Old chrome

New chrome

Less charm, but a whole lot more functionality...

Okay, so it's early days, but I like it.

I'm fortunate (in this case at least) to be running on a platform for which Chrome is available, and I'm geeky enough to want to find out what this thing can do, as fast as I can.

It's fast!

I have no numbers, but it feels damn fast.

It's capable

The short report is that I didn't have any trouble doing all the things that I usually do with Firefox. I didn't try to do some of the things that I need to use IE for... but then those things are all unpleasant in any case. :-)

It's funky

Some of the new drag and drop options for tabs are so obvious that I can't believe we weren't screaming for them already.

The new default home page is funky, but whether it's useful remains to be seen.

It's invisible

This is the most important thing to me. I just want the thing to work. I don't want to be surprised. I just want to get on.

At the same time though, Google make a big deal of just how invisible Chrome can be, when used as a wrapper for web apps. Again, time will tell.

It's stable

So far at least...

It's annoying

You know I said I don't like surprises? Well I got two of them.

By default, the thing has no Home Button. Puhleeze! You can easily turn it on, though.

New tabs are created next to the existing tab. A quick count through the office indicated that about half the people are completely happy about that. The other half range from oh well to deal breaker.

It's not finished...

I know. Nothing Google does is finished. But in this case they make a special point of mentioning it.

I want a way to use Greasemonkey, or a big enough shift in the way the universe operates that I don't need to any more.

I want it to work on a Mac. I don't want to use it, but if this thing takes off, then I want all my friends to be able to use it. Alright then, Linux too.