Onward with my exploration of Google Chrome. I haven’t had any problems running Chrome in my day to day. Have I heard of problems? Yes, in fact there have been a couple of security related items that have surfaced . Will I hold that against Chrome- no. No more than I held Firefox 3’s flaws and shortcomings when it was still in Beta. And I won’t hold similar flaws against Internet Explorer 8 either as long as it is in Beta.
I do like the built-in search engine feature. As I type into the address bar, I am given the chance to search for the term. You can change the search engine used within options. In other browsers, I have to use the additional “Search..” box. If nothing else this saves time. Embedded videos from YouTube, Stickam and UStream work as expected. Better in some cases than they do in Firefox and Opera.
The Tabbed browsing is the best among the browsers. The good thing is you can drag a tab off the “Tab bar and it will move into an independent window (opera is the only other browser I use that does this). And you drag it back again to incorporate it into an existing Chrome window. The bad- each tab takes up memory space, so if you have limited memory in your computer this could be a problem. Looking at reports provided by the OS Chrome takes more than Firefox and Opera with a similar number of Tabs running. The theory behind this is that one tab can “crash” without taking the whole browser. Fortunately, I haven’t tested that yet.
So right now, Chrome is a pretty decent browser, with some concerns. I will take issue if Google leaves Chrome in perpetual Beta like they have done with Gmail. There will be a point when Chrome will need to be held to the same standard as others. At this point, it is a strong contender in its current state.
The truth is that right now- IE8 has crashed more than Chrome. IE8 works with some sites that Chrome will not. Minefield (the 64Bit version of Firefox) steps in the way of normal FireFox 3 operation. So all the beta programs I am using are having some issues. Fortunately I can still fall back to using non-beta programs.
Judgement at this point- Chrome is nice, doesn’t add much in the way of headaches, slick UI- looks cleaner and less cluttered than the others even with multiple tabs going. I will continue to use it. Downside- does the world really need another browser?
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