Not another Chrome review!

Speed

Chrome is amazingly fast, thanks to integration of V8, which causes all Javascript to run way faster, an order of magnitude from FireFox 3.0 or Opera (which is pretty fast too, but much slower than Chrome). Trailing is IE8 Beta 2.

There's another trick the speed here, they appear to be compiling Javascript, which is a brilliant idea. It makes Javascript a whole lot faster when it's compiled. Something everyone should have done a million years ago.

Standards compliance

I don't know if anyone else said this, but I didn't read it anywhere yet, Google Chrome FAILED the ACID2 test (while FireFox and IE8B2 passed)

No title bar

This is one feature I have been SHOUTING to all the developers of FireFox, IE and Opera, PLEASE remove all the wasted stupid space that no one uses and GIVE ME my screen back! It's enough that individual web pages have tons of stupid ads that block me from the main content. Now I have to sacrifice 10px for stupid borders. Take them off .. ALL OFF!

Chrome is so minimalistic that it doesn't even have a border on the sides or bottom. That's AWESOME!

And yeah, I know I am running IE or FIREFOX, do you HAVE TO say that in EVERY window you create!!? Bravo Chrome!

Isolated Tabs

Nice touch, the tabs are completely isolated and each one runs in it's own sand-box. Which means, if one tab slows down, crashes or has malware running it will not affect any other tab. (I love this feature!!)

Nice use of pictograms for addition coolness, with Animation!

Downloads show an animated down arrow, and park on the bottom of your browser window for later use. Crashed tabs show a little mac-like icon indicating there was a crash. Even crashed plug-ins show a thick gold bar on the top of the browser with a sick-mac-like pictogram indicating that the plug-in has crashed

(yes, I crashed the browser, and the plug-ins too :))

Setup, installation and migration

Setup went pretty fast on XP and Vista. On other OSes it didn't go that well. Funny how it went really well from FireFox but not from IE. (remember this later on)

Migration was so quick and transparent. Passwords, favorites ..etc were all moved without much of a flicker!

Cool Textarea size override

This is one awesome feature, if you find the text box too small, you can now drag it to any size you want. Apparently it overrides html and allows the user to resize the boxes. Which is awesome because now you don't need Ajax to do this same thing

Highlighted input boxes/textareas

This is nice! You no longer need to highlight the field the user is typing in. This is marginal change, but it looks really good. Especially on those really dark blogs with dark input boxes

Built in spell checking

Just like Firefox 3.0 spell check is built in. Every Textarea, every string input. But there's one problem. It doesn't work inside iFrame which totally sucks because TinyMCE and other WYCIWYG editors all run in an iframe they use to override the textarea with

No real "zoom" features

CTRL-Mouse Scroll up and down or CTRL-+ and CTRL-(-) no longer zoom in and out (like IE7,IE8 and FireFox), instead you get the IE6 effect of text larger, text smaller. (not cool)

Middle Mouse click to scroll does nothing

In IE or FireFox, if you click the scroll button you get to move your mouse around while it scrolls around the page (excellent for long pages). Chrome lacks this functionality

No ActiveX support

Yeah, so don't think it will work with your corporate application. Right now, only IE is blessed (or is it cursed?) with ActiveX plug-ins

Cool shortcut keys:

CTRL-W still closes the window. CTRL-H for history in a nice Web display, CTRL-D for downloads and CTRL-B to toggle bookmarks on or off. CTRL-F to search within the page (more details below), CTRL-U to view source of the page (like FireFox)

Cool in-page search

Google, the search giant of course had to take that to the desktop. The new search box is part of the frame of Chrome, always hidden until you click CTRL-F or F3.  Then you will be given some basic statistics like. How many times the search object repeats in the page ...etc. It also automatically highlights the search term. And the coolest thing ever, it shows you where it is in the scroll bar by adding a little dash on the scroll bar. I found that cute!

Uses IE settings?

If you try to setup proxy information for your browser. Somehow it opens Internet Explorer's connection UI. 

Uses only ONE text input field

So if you're entering a URL like http://blog.sweetestmemories.com or Memories documented, you will get suggestions to get to the right place. Which is really cool!

Built in debugger similar to firebug

Want to view the source? Simple CTRL-U. Want to see more details on the elements in the page? Right-click and select "inspect"

Blank page is really not blank!

The best use of blank page is to display something the user "might" be looking for like, most recently/frequently visited sites. And that's exactly what is displayed in the blank page. But not just the page, but a miniature picture of it. Which is really cool! It will save the diehards a few keystrokes to get to their favorite site!

Looks like IE!

This is the selling point of Chrome in my book. The way it renders the pages is VERY similar to what IE does. In fact, I totally believe that had FireFox done this step in the past, they might have took over IE's share by now! Even though Chrome uses Webkit which supposed to render like Safari, it actually didn't render like Safari. It rendered more like IE. That's what I've been saying all along. The browser needs to be forgiving for sloppy web developers.

But still, it failed to render the dialog boxes for TinyMCE correctly, and I had to fish around looking for the buttons (which were on the bottom) to click them

Weird UI

Now the UI of the frame itself is completely different than IE, and diverges from Microsoft's philosophy of providing you with everything at your fingertips. This might not be convenient for all users

Small footprint

It took less than 1 minute to download the whole thing. Why did it take IE8 46 minutes to download is completely beyond me! But IE8 did something no other browser did. It checked my computer for viruses and malware in a special mode. So I'd give it that!

In Memory, it takes at most less than half that of IE. Which is another indication to how bloated IE is! Damn legacy!

Tiny status bar

This is so amazing. When you hover over a link or something. You see the details in a tiny strip at the bottom of the browser window that is barely visible unless you're looking for it. Awesome! Give me back those 10 pixels but don't take away my functionality!

Browse in private

Similar to IE8's inPrivate feature. Chrome has a mode where it will not remember anything. Not the history, not the cookies or anything from a session.

Smart progress indicator

When you're sending a request the progress indicator slowly rotates counterclockwise while receiving from the server, it rotates rapidly clockwise. Brilliant!

Poor security

Yep, just as with any quick to prototype project. Security vulnerabilities started surfacing only HOURS after the release! But, that's the nature of the beast! Chrome by default suffers from the same issues that Safari (another browser relying on Webkit) suffers from. Lets not call it Poor security, but rather, unproven security

Compatibiliy issues

Many sites are not rendering correctly. Many of the older sites are showing wierd UI and become totally unusable at times.

Conclusions

I am totally in love with Chrome, in fact, it has replaced all my other browsers as my #1 browser. I'm already using it alone on all my machines

The next battle in the browser world is gearing up right now. It will be between Chrome and IE. With Chrome doing to FireFox what IE did to Netscape Navigator. The battle is going to rage between IE and Chrome. With each side adding features to better compete for the hearts and minds of the users. Microsoft is going to rely on it's monopoly in the desktop field to get more people onto IE. While Google is going to rely most on it's monopoly in the search business to push Chrome. At the expense of everyone else. Soon the "reclaim the web, use FireFox" buttons are going to be showing Chrome. Across millions of sites.

One thing is certain. When these big players fight... we "the users" win!

PS, for the stupid people in the Google commercial claiming that browsers are doing things now that they were not designed to do. Please shut-up before you look more stupid than you are. Web-Chat was introduced in 1997. Web-Videos in 1999. So excuse me, there isn't a single browser that doesn't support these features, unless you're comparing Chrome to text based Lynx. Exactly what happens when you ask a developer with still developing human skills to do marketting!