Chrome Finish

Scott Hardie | September 2, 2008
This may be blasphemy for a web developer, but to this day, I have preferred IE6 as my browser of choice. Firefox is clunky, IE7 is clunkier, Opera is weird, and I haven't bothered to venture further afield than those options at home. What IE6 lacked in standards support, it made up for in nimbleness: I could whip it open and start browsing in a fraction of a second, with a minimum of clutter on my screen, while the other major browsers took up much more. But lately, more and more sites don't look right in it (duh), and more and more sites have come to rely on slow-loading javascript that freezes my browser until it finishes.

Enter Google's brand-new browser Chrome. I downloaded it today on a whim, just to be among the first users (and because my job requires me to test sites in all major browsers), and I was surprised to learn how well it blends what I like about the other browsers. It's fast, it's easy, it's quick, and it's stable & secure to boot. This thing might be Firefox for people who don't like Firefox.

I have a few little quibbles so far, but I'm test-driving it as my default browser for a few days to see how it handles. If you're trying it too: What do you think of it?

One more good thing about Chrome: It might finally motivate me to finish the goo.tc redesign I've been contemplating all year. I built this site in IE6 and tweaked the shell so that it presented reasonably well in Firefox, but it looks terrible in Chrome. Maybe you'll see a new look for the site sooner rather than later, if I can just find the time...

Amy Austin | September 2, 2008
I can't believe how much time has already passed since your last redesign...

Tony Peters | September 2, 2008
no chrome for Mac....

Erik Bates | September 3, 2008
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Kelly Lee | September 11, 2008
I'm downloading chrome and IE8 right now...
I got fed up at work finally (and at home, cause it eats my mem) with having firefox unable to start up on my computer. I attempted to dl chrome and ie8 at work, but since I run...ugh...windows 2000 no such luck there.

Scott Hardie | September 12, 2008
A week later and I'm still on the fence with Chrome. The stuff it does well, I'm quite pleased with. But it's buggy. Textarea fields (especially on this site) don't word-wrap well. YouTube videos don't play beyond 2 seconds, which is weird since Google owns YouTube. The program mysteriously hangs for a few seconds every now and then, even when no javascript is running. I'm one big glitch away from going back to IE for a while.

Kelly Lee | September 13, 2008
Yeah, I think I'm done too. Sigh. I just want a browser that doesn't eat all my mem up, and can run well on the sites I frequent. This isn't it. And IE8 beta is broken.

Tony Peters | March 5, 2009
OK I still haven't tried Chrome (since I'm Mac only these days) but the New Safari 4 beta is out and I am sooooooo happy with it, hell even m PC friends seem to really like it

Scott Hardie | June 7, 2009
Chrome continues to be my primary browser, but for every bug they fix, new ones keep popping up. Now it only submits RB concert data successfully about half the time; I submit the form saying what my next move is or what card I want to substitute, and randomly it either works or nothing happens. The best explanation I can find online is that sometimes Chrome won't pass GET and POST data at the same time, which is one bug reported by a user among, I'm sure, thousands of bugs being investigated. GET data is the stuff in the url of the page, like load=chrom for this discussion, and POST is the actual data in the form, like the comment I'm typing right now in this textarea field. Nearly every form on my site uses both elements, and it would take a lot of reprogramming to use only one or the other, so I guess I'm screwed.

Erik Bates | December 8, 2009
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Scott Hardie | December 10, 2009
Chrome Extensions just came out this week too. Between these and the TV commercials, it seems to me like Google is trying to weaken Firefox and become the anti-IE browser of choice. They have an uphill fight if that's the case, but it's possible.

Erik Bates | December 12, 2009
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Scott Horowitz | December 22, 2009
I've switched to chrome officially today... firefox is just not doing it... it likes to not load all the time on win7... and it's a memory hog

Scott Hardie | December 22, 2009
Hooray! I've been a Chrome convert since day one, mostly because I could only cling to IE6 so much longer. I can't stand slow browsers, like IE7+ and Firefox. If I suddenly have an idea to look up, I can whip open Chrome, search for it, and be reading the results before either of those programs would have even finished loading.

My three pet peeves about Firefox in particular:
1) Huge resource hog, making it very slow to open.
2) Constant popup reminders about needing new upgrades of every plugin. These can be turned off on each computer, but I jump around to different computers a lot in my work.
3) Smug attitude from Firefox users, like they're better human beings just because they threw off the IE yoke. I get the same vibe from Mac users sometimes... present company excepted. :-)

Amy Austin | December 22, 2009
Pshhh... you mean you *don't* use Firefox??? La-ame. ;-)

I hate the same things about it that you mention. I've also found that it doesn't allow me to apply for jobs on the DONHR website... a similar issue on the rare site or two where it ignores the fact that I've checked a box in order to continue. I have to use IE for these instances. Plus... I am window & tab crazy... I crash Firefox *all* the time.

Erik Bates | December 22, 2009
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Scott Horowitz | December 23, 2009
what is DONHR????

and Erik... mac sux :)

Tony Peters | December 23, 2009
I used Firefox nearly religiously until I bought my MAC....now Safari suits my needs....there isn't much that I don't know how to do with safari changing to another browser now would require some serious bells and whistles

Department of the Navy Human Resources and that is the one annoying thing I have DONHR doesn't speak any browser except exploder and freaks with my MAC and no scott they don't I would never have been able to work on 100 layer images on a PC regardless of the ram while surfing and listening to music.....MACs rule, now I need to go back to editing video

Tony Peters | February 6, 2011
OK I finally tried Chrome, I downloaded it today and other than an issue with Java support for Mac I am happy its certainly fast and very intuative

Scott Hardie | February 7, 2011
I'm still using Chrome, although it keeps getting slower the more features they add. The latest full release has an app store, which might make sense on a phone or netbook, but doesn't mean much on my desktop PC. I have IE9 beta installed at work and it's very fast, like Chrome in the early days, so I'm increasingly tempted to switch. Too bad my computer at home is nowhere near ready to support it.

Erik Bates | February 7, 2011
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