More impressions of Google Chrome

June 9, 2011

It's been a while since I started to use Chrome and in the time since last August I've accumulated more opinions, partly because I gave in and installed the Chrome equivalent of NoScript. The short summary is that I can't imagine making Chrome my regular browser instead of Firefox.

Here is my largest opinion in a nutshell: Chrome's support for extensions is not good enough. It really feels like Google fundamentally doesn't like extensions and supports them only half-heartedly, versus Firefox's wholesale embrace of them.

(This is probably not actually the case.)

The result of this is that using extensions on Chrome (especially interacting with them to control them) is more awkward and limited than using extensions in Firefox. Although I did not realize this back when I started using Chrome, it turns out that I interact with extensions quite a lot and so these issues grate on me as a little quiet background irritation.

(A detailed discussion of this got long enough that I've put it in a separate entry, ChromeExtensionIssues.)

I also have a number of issues with Chrome's interface and how Google is evolving it in various Chrome updates (I can't really call them 'releases' any more); there are things I don't like and things that are inexplicably missing. I could probably fix at least some of the things that irritate me if I worked at it and found the right magic options, but what it boils down to is that Chrome isn't attractive enough to get me to spend that much time on.

(I'm aware that I may wind up rather unhappy with Firefox 4 and future Firefox versions, since I've seen that they're into yanking around the interface in Chrome-like ways.)

Chrome continues to eat Flickr for breakfast, which is what I keep it around for. But my sporadic experiments with using it as a regular browser are basically a failure at this point and I can't imagine that changing. Fundamentally it feels as if what Google wants out of Chrome and what I want out of a browser are too far apart from each other.


Comments on this page:

From 98.207.133.247 at 2011-06-09 12:44:10:

'Chrome continues to eat Flickr for breakfast'

How so?

By cks at 2011-06-09 14:18:03:

The full background is in ChromeImpressions; the short version is that when Flickr rolled out their new interface about a year ago, all of my Firefox versions at the time got achingly slow. At work, even the beta Firefox 4 builds of the time were slow; only Chrome was fast.

(At home, a Firefox 4 beta build is fast. I don't know why home and work are different here, well, not apart from potential issues with home running Fedora 8 and work running Fedora 13 and now Fedora 14.)

I have not retried Firefox 4 on Flickr at work, partly because Firefox 4 has its own share of annoying interface changes and Chrome already works.

From 97.107.130.220 at 2011-06-10 10:08:36:
  • Google does not like overly native interfaces. But extension authors haven’t the patience that Google has to make their UIs sufficiently native-like using only web-like means.

  • Chrome has a far more stringent security model than Firefox (esp. historically). On Firefox extension naturally get chummy with all the same innards of the UI code that its official browser-chrome uses. For Chrome, there has to be a concerted effort to provide an interface to parts of the browser specifically for use by extensions.

You can see what that leads to.

Another issue I hate: Google doesn’t much care about local bookmarks. I use them to manage many queues and bits and bobs, and Chrome is just plain unsuitable for the purpose.

Lastly: Chrome is a lot more cavalier with user state in general. Close the last window and unless you have Chrome start with the same tabs as last time, you will never see those tabs again. No confirmation dialog either. Nor is there one for deleting bookmark folders. In which case there is not even an undo. Delete hundreds of bookmarks with one accidental keystroke, and you have no recourse.

But it sure is seductively fast. And it can properly contain plugin crashes, even relegate them to non-events.

So what has happened in my use is an extrapolation of what you hinted at with your mention of Flickr, that I use it for most searches and sites I frequent – uses that involve starting in one place and then scanning a lot of content. And I have completely uninstalled Flash from my Firefox and use Chrome for that purpose (esp since they recently built something like Flashblock right into the browser, even though you had to go about:flags to turn that feature on).

Essentially, Chrome has become my browser of choice for the seeking/hunting instinct and Firefox the one for contemplative reading.

Aristotle Pagaltzis

Written on 09 June 2011.
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