Rydertech

As I indicate by the title, this is not an in-depth review.  I plan to use this software in the coming weeks and months and monitor its progress—though unless I’m thoroughly impressed, I will be sticking with Firefox 3 as my default.

If you haven’t heard the hubbub yet, Google has been gearing up (bad pun intended) for its entry into the browser market with a newly-designed program called Google Chrome.  The site just went up today (September 2nd, 2008), though its URL already had parked a suspiciously spartan (read: Google-ish) 404 Error just yesterday.

Chrome represents Google’s determination to embrace the so-called Web 2.0 and to update, where it feels appropriate, the web browser—an application Google says still largely resembles its Web 1.0 roots.  Additionally, Google aims to leverage its tremendous share in the web to assist in both design and development of the new browser.  In the latter case, Google has the perfect test engine in that it has access to tens of billions of web pages, which it can use to do the work it usually takes hundreds of beta testers months to accomplish.  Aside from shortening the development cycle, Google claims this affords Chrome developers a unique insight into patterns of site design and web usage paradigms.  The point?  Supposedly this blows up the sample size and results in a browser design that reflects and facilitates universal Internet usage patterns rather than specific ones garnered from, say, a hundred or so popular websites.

(BTW, I didn’t just pull all this out of my nose.  It’s detailed in this amusing comic—yes, comic—put out by Google the other day, drawn up by Scott McCloud.)

So far, it’s too early to tell, IMHO, whether this will mean much in the long run.  It’s an interesting approach, and one that only a company like Google (or another search giant perhaps) could pull off.  However, one wonders at some point just how much you can really perfect the humble web browser.  Modern browsers (read: not IE, particularly the latest beta) are lightweight, expandable, secure, and, above all, transparent.  By this last one I mean that for the most part the browser doesn’t screw up its face and scream, “I AM A WEB BROWSER! LOOK AT ME!” in a distracting, howling wail.  Full disclosure: I am a die-hard Firefox user and have been for almost two years.  But I’ve dabbled in Opera and other open source browsers from time to time, and in this regard they’re similar.  They get out of the way and let you go where you want to go on the Internet.

This is not to say that the experience couldn’t always be improved in some way.  I suppose this is what Google aims to do with Chrome.

But enough blather.  I said I’d take a quick look (or cursory glance, lest Tom’s Hardware sue me for using their review terminology) at Google Chrome, and that’s what we’re going to do, kids.  Fasten your seat belts; we’re going for a ride!

Installation

This part is a little different than your usual excursion.  I’m currently reviewing the Windows version of the software (are OSX and *nix versions even available at this point?), so keep that in mind.  Basically, however you get to the Google Chrome site, you should see a big, shiny blue button proclaiming it’s the place to click for mad downloadin’ action (I can stop if you like).  Instead of packaging the entire program in the download, Chrome is more like a Java Runtime update—the download is a link that sets up a connection to the Google servers on which Chrome is stored, and it both downloads and installs the software from there.  You get the usual options (e.g. desktop/quick launch icons, import bookmarks, etc.) right before the installer completes.

First Impression

Honestly, I’m biased.  I’m so used to my customized version of Firefox that any other web browser in its raw form seems like a nasty little backwater in comparison.  When you use Adblock Plus for so long, without it suddenly the Internet looks like an out-of-control Peter Max-style acid trip.  Ads!  Banners!  Blinky things that serve absolutely no purpose!  Ugh!

Putting that aside, Chrome takes the concept of minimalism to a whole new level.  Even my custom Fx 3 installation, with a compact theme and with the Bookmarks and Mainmenu toolbars hidden, looks bloated and complicated by comparison.  But don’t take my word for it; see for yourself:

Fx 3:

Chrome:

Note the way the tabs live above the address bar (like in Opera) instead of below it (like in every other browser).  As jarring a paradigm shift as this might seem at first, honestly it feels totally natural once you’ve looked at it for a while.  It helps that the active tab switches color and blends seamlessly into the address bar.  Note also that there is no latent status bar.  A temporary bar appears when you navigate to a site, and disappears once you’ve arrived.  This is pretty smart, as the word “Done” isn’t particularly helpful once you’ve arrived at the site and it’s completely loaded.  There’s really no reason for a static status bar at all, if you think about it that way, and Google obviously did.  Well done!

