Chrome is very much a beta product. It feels like a... Mac kinda browser. You know, browser for regular joe who only checks football scores and Facebook.
This is untrue. With the ability to support multiple windows/tabs extremely quickly/efficiently(And by multiple, I mean hundreds without freaking out in the least), I don't see why this would be a browser catered to a handful of frequented websites.
Just because it's easy to use doesn't mean it's powerless. Shift+esc brings up the Chrome Task Manager, which shows just how much memory, CPU percentage, and Network, Chrome is eating up. Then, if you notice, in the bottom left there's a "Stats For Nerds" link, which will open up a new tab and show some very awesome statistics about the memory. It even will bring up statistics for any other browser you have open! IE, FireFox, and Opera all take similar amounts of memory, with Chrome being on top by just 20 MB for me(The same tabs are open). That's acceptable by anyone's count, unless you're on a computer with 256MB of RAM, in which case you shouldn't be on the DF Forums. Har.
It lacks a lot of very basic options and makes some other option strangely difficult to alter. Furthermore, the bookmarking system in Chrome is completely *new* (note that new here does not denote either good or bad) and as such, you'd probably have to spend quite a while getting used to it.
New bookmarking system? What do you mean? I haven't really noticed anything about it...? It's easier to use and makes more logical sense than any bookmarking system I've seen.
In Opera, when you make a new tab, you can enable this thing called Speed Dial. It shows you 9 open "buttons" you can put a website on. IT's neat because it's customizable.
Chrome has a similar feature, but less useful, in my opinion. It shows you the top 9 most visited webpages. You get repeats, occasionally, and it's based on your history. So if you delete that, then there's no more Top 9. It's aggravating, but it's better than having to type it in everytime, in my opinion.
The one major benefit Chrome has is that because every tab is an individual browser on its own, if one crashes, you won't lose the rest. However, this can seriously eat up your memory if you powersurf and really, if your browser is crashing so often that this is a concern, I think you have bigger problems to worry about.
IE8 uses this separate process for each tab thing, but IE still sucks. In fact, IE8 put in just about EVERYTHING Chrome had made, and bragged about, but IE8 still refused to interpret HTML by the WC3 standards... Now it's an option whether you want IE to interpret it like IE7 or by the standards(Microsoft, you freaking retards. Won't even build an internet browser to properly interpret the building block of the internet until now?).
And like I said, the memory overhead wasn't that much more.
Separating the tabs into separate processes has a lot more advantages than just crash-guarding your other pages. For one, you get to do some really neat things like making new windows entirely by just dragging the tab down. THen you can take other tabs and put it on the new window, too.
Overall, I much prefer Firefox myself based on addons, customizability, and control. Seriously, Firefox is incredible with the addons. Here's what I'm using right now:
<list of addons>
Damnit. You got me here.
Chrome doesn't support very many add-ons yet, but I'm pretty sure that this is just a matter of time, as everything Google does is amazing, user-friendly, extensible, and extremely easy to work with. I'm not too sure if it's open to making add-ons yet, but I'm sure that as soon as it is, you'll see an explosion of replications of FireFox addons, and many, many more.
One obvious benefit that Chrome has(And it's the one that keeps me using it), is how quickly it opens. No other browser can match this, although Opera is pretty close.
I'm sure you've noticed, but when you open IE, you can go make some popcorn, eat it, and start another batch before you can start typing in a URL to visit. FireFox(as of v3) isn't much better. It used to be acceptable, but not so much any more. Opera is pretty quick, taking maybe a maximum of 4 seconds from click-to-type, on a particularly bad day. Chrome is lightning fast. The most I've seen it take is probably 1.5 seconds. When I get the time, I'll time them.
Another thing I've noticed about the speed of Chrome is opening webpages, and handling several different webpages. I did a test at one point to see which one would play 6 youtube videos at the same time the smoothest. Chrome won, being able to play all 6 with no trouble, and quickly. Opera was next, and was only slowed down because it being on one process, I'm sure. FireFox was bad at it, locking the program up several times in jittery bursts, but at least all 6 videos loaded at the same time. IE7 would only load 2 videos at a time. AND it had trouble playing those two at the same time. Not to mention it took me somewhere around 15 seconds to get all 6 tabs open anyway. Apparently opening a new tab in IE freaks it out a little. I just tested out IE8 and it was just barely worse than FireFox. Which is ridiculous because FireFox is still on one process(Come on, IE, you basically invented the internet. Get with the race, here, sheesh.).
Sorry... Haha
/rant
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Topic: Best new browser? (Read 4038 times)