emotionalmarkup

So I’m typing this post using Google Chrome, which I’ve been using for a few days now and to which, I admit, I’ve taken a shine. It’s easy to be disappointed by a browser - particularly if your benchmark is a customised Firefox with all your favourite tools installed. IE7 was only welcome because it was better than its treacherous little brother. Safari (on Windows) was too slow to load and Apple’s software update tool too arrogant. Opera, well… Opera is just Opera. 

The first thing that will strike you about Chrome is its speed: load time alone is enough make me want to shun Firefox for general browsing, and creating and managing tabs is frightfully snappy. When you open a new tab, Chrome presents you with a search field, your most recent bookmarks and pages visited. It’s like the borg at Google have have read my puny mind!

But what intrigued me from the first moment I laid a cursor on it was Chrome’s process management. Each tab is a new process which can be annihilated without affecting the others. This has already proven triumphant over resource-greedy tards like Acrobat Reader and caters splendidly for my habit of opening 20 bookmarks at a time.

Of course the first thing I do when any new major browser iteration is released is to verify how it renders my favourite websites. Chrome is based on Webkit - thanks, Google!

Okay. So I sound like a lollypop sucking fanboy. It’s not all party hats and fish fingers.

The lack of an ad-blocker is disappointing. It’s strange experience returning to familiar sites without your marketing prophylactic. In Chrome, some of my favourite sites, seemingly aware that they could finally spew their repressed bile at me, shot out banner ads like golf balls at a Japanese driving range.

It also has a simple development tool that comes with a DOM/CSS explorer and JavaScript debugger, which is welcome, but it doesn’t come close to replacing Firebug. Chrome isn’t yet extensible so I think it means that I’ll still have to have two browsers open:

• Chrome for browsing
• Firefox for developing, testing, FTP, Greasemonkey and everything else it does so well

Then there’s the notion of yielding to Google - which I’ve already placed in charge of my email, my calendar, my web search and only sweet Jesus knows what else - the entire range of my web browsing activity. When does it become too much?

It’s clear that Google has big plans for Chrome. It smacks of a base platform to house new and more sophisticated web applications and extensibility is on the cards. At any rate, if Microsoft still harbours any desire to remain in the browser market they’d better pull their fists out. Will the final version of IE8 be a contender? I’d bet no.

But that’s just my opinion. And, now that Google has backtracked on Chrome’s terms of use, it will remain mine.