Google Chrome – Why I Hate It And Continue To Use It | Hacker News Reader

Google Chrome – Why I Hate It And Continue To Use It

jtaby.com

101 pointsjtaby107 comments

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.

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.

You mean it's missing? Like, flat, instead of gradient? I can see that... Not sure I'd complain much, though.

And you just moved the goal posts.

So I got downvoted.

Where the original goal would be being free of issues (or "Everything looks fine") with respect to the attention to detail regarding the gradient, and the new position is no longer being free of issues, but not enough of a personal nuisance for wccrawford to cause him or her to "complain much".

I'm still not sure that it needed to be spelled out like that.

I probably should have refrained from adding my personal opinion. I don't disagree that it should be fixed. I only interjected that I didn't think it was much of a priority.

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.

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.

I'm using chromium 13.0.759.0 on OSX and I don't see this issue either, the gradient looks fine. Not that a gradient in the developer tools could overshadow all the positives of chrome.

It is quite obvious that the article compares Chrome against Safari. This makes you objection to point 5 invalid, since Safari uses a search bar, not a search dialog and the thing you think is missing in the list of good points is something Safari has had forever.

> 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.

I'm having trouble figuring out what you're talking about here. "All other browsers"? Safari and Firefox did away with the old big and centered find-in-page dialog box; they both use a find bar. I just downloaded Opera and checked it, too. It also uses a bar.

Regarding "rendered useless [in]… all other browsers", neither Opera nor Firefox obscure any part of the page with their find bars. Safari temporarily obscures the part of the page that exists in the space where the find bar appears, but still lets you scroll up to reveal that part if you really need to.

I realize people form an emotional attachment to their software of choice and get defensive, but ease up. This is baseless stuff you're speaking here.

The author's coming from Safari, where the search field is integrated into the page yet doesn't obscure content. It's a very well done implementation that doesn't suffer the problems of Chrome's overlay tab or a search dialog.

Also, Safari has resizable text boxes. I agree, they're wonderful.

Still can't copy and paste images from Chrome to anything else on the Mac.

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.

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

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Hm. I don't know that this is a defense either - but this design decision was at least made deliberately, with awareness of the trade-offs involved.

" The find bar is presented as an overlay in order to prevent page relayout when the bar is shown or hidden. If the text the user is looking for is under the bar, it will scroll the page, or slide out of the way."

http://www.chromium.org/user-experience/find-in-page

There seems to be a consistent, understandable aversion to pop up windows within Chrome. Excepting the Downloads bar, there also seems to be an aversion to shrinking the display area of the screen. Putting the Find in Page UI overlaying the site causes the browser to show more of the page than if it shifted the page down, something that is clearly a high priority for them (see the Status bar for an example).

Every design involves compromise. I think I prefer the way Chrome went on this one.

But if you're searching for specific content it seems to fall into two categories:

A) The content _is_ the UI element that's being covered and the search box moves out of the way.

B) The content _is not_ the UI element that's being covered and you are looking to find something else on the page.

I don't leave the "Find on Page" box open when I'm normally using a page. So when searching I'm not really interacting with that UI, and when not searching it isn't being obstructed... so does this really constitute a UX issue?

There's one detail ignored here. You hint at it when you say that, regarding yourself:

> I don't leave the "Find on Page" box open when I'm normally using a page.

(emphasis mine)

When you have the find UI open and you click on a link within the page, the find UI disappears when it navigates to the new page.

This allows you, for example, to open the find UI and use it until you've reached your goal, then promptly drop the find UI from your mind, focusing on your new goals. It's not necessary to focus back on the find UI to consciously close it. Eventually, it gets "garbage collected", to use an analogy.

But under certain conditions, this isn't the case. The conditions are when one of the page elements you would come to interact with—without otherwise ever needing to bring the find UI back to the forefront of your mind—is obscured. You must now focus back on the find UI, close it, then switch back to whatever you were trying to do.

