1. A week with Google Chrome

    In the five years that I’ve used a Mac, I’ve had two browsers of choice: Camino, and then with Safari 3’s arrival Safari. I know that folks swear by Firefox, but I don’t - and typically find myself swearing at Firefox. Whilst the Mozilla folks have done a fine job of making it look like a Mac app, it never seems for feel and behave like a Mac application. Part of my Safari preference is that I also have a teeny bit of a crush for WebKit, the engine that powers Safari with its CSS animations and long-supported (much clichéd) rounded corners.

    In a quick trawl through my Applications folder last weekend, I happened to come across a rather old Chrome OS X Developer Preview that I’d downloaded and promptly forgotten about. Purely out of curiosity I ran it, made sure it was up to date, and started using it.

    I haven’t stopped since.

    Some Observations

    1. It’s fast. Lightning fast - I thought Safari was snappy (and compared to Firefox and Camino, it is) but Chrome is screaming in comparison.
    2. Top tabs - I was probably in the minority to mourn their demise in the final Safari 4 release, but it’s great to have them back. The behaviour of Chrome’s “Open in New Tab” option is also fantastic: when opening links in a new tab, the tab opens alongside the existing tab you’re working in. Safari adds tabs after the right-most tab, whereas Chrome’s option groups the links together, easily allowing you to return to your original tab.
    3. It’s super-stable - it’s not crashed or hung on me in a week - and it’s still not entered Beta. Take that, Safari.
    4. The combined search / address field - I find myself still hitting Tab, expecting it to focus a search box, but another few days use should cure that.
    5. It’s WebKit - enough said.

    The bit where I whinge about some minor issue

    Whilst Chrome looks and feels like a Mac application, there’s one striking annoyance that irritates me: the behaviour when you click on a Folder in the Bookmark bar. In any other browser, it behaves as an OS X menu should. That is, no matter where you click the item, the menu should appear in a fixed location, below the menu item in question. OS X’s default contextual menus appear directly below and to the right of the area you click.

    As it stands right now - and shown in the above comparison - Chrome’s bookmark folders behave like a contextual menu (despite also having their own contextual menus), and it’s driving me a little crazy. Yes, Chrome remains in Pre-Beta - and these things can change - but it’s details like this that make or break whether an application feels like a Mac application. Never mind if an app’s got aqua buttons, a sexy HUD or any other aesthetic beauty. It’s all about how an application behaves. If you’re curious, I’ve filed this as an issue on the Chromium project bug tracker.

    If you’re wanting to give Chrome a go, it’s available from the Chrome Developer Channel. It’s still pre-beta, however in my experience it seems to be more relating to its feature-incomplete state than anything else. I’ve been using the Chrome Preview non-stop for the past week, and you’ll have to pry it out of my cold, dead hands.

    Side-note: If you’re a LittleSnapper fan, whilst we don’t have full Chrome support in the application yet, there’s a bookmarklet you can use to snap from Chrome. All the details are here.

    Posted on Saturday December 5th, 2009