Tuesday, September 02, 2008

My Google Chrome first impressions


Google Chrome is a new browser released today by none other than Google themselves. It takes about 30 seconds to download and install, imports all your settings over from Firefox or IE, and looks really sweet.

But here are some issues I have at first glance:

  1. There is no "status bar" area at the bottom of the browser. Instead, when you mouse over a link, a light-blue box appears to show you where the link takes you. Which is all fine and dandy, except that it's quite annoying. It draws my attention to the bottom-left side of the screen when I don't think my attention needs to be drawn there.
  2. No extensions. What are all these ads doing all over the interwebs?! Boo.
  3. I can't move the "Bookmarks" drop down list. It's stuck over on the right side of the page, and I think I'd prefer it on the left. Also, there's no way (as of yet) to manage your bookmarks.
On the other hand, here are some things I really like:
  1. It loads fast. Like really, really fast.
  2. The graphics are clean and slick.
  3. The default "home page" with the 9 of your most visited websites with little thumbnails is quite cool.
  4. You can use the address bar to search Google! It works extremely well.
  5. You can drag & expand form fields to any size you want. This feature has been quite handy in just a couple of hours of use.
  6. You can drags tabs OFF the main browser window to create a brand new window. I've always wanted to do this!
  7. Did I mention it's super fast?
So yeah, go download Google Chrome right now and let me know what you think!

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