Four years with Google Chrome, and I'm never going back

http://betanews.com/2012/09/03/four-years-with-google-chrome-and-im-never-going-back/

by rainmaker23 • 14 years ago

31 46 14 years ago

dm8• 14 years ago

I for one never thought Google Chrome would win the "browser wars". I used Opera and Firefox regularly and I was very much satisfied with them. But I have to admit Google Chrome team has outstanding job and Chrome is my primary browser.

Any idea how many people working on Chrome team? And why Mozilla remained so indifferent speed when Chrome was beating big time?

kevingadd• 14 years ago

Indifferent seems an inaccurate way to describe it. A project as big as Firefox isn't exactly going to be fast to change course when a large number of the contributors work for free instead of being told what to do by the person who signs their paychecks.

Ygg2• 14 years ago

To paraphrase a police chief fro The Wire: "You can't turn your ship on a dime". Sames goes for any large endeavor.

When Chrome came out it's focus on speed/usability was new to the browser landscape. It took some times but FF is catching up in almost all aspects of it (speed is up, memory usage has been reduced).

For me FF always was unbeatable for its slew of plugins. The plugins and their intergration can't be matched by Chrome.

mike-cardwell• 14 years ago

Google Chrome has been so successfully primarily because they plaster a big advert for it on the front page of google.com if you're using something else. Don't get me wrong, it's a decent browser, but I bet they wouldn't have a tenth the number of users if they didn't exploit their unparalleled advertising power of the front page of google.com.

mitra• 14 years ago

I can't seem to find HTTPS Everywhere or smooth gestures, two of my most used extensions, anywhere on the new chrome web store. It looks like a new walled garden approach to something that was working well the way it was.

aboodman2• 14 years ago

HTTPS Everywhere: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gcbommkclmclpchllf...

Dunno about Smooth Gestures.

lmm• 14 years ago

It wasn't working well, and it was as much a walled garden as the chrome approach. XUL extensions were/are very strongly tied to mozilla, and allegedly a cause of its enormous memory leakage.

If you want an open approach look to userjs (e.g. userscripts.org); with a little bit of effort you can make a script that works across FF/chrome/opera/probably others. Of course, you'll still find idiots writing things that only work in firefox.

poblano• 14 years ago

What boggles my mind about Chrome is how terrible the location bar autocomplete is.

At least, that's how it seemed to me for ages when I switched from Firefox. I mean, I would have just visited a page with "foo" in the URL, and I would type "foo", and that recent page simply would not appear. But a page I visited two months ago with "foo" somewhere in the URL (or worse, somewhere in the page content) would appear.

I haven't noticed this so much recently -- maybe it's gotten better, or maybe I've just gotten used to it.

I've been shocked that I haven't heard many other people complaining about this. Maybe it's just me?

batgaijin• 14 years ago

No, you're right, it's absolutely dreadful.

The crazy part? Bookmark something, and then type the keywords that are in the title of the bookmarked page. The last time I used Chrome I could barely find anything unless I opened up all my bookmarks and searched that way.

It makes sense once you realize that Google makes a profit from having a shitty search function...

diminish• 14 years ago

Chrome location bar autocomplete is unable to recognize my history and bookmarks.

Can it be that google does not want users to do bookmark or history search, but rather prefers us to do a google search instead for data mining and ad monetizing reasons? Or can it be due to an Apple patent?

Lexarius• 14 years ago

My Chrome location bar autocompletes my bookmarks just fine. It usually only takes a few characters for the bookmark to be the top result, and I can tell it's the bookmark since I changed the label.

whichdan• 14 years ago

That's my biggest gripe with Chrome as well. When I first switched, it was painfully obvious, and now I'm (sadly) used to it..

natrius• 14 years ago

There's a flag for a new algorithm in chrome://flags.

masklinn2• 14 years ago

> What boggles my mind about Chrome is how terrible the location bar autocomplete is.

