Google Chrome... One week after.

I've now been using Google Chrome for one week. And here is an update on my first impression.

Chrome is still my default browser, this is good :-) The browser did not crash once in that week. And it is almost always open. I use a laptop and shutdown/log off rarely (standby/hibernate most of the time). So I guess I can say that Google Chrome is very stable (better that Firefox). I did not even got one crash in a tab. I really like the speed and responsiveness of Chrome.

Other things I like :

• I assigned a shortcut for GMail. It now lives in its own window. What I like, is that when I'm in the GMail window and press Ctrl-T to open a new tab, instead of opening it in the GMail window, the tab is opened in my browser windows. This is how it should work. Great!
• In the rare cases when I close the browser and reopen it, all my tabs reload quickly without bogging down my system like Firefox did.
• Google Apps works better in Chrome that in Firefox... especially when the browser reload the tab when it's being opened.

All is not nice and dandy in Chrome though, here are some gripes I have with the browser :

• Lack of extensions. They say they will address the issue in a later version. In the meantime, bookmarklets are alleviating a bit the lack of extensions,
• Full page zoom please! The zoom feature of Chrome only increase font size. This is lame. Give me full page zoom like in Firefox 3,
• Directly open PDF and some other file types. When I download some file and the server set the content-disposition to attachment, Chrome absolutely want to save the file. Please give me the option of just opening the file with the associated application (saving it to a temporary location),
• They really should encrypt and password protect saved password. They cannot claim better privacy without this. I feel that should have done it from the start,
• Going to http://askville.amazon.com/ give me a page telling me that I'm not using a supported version of Safari,

• I encountered some layout issues. Most of them are minor. But when I access my internal time-sheet application (Oracle Applications), Some buttons used to submit the time-sheet are invisible.
• First week, first security update... Maybe this should go in part in the pros, but there is no notification (if you leave your browser open all the time) unless you go to the Tools | About Google Chrome menu.

None of the cons are really showstopper for me. So I guess I will continue to use Chrome for a while.

Google Chrome First Impression

Yesterday, Google released their own browser. This release was like a little surprise. While it has been rumoured to be in work for a while, it was announced only the day before.

I don't know how many people downloaded it yesterday, but I'm one of them. I saw the little comic book  explaining how the browser work and wanted to put my hand on the product. After a few hour playing with it, here are y tought on the browser :

• It's fast! Right when you start it, it really scream... It feels faster that Firefox 3. When you click, it looks like your actions are instantanious. For some reason, I'm even able to watch some higher definition movien in Flash that I were constantly pausing when using Firefox 3 (I don't beleive the browser makes Flash run better, but thats the feeling I get). Switching between tabs is also instantanious.
• Damn my screen look larger. The minimalist user interface make your browsing surface a bit larger. Granted, you could do that with IE and Firefox in Kiosk mode. But here, you have no choice... Just a big browsing area.
• Where are my mouse gestures? I was using a mouse gesture extension in Firefox. There seem to be no extensions and no way to write them for Chrome (I'm probably wrong here... I guess the APIs are not realsed yet but they'll be coming in a futher release).
• Better Privacy. Not so fast. They claim better privacy... But their password manager is not encrypted nor password protected! I don't realsy care about the other privacy features they offer. I don't believe they are much better that the ones in Firefox. I don't feel that the Internet is a dangerous place anyway.
• Gears bundled in. The Gears API are natively supported in the browser. They even automatically grant www.google.com the necessary rights. They shouldn't do that. However, they don't grant docs.google.com the Gears rights.
• I already miss extensions.

Overall, I feel this is a solid beta realease. I will keep using Chrome as my default browser for at least a few days. Maybe I'll get back to Firefox to get my extensions back.