Chrome impressions

Let's start in reverse with my conclusion of Google's browser: I think Chrome is a fine starting point for a browser. I like it well enough to keep it around, but not enough to ditch Firefox. So maybe I'll feel adventurous and fire up Chrome instead of Firefox every now and then. However, it lacks features that I find essential in my browsing habits.

First, the absence of AdBlock is probably Chrome's biggest fault. It's like visiting a completely different internet when you have AdBlock disabled (and that's an internet I don't care to visit). In Firefox, I only whitelist pages in AdBlock that I respect (1UP, Digg, Revision 3), but now I see that the internet I remember from say, 1998, is still alive with Flash ads that aren't far removed from punching monkeys in the face for some inglorious prize.

Secondly, Chrome's version of Firefox 3's "Awesome Bar" isn't quite as good... I like typing in a couple of letters that correspond to a bookmark and having that show up first instead of "Search Google for..." Combining the search bar and the address bar in Chrome is something I'm not a fan of. I use the Google, Wikipedia and YouTube search engines all the time in Firefox and taking that away disrupts my browsing habits greatly.

The third item on my agenda that greatly throws me off is not being able to middle-click and have the mouse do auto-scrolling by having the mouse pointer above or below that click point. I guess I've gotten so "lazy" that I don't like bothering to physically scroll through an article to read it. If you've ever had to use a mouse without a scroll wheel, you'll have a feeling for what that's like.

The absence of a built-in spellchecker is also missed in applications such as e-mail and the writing of this blog post. I don't see any option for add-ons within Chrome, so even the idea that it only has "what you need" is a misgiving. I do think that Firefox has acquired a little bloat through the years and Chrome almost feels like a "lite" version of that, but without the option to add what you need (AdBlock, spell check, download manager support), it also feels limiting.

I do, however, like the interface. The absence of the file menu and having the tabs above the address bar is something so minor, but it somehow works for the betterment of the whole. Being able to detach a tab and make it its own window or to merge windows into tabs is a very slick feature that I'd like to see in Firefox.

It's also a very speedy browser. The only thing that it doesn't seem to do as good as Firefox is Flash video. However, this could be just because of the current programs and whatnot that I've had running while using Chrome versus Firefox. Maybe I'm wrong, but so far all my Flash videos stutter in Chrome, whereas they're normal in Firefox.

At any rate, it's just another reason that Internet Explorer should go in a corner and quietly die.

Edit: Check out Ars Technica's review of Chrome. Until reading it, I didn't even realize that Chrome left out RSS!