As 90% of you should know, the Google Chrome beta launched within the past 10 hours or so. If you don’t know what it is, it’s Google’s entry in the browser wars. Now I use a browser based on functionality, so here’s how Chrome is working out for me.

Good Things

1. Imported EVERYTHING from Firefox. Bookmarks, saved passwords, browsing history. Everything. No need for a long and tedious process to move all my data from one browser to another
2. Uses the computer’s default proxy settings! This may not seem like a big deal, but in DCU I have to set my computer to use the proxy. Although I had the SwitchProxy extension installed in Firefox, it was still tedious to have to switch it separately to the rest of the entire computer.

Failures

1. No choice of installation location, no prompts or anything. Once I clicked, it installed itself. Not the most secure method…
2. Failed to import my settings from Firefox while I was still running it earlier with many tabs open. Had to close Firefox and all tabs before Chrome could import. Not the best way to start…
3. My site’s hit logs logged myself visiting my site using Chrome. The log stated the browser as “Safari”. Doesn’t help when I want to be able to differentiate between the two!
   OK, I’ve fixed that actually – added another line to the browser.dat file to handle Chrome and it works fine now.
4. Folders in the bookmarks toolbar need to be clicked on to open, opening one and then hovering to another won’t make that one open. Sub-folders take a bit longer to open up.
5. Breaks the blog page and any sub-pages. Must be another one of those “1-pixel” things…
   Spent about 15 minutes trying to fix it, and eventually had to give up and set the overflow-y to hidden to get them to play nice…
6. Ugly colour scheme, for the moment…

Neutral Things

1. I’m quite used to having a status bar at the bottom to see the destinations of links before I open them. I know Chrome has a little bar that pops up to show you the link, but I prefer the robustness of a full status bar.

Overall

It looks like it could work well. If it’s extendability improves as the Beta progresses, then I’m sure it has contention of taking over from Firefox as my default browser. But it still has a long way to go!