What boggles my mind about Chrome is how completely fucked up its cache behavior is, considering the number of people for whom it's the primary development browser.

ngokevin2• 14 years ago

Internally, there's no such thing as the browser war. It's just something the media hypes up and something nerds argue about. Google used to contribute to Firefox before they went into their caves to give birth to Chrome, and the relationship is still symbiotic. Vendors are happy with the fact that the web is actually progressing now with competition spurring it unlike when Microsoft stopped working on IE in the olden days. Most browsers today are modern and well-kept, even IE10. You'll be fine with whatever modern browser you choose, everyone likes their own little idiosyncrasies found in their browser of choice.

pjscott• 14 years ago

Google still contributes to Firefox, in the form of about $300 million per year.

jsnell• 14 years ago

That's not a contribution, it's a business transaction.

Jyaif• 14 years ago

Does anyone know how they use their 300 million? They could have a thousand software engineers working on their product, which is probably more than what Google/Apple/MS uses on their respective browsers.

benologist• 14 years ago

Chrome's launching speed was amazing before SSDs made it so even Adobe couldn't completely fuck that up, and it's update mechanism is still great today. I'm ready for something new though.

These days the back button often seems to mean "redownload the whole page" which shits me just about every time I have to use it, and the address bar likes to just erase everything I've typed when I hit enter and then a few seconds later after it's done some stuff it'll put what I typed back.

mise• 14 years ago

Come to think about it, that's true. Often I'd click back, and the page would fully reload, and not bring me back to the same scroll position.

vegardx• 14 years ago

The first releases for OSX was the exact opposite. It took ages to start up, and still, to this day, Chrome just feels more "right" on Windows than on OSX. Things are way better now, but the start up speed is still not on par with Linux and Windows, for some reason. Not that it actually matters, I rarely restart my Macbook.

I have the same frustration with the back buttom. I get it in the case of POSTed data, but couldn't they just differentiate on it based on current situation?

afhof• 14 years ago

It was a grim realization that I am not the target audience for Chrome. All the stylistic features I like about Firefox seem deliberately left out of Chrome. What bothers me more though is that Firefox along with the rest of the browser market are aggressively trying to become Chrome, leaving me out of luck.

Ogre• 14 years ago

There's really only one extension Chrome needs to get me to switch. Currently that extension is called Roomy Bookmarks Toolbar in Firefox. There have been variations on the theme like Smart Bookmarks Toolbar and others, which may or may not be broken in current versions of Firefox (something FF is awful about - extensions seem to break way too easily, but in this case at least they exist!)

All it does is hide the names of bookmarks on the toolbar so all I see are the icons, until I hover over one of 'em. It seems really minor, but I really don't want to give up my little row of icons, nor do I want to delete the names of all them (which I used to do, long before smart people wrote extensions to hide the names)

The closest thing I can find on Chrome is "Iconized Bookmarks Bar", which simulates the same idea, but the implementation is terrible. Instead of an actual toolbar, it inserts a little HTML thing at the top of every page. It works fine on 90% of the web, and causes various levels of havoc on the other 10%. For example, it made it impossible to log in to Amazon last time I tried it because the hover logic on the Login menu got screwed up.

I assume that the functionality I want is simply not possible in Chrome at this time. I haven't actually looked into doing it myself though, it's just not that important when I've already got a browser I like just fine.

ebtalley• 14 years ago

Never thought of using an extension to make bookmarks just show the icon. I have always opened up the properties after saving the toolbar bookmark and deleted the text. That does the trick for me.

aboodman2• 14 years ago

This would be really easy extension to create with the bookmarks API:

http://developer.chrome.com/extensions/bookmarks.html

You should give it a shot!

Edit: It wouldn't be able to do the 'until i hover over it' bit. If that's important to you.

oceanician• 14 years ago

Never say never.

I'm sold on Google Chrome at the moment also, but found Opera to be the best for developers for years previously.

They'll be another awesome browser. Just like they'll be another search engine we all use one day.

EricDeb• 14 years ago

I still prefer Firefox for firebug and some other extensions but Chrome just blazes in terms of JavaScript rendering

mappu• 14 years ago

I use Chrome developer tools as my main testing environment - every time i check out compatibility in other browsers, Firebug ranks in slightly behind IE's built-in support for me.

You still change frame contexts with cd()?

masklinn2• 14 years ago

> I use Chrome developer tools as my main testing environment - every time i check out compatibility in other browsers, Firebug ranks in slightly behind IE's built-in support for me.

