The Gleam of Chrome

For the past few days - I've made Google's new browser - Chrome the default browser on my system - just to give it a proper test drive.

Ok, so Firefox 3 was eating tons of memory (it even popped into virtual memory on occasion) because I keep a bazillion tabs open in each of 4 or 5 windows. Now, I'm heavily invested in Firefox - it has all the bookmarks, quick links, certain site passwords, etc. all set up - so making the switch for me was a bit difficult.

I decided to take a man pill - and tough it out - and frankly, I'm glad I did.

I'm not one of those users that has 50,000 plug-ins and extensions in my browser - I use my browser to, well, just browse the web. I don't expect it to do my laundry and wash my car - just serve up pages quickly and let me have 1,000,000 tabs open in 5 windows and not slow down or crash.

The interface (or lack thereof) takes a bit of getting used to - it's unlike any browser you've used before. It has a tabbed interface (duh!), but the tabs are above the address bar, not below it. There is no "File", "Edit" menus - and there's not even a "home" button. There are two icons to the right of the address bar that contain all the commands you'll ever use (and keyboard equivalents for everything).

One more thing - there's no title bar (that thing that would normally have the icon and shows the title of the page - with the minimize and maximize buttons on it). NOPE! Not there. Google's intent was to make the browsing experience as stripped down (UI wise) as possible - but still make it powerful.

Each tab is, in effect, it's own browser - so if one page blows up - it doesn't take the whole application down - it just blows that one tab up. Me likkie. The other thing that's interesting - is that because it was built from the ground up to be optimized for browsing - there are some cool, albeit somewhat hidden, features that give you almost too much information about what's going on under the hood.

For example, choosing Developer -> Task Manager (or Shift + Esc) - you can see how much memory every open tab is taking - and how much memory plug-ins (like Flash) are consuming and you can kill any process at any time with the click of a button.

If you're really into code - check out the Element Inspector. Just right click on any object on a page and you'll see the Inspector window come up with the HTML of the page with the selected object highlighted. It will also show you all the CSS information and JavaScript in a collapsible tree view that you can navigate.

There are a ton of other features in there - like when you open a new tab rather than it being blank it shows the 9 most visited sites. Also, when you open a new tab manually - it goes to the far right like you would expect, but when you click on a link in a page and have set it up to open a new window in a new tab - it will open the new tab directly to the right of the selected tab. This really makes it easy to hop back and forth - and is just one example of the neato features that just work.

There are a ton of other features in there - if you're interested you should have a look at the ComputerWorld article by Preston Gralla - he goes into terrific details about how to use them and where they are.

If your idea of what a browser should be is just a browser that's optimized for browsing - and you're on Windows (for now) - then I would highly recommend you check out Chrome.

Firefox and the F Word

I've been using Firefox since version 1.0 - and, in general, I like it a lot over by old default browser - Internet Exploder. Version 2.x was cooll - although a bit heavy on the memory usage and it could be a bit sluggish at times. All-in-all - pretty good.

Then I "upgraded" to Firefox 3. At first blush, the rendering is fine, the speed is a bit better than 2.x, the UI has some improvements that are nice - but the BEST feature is the new automated crash-and-burn feature.

This terrific new addition is really fun and was probably added to shake up the web surfer's day and remind them that they should take daily (or twice-daily) breaks and interact with other humans.

At least Firefox saves your session information. If not for this truly great feature - I would have chucked my laptop through the wall by now. Firefox just seems to crash now - for no apparent reason. Click a tab once - OK. Click a tab twice - bye bye. Open a file once - OK. Open a different file - OK. Open a new link in a tab - BOOM.

I admit I'm a tab-aholic and have 10-20 tabs open at a time - but, hey, I did in Firefox 2.x as well. My browsing habbits haven't changed - the only thing that has is my browser.

So, I had a BRILLIANT idea - I'll just start using Safari. So that's what I've been doing over the past week.

Or at least tried to do.

Once you get over the sort of Mac-like goofy UI renderings of buttons and the glow around the active entry field and the terrible fonts for the menus and the horrible too-dark "metal" header - it's actually not a bad browser.

One thing I will say for sure - it's the absolute FASTEST browser I've ever used. The speed is almost embarassing. Sites pop up really fast - and even with zero browsing history and zero cached graphics - this thing cooks. It does take a little longer to load a new (never visited site) - but once it loads - it seems to have cached everything in the site.

So I thought to myself - YEAH! OK, a new browser, I can do this. I started to move a few bookmarks over - and entered some passwords to some of my many username-required sites - and that's when I started missing some of the features that I take for granted in Firefox.

Like: password protection for auto-entering user information on sites.

The next one was the deal breaker: I shut down my laptop (with the browser running) - and just expected that the next time I launched - it would just restore itself. I had maybe 10 tabs open. Nope.

I mean, it's not the end of the world or anything - but I've gotten so used to be able to just restore my last session (I often keep tabs open for days until I read the story, finish my research on a topic, etc) - that not being able to do that became a real pain.

Plus, the rendering and the fonts used - while readable and well-rendered - were just not... ummm... "normal." Sites viewed in IE, Firefox, and Opera looked, well... a little Mac-ed up. It's nothing that I'm sure I couldn't get used to in time - but old habits die hard.

And so do cookies. And passwords. And browsing history.

When all was said-and-done - I really wanted to use Safari as my primary browser - but I just couldn't.

Now I'm back to Firefox 3 - and I have convinced myself that those "daily reminders" (or more) are actually a benefit. They remind me to get up and take a pee...

So Much For A World Record...

Well, Firefox 3.0 officially launched today - and they wanted to get into the Guinness Book of World Records by having the most downloads in a single day.

Too bad you can't download it.

Apparently, everyone took that challenge literally - and the servers are all down. Yep, all of them. Mozilla.com, the SpreadFireFox, GetFireFox - all went to their knees.

Now I guess they know how the Woodstock organizers felt. It's one thing to ramp up to a big new release by seeding the world with release candidates, and get everyone talking about how great and fast the new version is. It's a whole 'nother enchilada when you're encouraging everyone in the world to download a huge file on the same day.

One would have thought that if one challenged people to go for a world record - that it would have called up their ISP and Alkamai and had mirrors and extra bandwidth to spare.

Alas, 'twas not the case here (at least not yet). It will be interest to see as the day progresses - what will happen - but for now - it's "No soup for you" - unless you downloaded RC3 (which is identical to the final version).

If you're one of the souls that hasn't been keeping up - here's an overview of what the hullabaloo is about:

• There’s an easier to use password manager
• Download manager which supports resumable downloads
• Better find system
• Totally re-designed address bar
• Ability to integrate with antivirus software and parental controls
• According to SunSpider - it's the fastest browser out there
• Greatly reduced memory footprint

So, if and when the servers come back up - I'll be anxious to give it a whirl...