Another Warrior Into The Fray: Chrome

• General
• Google

So it turns out that while I was gone over the past few days Google decided to release a browser that they had been working on. Most of you know about it by now and most of you have probably already downloaded it to test it out.

I found out about Chrome because of the posts that Garry had made so I decided to download it as well to see what the hype was about. I wish I would have been home while it was released, I heard that Garry had received some insane traffic to his blog when he first wrote about it and I know that he is still receiving traffic about Chrome.

So I thought that I would just share my thoughts real quick on Chrome so far. I like it for the most part and it is extremely fast loading. I somewhat like the layout, not too sure about the tabs being above everything else as I am so used to Firefox having them below everything.  I think Google should let users decide, if other toolbars and such start getting developed for Chrome, it is going to push the tabs further away. That means that you are going to have to move your mouse that much further to get to the tabs, unless Google already has hotkeys for scrolling through the tabs, not sure on that one just yet.

I see that they kept the same feature of being able to open up links and bookmarks in a new tab with the middle mouse button. That is probably the feature that I use most out of any browser and whoever came up with it first deserves a lot of credit. But, I don’t like the fact that I cannot open up the homepage using the home button on the address bar in a new tab. I have to click on the little plus sign to open up a new tab. Plus it doesn’t go to my regular home page instead it lands on the customized home page with the thumbnails and other stuff. Don’t get me wrong, the custom page isn’t bad but if I have my homepage set to a certain site it would be nice if when I opened up a new window that it would open up my homepage.

Oh and I don’t like the status bar that doesn’t reveal the whole URL of the link that you are clicking on. I just like being able to see the full URL of where I am going to instead of seeing about half of it with some links. I am wondering if that will change and if it will be expanded across the entire window. I also like that the main domain name along with the subdomain is darkened up in the address bar compared to the rest of the URL. Gives you a nice separation and lets you see where you are actually at with a quick glance.

The one thing that I could wish for with Chrome right now is that the Web Developer Toolbar could run on it. This is something that makes it a hell of a lot easier to develop a website with and the other features that it provides are just amazing. If Chrome ends up not being able to support the Web Developer Toolbar then I am not sure I will keep it as my main browser. Viewing the source code of web pages in Chrome is a nice feature considering they color coded tags and underlined actual links inside of the source code. Though it would be nice if the source code showed up in a new window instead of a new tab.

I realize that Chrome is still in beta and that there will obviously be some changes to it made in the future but I definitely think that Google is headed in the right direction. Google has a huge user base and if they decided to start promoting Chrome they would have a good chance at competing with Microsoft and Mozilla I think. Overall I am happy with Chrome and I think I will stick with as my main browser unless I am doing some web design work in which I will use FireFox and the Web Developer Toolbar.

• Google Chrome Tips and Tricks
• Cross Browser Testing And Why It Is Important

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