Speed-wise, Chrome is already a champ.  At the moment I’m hampered by what must be the World’s Slowest Bandwidth Cap here at WSU, and yet Chrome makes web navigation almost livable.  Almost.  The program starts up pretty quickly, too; it leaves Fx 3 in the dust in that respect.  All in all, it looks like WebKit (the layout engine used by Safari, Chrome, and other open source browsers) was a good choice on Google’s part.  There was some controversy about this pick, given that Google is a big financial backer of the Mozilla Corporation, which develops the Gecko layout engine used in Firefox and derivative open source browsers.  Keep in mind that, as this is merely a cursory glance, we’re keeping things subjective.  Once this project gets underway, I’ll try to crunch some real numbers (limited though my ability to do this may be).

One aspect of Chrome that has already shown its merit is the way the browser separates out different rendering tasks and runs them in parallel (instead of asynchronously, like other browsers).  Again, due to the lousy saturated bandwidth here at Wayne, even with the speed throttling pages still hang with dismaying regularity.  Firefox, like any other modern browser, gets only so far, something hangs, and eventually the connection times out.  Though I’ve basically been throwing URLs at Chrome at random for the past hour or so, so far I’ve yet to encounter a time out.  The browser is even hardy enough to handle the atrocious customized profile pages you’ll find among the more tasteless users of MySpace (something, incidentally, that crashes Firefox in the latest alpha of Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex).

Bugs and other oddities

This is a beta.  Big surprise: there’s bugs.  In the limited amount of time I’ve spent with the browser, I haven’t encountered many real problems, but there are a few annoyances.  My Synaptic touchpad (like most touchpads these days) has a page scrolling strip on the right side.  In Chrome, you can scroll down using this pad—but then you can’t scroll back up with it.  You have to capture the scrollbar like you did back in 1995.  Annoying, but probably an easy fix.  I filed a bug report, so Google knows about this now.  Also, I noticed erratic behavior when highlighting text.  Sometimes it works fine, but other times (like in some form boxes), precise selection of individual characters is not possible.  I noticed this second bug while filling out the bug report for the first.  I warrant there are several more bugs lurking in there somewhere, or perhaps even sites that don’t load properly.  I haven’t found one yet, though some sites (like Anandtech) look really weird when they load—the individual page segments look like tiles that fold into one another.  It’s difficult to describe.

Final Thoughts

I could go into detail about the Options dialog, the so-called Incognito Mode, the memory usage, etc.  I won’t.  This isn’t the place for it.  That’s for a proper review, which I hope to generate as soon as this project is farther along.  As it is, the work is astounding for a mere beta.  Minor touchpad annoyances aside, this is easily on the level of stability of, say, an Ubuntu Linux beta.  It’s still probably not ready for use as a primary browser, but for a solid testing session it looks like it will hold up pretty well.

Will I switch from Firefox to Chrome once it goes prime time?  Well, that’s assuming it ever comes out of beta, which, as it’s Google, is probably not likely any time this century.  But that’s beating around the bush.  I suppose it all comes down to extendability.  Of all the things I like about Firefox, the Add-ons system is the part I miss most when I use other browsers.  Specifically, Adblock Plus and other helper programs.  If a similar universe of plugins can be created for Chrome (Google hints in the comic this is possible), then I might be really compelled.  If a port of Adblock Plus is made, then I’ll be sold in an instant.  It all depends on which direction Google goes with this project.  As it stands, as impressed as I am with this browser already, there’s not enough there yet to make me surrender Firefox.

It’s gonna be really interesting.  Keep up the good work, Google.