My experiences with Google Chrome
Posted by Tariq • Thursday, January 8. 2009 • Category: Computers
On September 1, 2008 Google announced a A fresh take on the browser. I greeted this news enthusiasticly; some people believed that google was mobilizing to crush Microsoft in an all out internet browser war. At the same time Firefox crackpots (I am nearly one :op) riled at how inferior Google Chrome was or still *is* -- what no browser extensions? I decided to hold back on what I thought and give it a fair chance.
In the first week in September I decided to use no other browser (where possible) other than Google Chrome and used it so extensively that I wrote a dangerous patch for Moodle to work with Chrome. Chrome fixed two things I hated about Firefox 2:
So Google Chrome is good. In fact its more, its bloody brilliant. And I feel this can be said loudly even though I don't use it any more and let me explain why. Firstly I hate the source code view, it doesn't show me the HTML which is actually on the page and that's no good to me. Secondly, when I hit CTRL+F I can't search for text in textareas -- quite annoying. Thirdly, I miss my plugins; when I went back to Firefox I started with FF3 and absolutely required Tabs Open Relative to be able to surf normally again. Finally, Firefox 3 crashes less and I have enough RAM (8GB) to never care about memory consumption.
So why do you think Chrome is brilliant if it can't do simple things which are pretty important for developers? Well because my Mom no longer thinks the blue E on her Netbook's desktop is the internet. She likes it and yet shuns Firefox. I am not sure why, it is just what has happened. And it is not just her lots of people like her love Chrome. On Netbooks I found Chrome edged Firefox anyway because it only used the memory it needed, quite imported for cheap laptops with limited RAM; perhaps time for some über minimal version of Firefox?
In the first week in September I decided to use no other browser (where possible) other than Google Chrome and used it so extensively that I wrote a dangerous patch for Moodle to work with Chrome. Chrome fixed two things I hated about Firefox 2:
- When pressing CTRL and clicking a link in tab X a new tab Y opens next to tab X; very simple change, but makes so much sense.
- I like to open tabs and close tabs. I don't like closing the browser, ever. So when Firefox is still eating 400mb of RAM and the only page open is Apache's It works! page that's really annoying.
- Stupid quicktime plugin (or others) errors take down the entire Firefox process. This annoys me a lot especially when writing a wiki article, which hasn't been saved yet, and some silly applet or video takes down the browser. AAaarrrgggh!
So Google Chrome is good. In fact its more, its bloody brilliant. And I feel this can be said loudly even though I don't use it any more and let me explain why. Firstly I hate the source code view, it doesn't show me the HTML which is actually on the page and that's no good to me. Secondly, when I hit CTRL+F I can't search for text in textareas -- quite annoying. Thirdly, I miss my plugins; when I went back to Firefox I started with FF3 and absolutely required Tabs Open Relative to be able to surf normally again. Finally, Firefox 3 crashes less and I have enough RAM (8GB) to never care about memory consumption.
So why do you think Chrome is brilliant if it can't do simple things which are pretty important for developers? Well because my Mom no longer thinks the blue E on her Netbook's desktop is the internet. She likes it and yet shuns Firefox. I am not sure why, it is just what has happened. And it is not just her lots of people like her love Chrome. On Netbooks I found Chrome edged Firefox anyway because it only used the memory it needed, quite imported for cheap laptops with limited RAM; perhaps time for some über minimal version of Firefox?
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