Chrome for Mac

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Neat and convenient features in Chrome

• 1. A smarter way of opening links in new tabs

  
  
  Gotta love this one. Rather than opening links in new tabs at the very end of the chronological line of other open tabs, you can open a new link in a tab that shows up next to the tab you're currently on. It's a small detail that saves you the trouble of sorting through all the other tabs you've got open in a smarter, relative order.
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  2. Dynamic Downloads at the bottom of the window

  
  
  This one is a step up from a feature already in the newest version of Firefox 3.5.5. When you download something, it shows up at the foot of the browser window. You get the see the progress bar while browsing through other stuff, and you also get to manage the files without opening a Downloads window.
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  3. Pretty History Listings

  
  
  This isn't usually an important feature to me, and it certainly isn't something new, but the way Chrome cleans everything up in a more reader-friendly format instead of the traditional listing of garbled and encoded links and timestamps. Very clean user interface here.
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  4. New Tab: Top Sites

  
  
  When you open a new blank tab, you arrive at a default page with a customizable "top sites" list in thumbnail format (you can change this to textual lists). This isn't something we haven't seen before - Apple developed a much prettier version of this in Safari (compare the screenshot of Chrome on the left vs the screenshot of Safari 4.0.4 on the right). What IS new in Chrome is you have a few more options in choosing which sites you want listed, such as Recently Closed sites.
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  5. Googling: Even Easier

  
  
  This is a really nifty feature where you can google directly on the search bar itself. Keeps things simple and clear, instead of having to install extra toolbars to use the world's favorite search engine. On a side note, I admire the fact that you can figure this out almost intuitively (I almost never read manuals or how-to documents, so I can appreciate the dummy-efficiency).

Not so convenient things about Chrome

• 1. No RSS Feed Reader?

  
  
  This was the biggest problem I had with Chrome - enough that I decided to switch back to Safari and Firefox. I use feeds all the time to check on updates from my favorite sites, and i was very disappointed to find that (1) Chrome does not have a feed reader that can list everything in a neat, human-readable format and (2) Chrome does not offer a default solution to notify me when there IS an update (i.e. in Safari, there's a little parenthesis "(5)" next to the feed bookmark, telling me how many new updates were made since I last visited).
  
  Google addressed this issue this month and there is indeed a "bookmarklet" script you can install.
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  2. Gmail Error

  
  
  
  Google Chrome 4 - "Some Gmail features have failed to load"
  Google Chrome 4 users might see this error message on trying to sign in. To work around this issue, you can either try another browser or use a different version of Google Chrome, either the current stable version or a dev channel version after rev. 35761.
  
  Well I wasn't so sure what to think of this one. I hit this error several times with my Gmail account using Google's own Chrome browser. But apparently this is a known issue in the beta, so hopefully this will be fixed soon.

Comments

Ongaku @ Thursday, February 11, 2010 -- 2:17 pm

I've had Chrome downloaded for such a long time now but I have yet to actually use it.

I'm thinking I will give it a try if FireFox makes me angry but I'm still pretty happy with FireFox... then again I don't put a lot of add-ons and stuff...

Daquan Wright @ Wednesday, February 10, 2010 -- 11:31 pm

I use Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, and IE Tester (testing only).

Firefox offers so many great add-ons, I wouldn't change it for the world. However, I prefer to browse with Chrome/Opera (light on the memory).

Unfortunately I feel that chrome after a while starts to get bogged down, but that may just be my internet.

I find that if you have really good internet speed differences aren't great amongst all the top tier browsers. I too tried Chrome, after I uninstalled it. I love software, working with all of these browsers has taught me their faults.

Although I have a friend with a stronger laptop than mine and he said he uninstalled chrome and got Opera instead. One thing I don't get is why the tabs require you to be in the page in order for them to load. Honestly, it bothers me a great deal. I'd rather the tab load without me having to go into it.

*I wish you had an e-mail feed for wallpapers Jay* xD

I really need to learn how to use Firebug, I'm mainly relying on web developer toolbar at the moment.

Tammy @ Tuesday, February 2, 2010 -- 8:55 am

Sadly I am more of a Firefox user as I'm still a windows user. I heard about it way back, but I never looked too much into it afterward and forgot about it until this entry. It was really interesting to hear about the differences between Safari and this browser. I don't really use feeds so I wouldn't have even noticed.

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