So it looks like Google released their new web browser today.

Google Chrome.

I downloaded it today and have been messing around with it a bit. It has some neat features but I don't think I'm quite ready to leave FF for it yet.

The Good:

• For the most part it has most of the niceties from FF that I've come to love.
  • The keywords for access to quick bookmarks and quick searches.
  • The 'smart' address bar.
  • etc. (e.g. that's all that comes to mind atm D:)
• It has this new task manager feature. Pretty much the windows equivalent but just for Chrome. (if a tab locks up or is acting funny instead of having to reload the browser can just ctrl-alt-delete the one tab)
• It has this seamless feature of being able to move around tabs and pull a tab out into a new window and back in and is done very smoothly.
• The 'view source' implementation makes me drool. One thing I really wish FF had. FF has it but Chrome's looks so much nicer. Lines are numbered and it has syntax highlighting. It's really nice for looking for problems and such on the fly.
• For downloads instead of having a pop-up window it just adds a small bar at the bottom of the page and displays it there. Way smoother than FF.
• The find feature (ctrl + f) is really nicely integrated. Given it's just a little thing, I notice most of the time it's the large amounts of little touches that really make something nice.

Those are the few major things I've run across that come to mind from what I've seen so far.

The not so Good:

• One major thing I'm missing from FF is how they've implemented search engines. They've merged everything into one bar, the address bar. Given it may be simpler I much prefer the separate search engine bar. (this also inadvertently gives you 2 'default' search engines in FF as you can have google on the main address bar and which ever other you prefer to the right)
• Instead of having a bookmarks context menu Chrome just adds a button on the bookmark bar, 'Other Bookmarks', which I'm not a fan of. It crowds the bookmark bar and it's at an odd spot of the screen to access that's kind of a 'reach' to get to.
• From the looks no plugin / addon support. Given it's still in beta and they'll probably add it, it doesn't look like you can get plugins / addons for Chrome right now. That's pretty much a deal breaker for me. I really like No-Script for FF and not having that really sucks.
• No theme / skin support. I really like how FF integrates its self with your os and os / them. Right now Chrome doesn't look terrible but I'm really not a fan of the current style. I wouldn't even mind just a simple option for the time being of having it adapt to your current OS's theme.

From my brief look and just poking around with it, that seems to sum up what I think of it so far. It definitely looks promising and I'm really looking forward to see how it matures.

Tags: Google, Technology, Web