2008-09-03

TECH: Chrome is out - on a second glance

Well, after now round about 6 hours in using Chrome and comparing the results to IE7 and FF3 on Windows Vista 64bit the following is what I can tell by now:

 The good things and

  • Nearly all pages I visited with Chrome browser work perfectly, except the one or other mainly CSS glitch. Those pages didn't display well don't do so as well in IE7 and FF3.

    Here again I have to stress that the current IE8 beta is doing way worse (even in IE7 mode), again having me MS asking to speed up, because many of the IE8 features are of great benefit (not only to Windows users :))
  • Chromes all in all performance are astonishing, and the system consumption is really low, especially if you compare it to FF3 (which is a monster in terms of consuming system resources). I am quite surprised about Chromes JavaScript speed, with the exception of handling large JSON tables with more than 200 data rows (of round about 512bytes each), Chrome is very fast. At least it beats the other here mentioned browsers depending on the page in seconds, some only in milliseconds.

    I wonder if there is something like a JavaScript benchmark out there - for sure it is I am going to find some :)
  • Opening a new tab is insanely fast - I really love this and wonder why the others are so slow.

  • Drag and Drop does work between IE and Chrome and sometimes (whysoever) also between FF and Chrome. AND it does work vice versa.

  • The view source function is fast AND like FF's Add Ins for Sourcecode, I like especially the line numbering :)

the bad things

  • Chrome does not allow to change the language - which is pain in the Ass since many, especially the Google- pages like this blog - depend on the information and somehow the Browser, why-so-ever, comes always to the point to show German instead of English. This even though my whole system is EN, every program including Chrome is EN as well - and I even setup USA as region. Chrome is anyhow resistant and insists on German wherever possible... I feel like this is a bug, easiness forth or back, to me that am a pain. - Or didn't I simply find the button?
  • Handling of large data tables coming from JSON as well as simply being delivered as tables (optimized or not doesn't make a difference) is a problem for Chrome. This is something I might investigate this weekend more in deep since it seems like a render issue.

    The same happens on pages making extensible use of tables - even though this is depreciated for positioning (and hopefully designers and web programmers sooner than later forget about this at all) - still many sites are relying on this technique. 

    Chrome suffers dramatically in terms of speed here - I guess some deeper investigation will show whether this is only a table issue... and to be honest, which new browser hadn't had this issue? - I can't remember one, do you?
  • I still miss my Google- Toolbar... where is it?
  • At least on the BlogSpot page, Chrome always changes my Arial font back to Georgia - which is just pain.

All in all, Chrome has the ability to drive me away from IE, except the issue that Google is watching me ... which is the worst and bad thing with this browser. I also want to refer to a very interesting article on heise online (sorry in German only): http://www.heise.de/newsticker/Googles-Webbrowser-Chrome-wuehlt-das-Web-auf--/meldung/115371

More to come soon,

Ingo

PS

Since at least some people seem to read my blog (thank you very much for doing so), here is the system I am testing on:

Manufacturer:
self made
Processor:
Dual Core AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 185 (2 CPUs), ~2.6GHz
Memory:
4094MB RAM
Hard Drive:
~2 TB Total (4x Raid 5 for data; 4x Raid 0 for system) - all drives are 10kRPM SATAII drives
Video Card:
Radeon X1950 Pro
Monitor:
2x Samsung SyncMaster 930BF
Sound Card:
Speakers (Creative SB X-Fi)
Speakers/Headphones:
Creative Labs Inspire T-7900
Keyboard:
Microsoft USB Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 (IntelliType Pro)
Mouse:
Microsoft Habu
Mouse Surface:
Raptor-Gaming
Operating System:
Windows Vista™ Enterprise (6.0, Build 6000) (6000.vista_gdr.070828-1515) SP1

TECH: Chrome is out - my first impression

Well, Google develops a browser and the world is writing about it - even more interesting, most writers never ever saw the browser but have the best to say about it.

So far so good, after downloading it in a fabulous short time and trying around I have to say I wish MS would deliver such a browsing experience with IE8 (the current Beta is from my personal feeling more an Alpha).

It (Chrome) is fast on most pages, it has some difficulties with pages making extensive use of JS (JSON especially) and with pages using nested and / or large (data) tables.
I'll test it more in deep soon and write more about this here.
@Google: Hey guys, great browser, but were is my beloved Google-Toolbar and its features?