The First Google Chrome Experience

On my way in this morning, on the bus I checked, after all the reports still no sign of Google Chrome, it was supposed to be here but alas noting to look forward to on my last day in at work before some much needed holidays.

I have been reading about this new browser for the last couple of days, and most of the development was delivered in a 35 page story in comic form detailing all the ideas and processes that lead to the new program. It interested me and I couldn’t wait for the release today.

Then I got to my desk, one more check… Wow, the page is now there and the program is ready for download. So that’s exactly what I preceded to do and my first are impressions are as follows…

From Firefox the downloader starts fairly quickly and the installation begins…

The old browser then needs to be closed to import all the settings…

And then, even on my slow old machine, within a couple of minutes it runs…

At this point I can already see this is an application that runs quickly, like a new clean toy without all the bloat-ware, it is clean and polished. So now it’s running, lets go surfing

I have a few regular sites I check, like a newspaper each morning, so lets go through them and see how they present.

Slashdot is my first web site I visit. I was worried for a second, after clicking the bookmark nothing happened for a moment and then things started moving. The page began to load and things popped up, ah it worked.

I saw an interesting status area at the bottom, not a permanent status bar, but an information area that’s less obstructing. Nice move

An article about Mozilla’s POV on Chrome appears, I might be one of the first to download and review this application, and I am sure I wont be the last. Scrolling down the page is very nice, as I said before I have a slow machine at work and I can see page update delays on things like this, this is a very nice app and seems so far to be very well optimised.

Engaget, great all loaded well and this is a heavy CSS site, very quick.

BoingBoing… WOW! That is the quickest I have ever had that load and display, this browser is a treat.

Digg, again very fast and clean.

All the sites that I normally go to are working very well and no sign of delays or screen rendering problems at all.

Lets dig(g) deeper and try some other web features. Our Australian news paper sites and the more dynamic places distribute flash and video streaming and are big circulation items so to give these a go. All work and look fine and again, all running and displaying fast.

I am like a kid in a candy store, looking at everything yet not sure what to pick next.

Ah, my first pause, going to a video link presented me with a pop-up blocker,

I can close it but it gives me little other information. Clicking on the bar area itself though then brings up the pop-out in a window attached to the bar itself, very nice (except it was off the bottom of my screen and I had to drag it up). Then, while writing this blog, the video started and displayed, again perfectly.

I am determined to find a fault, something that breaks my new browser, it has to happen…

As detailed in many articles before, the biggest difference in this browser is the top area presenting the tabs and URL entry. It’s all upside-down from previous ways, but it makes much more sense, the application is a multi-doc program with the tabs the top-most part of breaking up the web pages. Below and within this is the URL areas and technically within this is separate processing of the page content, java and embedded application.

Strangely, the bookmarks area is within and below the tabs and url window. Given the philosophy of the tabs and the way they are in the system, i would have expected the bookmarks to be above this, yet they are within it, strange.

Each of these pages and content and processes are ‘sand-boxed’ to keep them separate and independent. It makes for greater reliability and security as well as being managed into the system better as tabs and pages are removed and added.

At this stage I have done nothing but install the application and try some web sites, sure I have flash, acrobat and media players already installed on my system but I have yet to do any customisation or worry about plug-ins etc.

Configuration Options;

The tabs for the config window include, ‘Basics’, ‘Minor Tweaks’ and ‘Under the Hood’ but all present very basic arrangement of settings and controls that most people will be able to understand if they need to change them.

Also under the configuration icon is a history section showing a list of pages recently visited and easily managed.

There were some other features mentioned in the preceding documentation about sectioning of tabs/windows to be more secure and separate from normal defaults, so it doesn’t record history and the like, I am yet to find how to activate this.

The one last area I want to cover is the URL entry bar, this has been changed from the standards implemented before and it should provide me with ways to easily find urls and historical pages/sites.

By typing in ‘slash’ a list of about 7 items appear, urls or sites that I have visited including of course, slashdot.org, but also I see that this list is updating dynamically from the web to include wikipedia entries and the like. I think this will be a useful tool as it learns your habits and filters results based on your actual needs.

Found it, the ‘New Page’ function includes an ‘Incognito’ window.

 

This makes a quick browsing to banking sites and other places, particularly on a shared computer a must have.

The other feature is a new ‘home’ page which presents a browsing history on loading the application. Now that I have done some surfing, the ‘home page’ is now presented as a quick access site mapper,

So that’s it for now, a quick view of the newest browser on the block, Google Chrome.

Speed: 10 | Reliability: 10 | Functionality: 10