Alright, I can see the case where someone doesn't habitually close it and stumbles upon a site where it is obscuring. It seems rather mild to me, but I guess I could regard that as a UX failing.

The only solutions that immediately come to mind:

A) Place the "Find on Page" box at the bottom of the window.

Advantages: It would get out of the way for the common practice of placing web UI at the top of the viewing pane. Also the tradition of putting other UI elements at the bottom (namely the download bar comes to mind) means that it wouldn't be too unfamiliar.

Drawbacks: This _would_ put it rather far from it's omnibox UI-sibling and the rest of the prefs UI, breaking some of the association for the UX. It doesn't resolve the problem of UI elements being obscured the bottom of the viewing pane.

Seen also in: I know at least Firefox does this.

B) Have the "Find on Page" UI element displace the page so as to not cover any page UI while "active"

Advantages: Won't cover UI. Potentially more room for search terms.

Drawbacks: Takes up more screen real estate.

Seen also in: I know at least Firefox does this as well.

Alright, so those are potential solutions... what I'm more interested in are the ones I _haven't_ thought of. Does anyone in the HN community have a brilliant solution for how to deal with designing a "Find on Page" UI?

Another approach could be something that sort of resembles B.

When the find UI opens, it has the same effect as displacing the page, the way full-width find bars do. The difference would be that the UI stays as it is and isn't changed into a full-width find bar. The null space to the left and right of the find bar would still allow whatever it's overlaying to shine through.

The only move to make now is figuring out what happens when the user isn't sufficiently scrolled down far enough, i.e., the null space around the find UI when the user is scrolled to the very top of the page is actually void space. What do you put there? I suggest silently[1] extend the scrollable area of the page by adding a quasi-content area. It's quasi-content because it's not actually part of the page--it's just part of the scrollable area. It pulls its color/background pattern from the page's background style.

Another approach would just be to have the find UI extend into the browser chrome, temporarily shrinking the location bar.

[1] being careful here not to set off any events or changing the way, e.g., event coordinates look to script on the page

Worst of all is that closing the downloads bar actually makes the browser window smaller!

It actually doesn't -- or at least, it doesn't seem to on the Dev Channel or Canary. If there's enough screen real estate, the downloads panel grows out of the bottom of the window, and shrinks away when dismissed. The viewport retains the same dimensions before and after.

If there isn't enough space below the window, the panel does indeed overlay the bottom ~47px of content, but in that case, dismissing it doesn't change the size of the window, restoring the viewport to its previous size.

That's the most frustrating thing about Chrome: it's inconsistently polished, and in many cases, it feels like its relationship to ChromeOS is akin to the tail wagging the dog.

Making the browser window smaller after closing the downloads bar is actually a bug, it doesn't do this on other platforms. I think this is fixed in the newest dev builds.

In regards to #1 - I'm not sure what you mean by "manage".. the 3 places cater to 3 distinct use-cases -

- The downloads bar works in the 90% use case - we just want to download something and open it. When you click a download(s) in the bar, the bar closes after the download is complete.

- The dock icon lets you know how the download is going, when you're in another app / away from the browser.

- The download tab gives you your complete download history, for when you want to look back for old downloads.

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

My bookmarks bar looks quite similar. In fact, this is the main reason I'm using Chrome instead of Safari, though I really like the new features in Lion and therefore think about a new way to organize my bookmarks.

Personal taste, I guess. I find your browser setup very distracting.

I imagine it would be distracting to someone who doesn't use it daily. For me, I know where everything is and what it does. It's optimized for efficiency, not cleanliness. Bookmark buttons are grouped by subject (mail, links, security & coding, humour, news, info, music, tv & video) and I know what each favicon is for. It saves me having to type the first few letters of a given URL, which works for me.

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?

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.

Firefox has been experimenting with autocompletion, it might make it into a future version. https://mozillalabs.com/prospector/2010/10/27/navigate-the-w... 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...

