 2008.
Chrome had a built in PDF viewer which was convenient. In IE, clicking on a pdf link triggered a disruptive "Save file as" prompt or if one had Adobe installed, it would launch Adobe Reader which was a jarring UI experience&
Good points for the most part, but not that one. A shitty JavaScript .PDF viewer is a much more "jarring UI experience" than launching an external viewer that I intentionally installed for just that purpose.
> - Chrome had very good dev tools included. With Firefox, you had to install the Firebug plugin which was slower and buggier
I remember very well that after I made the switch to Chrome, I still used Firefox for all my debugging purposes and web-development. Firebug was way ahead of Chrome Dev tools.
>>>I think that's rather revisionist.
I agree with the sibling comments that remembered the past differently: Back in 2008, Chrome was actually the superior product -- for both users and developers.
- Chrome had a better partitioned process for each tab. IE and Firefox 3.x didn't so they often crashed on buggy web pages or bad Javascript. In Firefox, that would also take down all the other tabs one had open which obviously frustrated users.
- Chrome with V8 had the fastest Javascript engine at the time. This translated to faster UI on Gmail, Google Maps, Google Docs, etc.
- Chrome had a built in PDF viewer which was convenient. In IE, clicking on a pdf link triggered a disruptive "Save file as" prompt or if one had Adobe installed, it would launch Adobe Reader which was a jarring UI experience. (Also add that Chrome included ability to print to PDF. To duplicate that functionality in IE required buying the full Adobe Acrobat Professional for $300 or installing a similar PDF printer driver such as Bullzip.)
- Chrome had very good dev tools included. With Firefox, you had to install the Firebug plugin which was slower and buggier
It's fascinating how Google's recent controversy has caused widespread amnesia of Chrome browser's real technical advantages in 2008.