Google Chrome: First impressions
matthewbuckland.com
matthewbuckland.com
Well, others did think of this. In particular, the comic book guy looks like Aza, and talks like him too. The things Aza suggested are a little more complicated behaviorally, too; they're context sensitive.
http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/new-tabs/ http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/firefox-google-chrome-new-ta...
The "new tab page" is Opera's "Speed Dial" with a twist.
Does Firefox have that even as an add-on? Maybe they haven't realized it's an idea worth copying - but Google did.
I love what Aza writes about, but thus far he's shown himself to be much better at conception than at implementation. Even Songza, which is a neat concept and works nicely, doesn't fare well against much uglier sites such as Skreemr. While I read his blog, I do it for his ideas: not because I think he'll ever implement what he talks about.
Maybe his "new tab page" was really an idea he had come up with on his own, without seeing Speed Dial.
But maybe he had seen it, and just wanted to play a visionary to the Firefox crowd.
It's mildly annoying to watch Firefox users admire Chrome's version of Speed Dial.
It's kind of funny. He's the very definition of a nutty professor. He's obviously quite brilliant at what he does, and yet there have been a few cases in which he seems completely unaware of what's going on around him.
He can be forgiven, though, because of Bloxes.
1. "It's not evil." Okay, because it asks if you want a different default search engine, it's not evil. You're entitled to your opinion.
2. "It’s fast, minimalist and clean." Right, but it's not that much faster, it's ugly, and it doesn't look native to Windows. Why?
3. "It loads up quickly." I really have never had trouble loading Firefox. Plus, I do it so infrequently that the startup costs just don't matter.
4. "It seamlessly and quickly imported my bookmarks and passwords from Firefox." Every browser should do this. And I believe most popular ones do.
5. "I love the 3D, industrial Chrome icon and logo." Okay. But seriously, if the logo is one of the top things you can say about a browser, the browser might be in trouble.
6. "You can open a window in incognito mode, just a right click." Incognito is fairly neat, but really, it doesn't make a huge difference to me. I'll never use it.
7. "A quick right click on any area of the page and selecting 'inspect element' allows you to see the code behind it." As you say, Firefox has this. One thing that might make this better, which I haven't checked, is if it shows the _actual source_, rather than a reversed-engineered source based on the DOM like Firefox does.
8. "On startup you can set it to open multiple homepages" Firefox also supports this. Not a new feature.
9. "Choose a new tab and you get option to select from your most visited sites." I do like the visual representation -- good feature. Perhaps other browsers haven't done this because they haven't had Incognito? This feature might actually necessitate Incognito.
10. "Task manager pretty cool for the multiple window & tab freaks." Honestly, I can't even figure out how to open the Task Manager, so I really have no opinion on this other than it might be neat if I could figure it out.
My guess is there's a lot of Google kool-aid being drunk on this one and that if it were developed by anyone else, it would be shoved to the bottom of the news and never talked about.
My opinion? I'll stick to Firefox, thanks.
1. TBD
2. It is that much faster. Check out a couple of the benchmark links in other HN Chrome stories.
3. It does load quickly. Much faster than FF3 on my machine. I have 2 addons (Firebug, Web dev). I also don't keep browsers around all day. I like to break them up into sets of tasks and when all my tasks are done, I tend not to have any browsers left open. Launch speed is extremely important.
4. Importing could still use some work though. Try reorganizing favorites from another browser after importing. It's cumbersome.
5. Non-factor
6. Just because you won't use it doesn't mean it's not a big deal
7. I think this was mentioned because it exists on Day 1. Safari for Windows lacked dev features when it was first launched. So stuff like this is notable.
8. By mentioning that it exists, he's avoiding the inevitable "Chrome doesn't have X" complaints
9. It's a nice feature. Nicer than I thought. IE8b2 launched with something similar last week but Chrome does it better
10. Shift-Esc or under the wrench menu. The "Stats for nerds" page also shows memory usage in your other open browsers. That's cool.
1. What DOES make it evil, then? Frankly, I don't care if it DOES start you off with Google. I think it would still count as "not evil."
2. It's much faster at running sites in parallel. It's not ugly. Are you kidding me? This is the most aesthetically pleasing browser I've used. Soft colors, emphasis in all the right areas. And it has native open/close buttons. Windows itself doesn't use consistent design other than those buttons, so it all works.
3. Look at the benchmarks. Firefox has had a problem with this. And it's a problem that's been pretty consistent.
I must ask, though: why the hell are you griping about this? If you like Firefox more, you can use Firefox. When you respond to a review of something, it ought to be because you've got important points to make. Like my explaining why a lot of your points are bogus. Griping for the sake of gripe is helping nobody, least of all you.
4. So you're mad at him for saying that he likes things moving seamlessly? And this did away with the opening dialog box that Firefox and Safari offer on Windows, so it's slightly improved.
5. He doesn't rank things. He points out things that he likes. Informally. Almost like, rather than writing an article, he's writing a sort of log of points. A "web log."
6. Again: a lot of people like incognito. Especially single people aged 16-22, in my experience. I also thought the little magnifying glass guy was cute.
7. But not out of the box. And having a light-weight checker is always nice.
Also - can't you CHECK things because you write posts like this? Honestly. Do some firsthand reporting.
8. No, but Google makes it a lot more transparent. And the blank opening page is pretty awesome. I'd say it even tops Opera's.
9. What does Incognito have to do with anything? This is based on Opera's Speed Dial, but it's a bit more complex.
10. So, this browser has two buttons - TWO - for opening menus. That's it. And Task Manager happens to be on the first one, underneath Developer, which was the first place I checked, because it made logical sense.
"My guess..." etc.
There is no Google Kool-Aid. Most people I know are actually pretty critical of Google. I've been displeased with a lot of their stuff lately. Doesn't change the fact that this browser is sublime and better than anything else currently on the market out-of-the-box. They even topped Safari, and Safari had a damn good out-of-the-box showing, even on Windows. I'd pick this on Windows over Webkit on Mac, actually, which is saying a lot.
You can stick to Firefox. This article doesn't talk about how much better Chrome is than Firefox. You're just acting defensive, because something groundbreaking just hit. Fair enough, but please do it in private rather than as a comment. If you've got actual criticisms of this thing, I'd love to hear them.
Also the article wasnt a comparison to FF or Opera... I wasn't necessarily only pointing out unique features.
And lastly, i dig that logo..
Thanks for your comments on my blog
Matt
It's okay. I have faith in Google. They are happy and love me.