My only usage for a bookmark bar is for javascript bookmarks such as readability and HackemUp

These are 'bookmarklets' and can be accessed through the normal bookmarks window (or bookmarks pane) as well.

Damn dude, I do the same thing, just not as.... extreme. Been using FF4 a bit lately, once Firefox gets tab/process separation I think I'm going to be on my way back there. I miss noscript like nothing else.

Here's mine, I've been having a fun time trying to figure out half of your bookmark bar, damn man.

http://i.imgur.com/mLKd5.png

From the left:

Gmail

Google Torrent search

Google Reader

Hotmail (requires me to log in every 30 days to keep forwarding to gmail)

Facebook

Canucks Forum

UVic website

Popurls

StumbleUpon

Hacker News

Slashdot

H-Online/Security

Intern0t

Stack Overflow

programmers.stackexchange

Cracked

College Humor (never visit, since removed)

xkcd

Cyanide & Happiness

Penny Arcade

Dilbert

SMBC

ZDNet

Ars

Wired

Engadget

TechCrunch

Al Jazeera English

The Onion

CBC

/b/

wikipedia watchlist

Wolfram Alpha

Grooveshark

Pitchfork

SurfTheChannel

Sidereel

Youtube

TPB

Torrent Butler

----------------

I have a bunch of individual pages favorited in a number of areas, but those are the ones I visit frequently.

Edit: It's times like these I wish HN used Markdown, so I could compact this into a table. Sorry for taking up so much room.

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

To be safe, shouldn't all photos posted on the Web use sRGB? Using any other profile seems like asking for trouble and loss of dynamic range.

That's what they used to say about the "web-safe" color palatte, but I was hoping we'd put that problem behind us (along with avoiding alpha channels in PNGs and fixed background images).

Well it certainly hasn't been standard for all that long. I do not have dates handy, but I can remember a time in the not too distant past where Safari was the only browser that processed color profiles. It was actually a huge pain in the ass because you'd think something was working correctly and then later realize you hadn't stripped the color profile when you loaded it in Safari.

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?

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

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

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.

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-...

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.

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.

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).

>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...

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.

> 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.)

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.

Definitely a window manager issue. On Windows 7, the space between the tab and the top edge is 18px, which is plenty thick.

"..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.... I think it's taken all the good stuff of chrome's tab bar without the bad.

> 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

you can always use LastPass, seriously, it would be like their motto says: The Last Password You'll Have to Remember!

just out of curiosity, why the downvotes?

Chrome seems to remember passwords just fine for me on Windows 7. But I don't like the fact that you can't set a master password. Yes, I understand that storing password in the browser is not exactly full of win. So I only use it for non-critical stuff, but I still don't want all that non-critical stuff open to anyone who sits down at my PC. It get's worse if you sync passwords between two devices. When some dude steals your laptop all of a sudden he has easy access to your Facebook, Twitter and HN goodness. Ouch.

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.)

> 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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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

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.

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!

> 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.

> 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.

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

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.

Actually, that was on the New Tab page, not on Hacker News itself... And it was pointed out that it's easily fixable, and they haven't done it. They actually tried to anti-alias it, but failed to give it a background color, so it doesn't work correctly.

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.

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

Agreed. The author has way too much time on his hands.

I _have_ been unemployed for a week.

Submit your resume to the Chrome team, then you can fix all this stuff. :)

I wouldn't say it is a waste of time to read, but the author does seem to complain about a lot of things that just don't matter to most people.

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...

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

"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.

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.

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?

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.)

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.

My friend's written a small Chrome extension which implements MRU tab order - let me know if you're interested, I'll get him to share :)

Does it hook Control - Tab? My understanding is that as of Chrome... 5 or 6, I believe, the ability to hook default keyboard shortcuts was disabled, as a security measure.

I'd be interested enough to take a look. Thanks!

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

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

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.

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

TL;DR

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