Wow, somebody has drunk way too much koolaid.

nnethercote• 14 years ago

"JavaScript rendering" is a nonsensical phrase. JavaScript is code, it just runs. Rendering is what the layout engine does.

fauigerzigerk3• 14 years ago

It's amazing how bad browsers still are for some of the most frequent tasks. This isn't directed against Chrome specifically.

I just realize how much time I spend looking for windows and tabs. I use three different browsers for no other reason than to get different entries in the Cmd+Tab application list so I can switch back and forth between them.

I have tried every tab switching plugin on the planet without much success. They're all buggy or slow or just don't do the right thing. And it's really a problem of browser/OS integration, nothing a plugin can or should solve.

I also tried OS X Spaces to mitigate these issues. I had to give up because the animation causes nausea and the switching behavior is nonsensical (e.g. switching back and forth between two windows in different spaces is asymmetrical). That's not the browsers' fault of course.

When will browser and OS makers realize that web applications are applications that need their own icon and entry wherever other applications have their own identity?

sallubhai• 14 years ago

>When will browser and OS makers realize that web applications are applications that need their own icon and entry wherever other applications have their own identity?

(If you're using Chrome) Wrench > Tools > Create Application Shortcuts > Choose any of Desktop, Start Menu or Pin to Taskbar.

It will open somewhat like a native app.. no tabs/address bar etc

fauigerzigerk3• 14 years ago

So does that give an individual browser window its own identity and icon in Cmd+Tab switching? I'm asking you because my Chrome on Mac doesn't have the menu items you mention.

blownd• 14 years ago

You might like to take a look at my Mac app, it allows you to switch between Chrome and Safari tabs with cmd-tab and type to search for a tab by name:

http://most-advantageous.com/optimal-layout/

fauigerzigerk3• 14 years ago

Thanks, I'll have a look.

ANTSANTS• 14 years ago

On Windows and most Linux DEs, each window is given its own entry in window switching keyboard shortcuts, and (though you have to enable it in Windows XP and up) the task bar. I keep several Chrome windows open at once for this precise reason, along with separating windows by workspaces/virtual desktops.

I don't mean any offense, but this is a problem with OSX's window management, not any web browser. Dock-style "1 icon per application" instead of taskbar style "1 icon per active window" is a convention I have never liked on any OS. In exchange for one kind of interface simplicity, you give up a great deal of flexibility when running multiple instances of a program.

nfg• 14 years ago

Without TreeStyleTabs à la Firefox [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...] I can't switch, it's indispensable when dealing with 100+ tabs (which I find myself doing a lot as crazy as it seems). Besides that the "AwesomeBar" in FF seems to work more effectively than Chrome's when digging up old pages I've visited. There're also a few extensions I'm probably forgetting, SessionManager comes to mind. I've given Chrome a more than fair shake, and still use it on a near daily basis, but I'll stick to FF on my own box.

darklajid• 14 years ago

Same here. Whatever the machine, be it netbook, thinkpad or dual screen desktop workhorse, I have more space horizontally than vertically. Tabs belong to the left.

The added benefit of having a _tree_ of tabs (usually most of the nodes have HN as a root for me..) is something I wouldn't want to miss again, ever.

And FF Beta on Android still beats Chrome in terms of usability for me (talking about both rendering speed and nifty things like addons).

I open Chrome Canary every once in a while, out of curiosity. But day to day it's not for me.

morsch• 14 years ago

One of the biggest benefits of a tree of tabs is that it makes it easy to get rid of a group of them. You can double click a root tab to collapse its tree -- that's super useful right there; when you then close the root tab, all the tabs in the tree are closed, too. Makes it incredibly quick and painless to clean up after a prolonged research session, which in turn encourages judiciously opening tabs during research.

Tichy• 14 years ago

I use Chrome for sites that require flash. What I still don't get: how do you get by without tags on bookmarks and the awesome bar? Is there some equivalent for Chrome?

zobzu2• 14 years ago

"I can say with a certain amount of confidence that I no longer derive any personal identity from the browser I use."

"Four years with Google Chrome, and I'm never going back"

The irony.

benjaminwootton• 14 years ago

Never say never. I said that about Firefox after leaving Internet Explorer.

Four years with Google Chrome, and I'm never going back

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