There was something about the reviews of Google’s Chromium browser, when the beta was released in September last year, that failed to excite.  I recall its cleaner, simpler window style, but that was about it.  And, back then, I didn’t view Google as a personal software company; their expertise was on the web, not on the client.   It certainly wasn’t enough to tempt a confirmed Firefox user to switch browsers.

At that time I’d been a happy Firefox user for years.  I liked its user interface, the wide range of plugins, the online support community, the fact that it’s open source and, well, that it isn’t IE.  On the downside, Firefox did sometimes take ages to load but, once loaded, it generally ran smoothly and quickly enough.

So, I forgot about Chromium and lived my online life in Firefox for another year or so.

Opinions change

In the meantime, my perception of Google, the Company, changed.  I’d had a Google account for a few months, initially for Google Mail  (being in the UK, we’re not supposed to call it “Gmail”) and the excellent Google Reader.

My Google Mail account started out as a throw away mailbox for web registrations, if spam ever became an issue.  Thankfully, Google’s excellent spam filtering meant I saw very little actual spam.  At the time my main email was with my ISP, forwarded via a personal web domain, but I wanted to change ISPs and saw the opportunity to improve the way email works for me and for others in my household.  We now all have our own Google Mail accounts, mine being my original “throw away” account, all forwarded from the original web domain.  We’re all agreed the Google Mail web UI is so nice and the new web-based email freedom is so much better than the old POP3 download approach.  This did a lot to raise my opinion of Google, the Company.

Over the same period, I had become interested in some of Google’s other cloud-based offerings such as Google Docs and App Server.  (From other posts in this blog you’ll see further Google-related interests.)  I’d also viewed the Wave presentations from the May 2009 I-O event and heard about things like Google Gears and its  support for HTML 5 and Web 2.0.  I’d installed the Firefox Gears plugin for improved functionality in some of the Google online apps.

Time to give Chrome a try

During the summer, Google announced a new public release of Chrome, a stable version of the open source Chromium web browser.  I was a little more interested in this now, and thought, “yes”, I’ll give it a try sometime, but not right now. I was still a happy Firefox user (aside from the slow start up).

Then, for reasons I never discovered, I had problems with some Google Docs functionality, notably the inability to edit documents.  It was quite a show-stopper.  I’d come to rely on Google Docs and so, against all my instincts, I reluctantly tried IE.  It worked!  I could do everything I needed to in my Google Docs.  But it was IE… there had to be a better way!

Like a light from above, I remembered Chrome.  It installed in no time and started up in about two seconds flat.  It was love at first sight.  The UI is so clean.  Minimalist, even.  The main thing was, my Google Docs functionality was all OK, too.  Problem solved.

Getting to know Chrome

After the relief of finding that Chrome fixed the Google Docs problem, I settled into using it full-time, as a replacement for the long-serving Firefox.  Not an easy decision to make, but Chrome has so much going for it.  This is particularly true when you consider how much time we spend on the web.  With Chrome maximised, it’s sometimes as if I’m not running Windows at all!  The Chrome themes emphasise this, with their non-standard window headers.   It feels like a new OS.  This may be intentional by Google.  If so, they’ve achieved it for me, and I’m happy to say so.

Chrome and Chromium

There are a few shortcomings in Chrome.  I’m running the latest version 3.0.195.33.

The most obvious being the lack of plugins.  That said, as a  Firefox user, I never was one to install masses of plugins, preferring to keep it simple.

My first question with Chrome was “how do I access my Google Bookmarks?”.  Others have been here before and I found a good blog post that describes a workable solution.  The same author has a related post on using bookmarklets in Chrome.

I have had one problem with a file download from a very slow server during which Chrome mistook a pause in data transmission (a few minutes) as indicating the end of the file.  The same file downloaded OK with trusty Firefox, btw.  Looking at the Chromium developer forum, this is a known problem that will be fixed in a future release.

Sticking with Chrome

I have become a Chrome enthusiast in the month or so since I started using it.  In the first week I caught up on all the Chrome release info.

I like a lot of detail, and one of the best sources of in-depth Chrome information is the comic book style presentation.  Don’t be put off by the 39 pages… it’s an entertaining read if you have the curiosity to know.  Key points:

  • Built-in security, from the ground up.
  • One process per tab.  If a tab freezes up, the other tabs are unaffected.
  • HTML 5 support.
  • Google Gears built-in.  This is a real bonus for Google users, improving the functionality of Google’s web apps.
  • The clean UI.

Chrome has changed the way I see the web, for the better.  I look forward to future releases with functional improvements like plugins but, even without these, it’s definitely worth a try.