found drama

I broke down and decided to try out Google’s Chrome browser after having heard so many positive reviews of it.  It’s backed by WebKit–just like Safari, my current favorite–and so if nothing else, I know it has a tried and true and powerful engine going behind the scenes.  That said, I’ve tried out more than a few browsers over the years and almost always wind up “switching back” after a day or two (or at most: a week or two).  With that in mind, I was more than expecting to go “Meh, back to Safari…” by the end of the week.

But at the end of that week, I’m beginning to think that Chrome might stick around for quite some time as my day-to-day browsing ¹ browser ².

First, what I like:

1. The tabs. The tabbed browsing experience in Chrome is nearly perfect and without a doubt the best I’ve seen so far.  The tabs in Chrome are “on top”, which Apple tried to do in the Safari 4 beta and failed to execute properly.  What Apple did wrong in the Safari 4 beta was to try to have the tabs merge into and replace the title bar; this is wrong.  From a UI/visual hierarchy perspective, the tabs definitely belong “above” the browser controls and the address bar, etc.–but they are themselves a part of the window and as such you need adequate clearance.  Under Safari 4 beta, the tabs went all the way up to the window edge; Chrome nails it by providing a just-about-right-sized buffer between the tab’s top edge and the window’s top edge–from what I can tell, it’s about ½-â…” the size of the title bar’s normal height.  So there’s no ambiguity with respect to what you’re going for:  you’re either going for the tab (to rearrange it or do the also well-executed tear-off behavior) or else you’re going for the title bar to move the window around.  To crib a phrase, in the platform’s UI grammar, this is correct ³.
2. The animations. You may call it superfluous if you wish, but this kind of spit-and-polish work can be important in setting one application apart from its peers.  Most of the animations are with the tabs, so I’ll list off a few that I instantly noticed and instantly loved:  the way a tab pops up when you create a new one; the way a tab sinks when you close it; the tear-off animation; the tab rearrangement animations; how the loading circle in the tab goes anti-clockwise and much slower until it gets a server response (and then starts to load).  These are not key features, but they sure make things feel more complete.
3. Fast. It feels like a very fast browser.  Maybe I’m distracted by the animations, but it seems a little snappier to render pages and to respond to in-browser events.  I’ve read that it’s faster than any other browser; but I’ve also read that Safari has the slightest edge on it.  But then again, I’ve also read that Chrome knows how to use more than one CPU core at a time.
4. Unobtrusive UI elements. When I first noticed that Chrome didn’t have a status bar across the bottom of the browser window, I went looking for it.  I want this thing to be turned on.  But after using it for a few minutes, I noticed that it didn’t need a status bar because it just displayed status messages on an as needed basis in a little messaging space that was only as big as it needed to be.  (Win!)  And then when I downloaded a file and instead of popping up a “downloads window” it just put a “downloads bar” across the bottom…  Well, I must say I was impressed with that, too.  Unobtrusive, and only as needed.
5. Additive tabs. If you (like me) tend to open big batches of tabs all at once from a bookmark group in the bookmark bar, you’ll appreciate that Chrome just appends these to the open tabs.  Instead of replacing the ones you have open.  (Safari, I’m looking you direction.)

What I do not like:

1. The icon. Chrome’s icon blows.  It looks like a Pokémon egg.  Or a half-baked Simon-from-the-future.  If asked to rate the browser icons, it would go something like this:  Shiira, Firefox, Safari, Opera … a whole bunch of other guys … Chrome, and finally Internet Explorer.
2. I miss my “open in tabs” command. Allow me to rephrase:  I’m annoyed that I need to right-click my bookmark group and click “Open All Bookmarks”.
   
   Safari just has this at the bottom of the bookmark group.  And I use it a hundred times a day ⁴.
3. Text fields do not (always) play by the rules. Folks on the Mac that “switched” from Windows machines will probably understand this one right away.  You get used to hitting “home” and “end” to go to the beginning and end of lines (respectively) and then you switch and have to learn that you now press up and down to do the same thing.  And then you get used to it.  And then you start using Chrome and this isn’t the case.  Or at least isn’t always the case.  In the browser’s address bar, up and down are bound explicitly to the history/search results/bookmarks suggestions list that appears.  And within the browser window itself, a text field may play nicely with this convention.  And sometimes it won’t.  And I haven’t figured out the pattern yet.  If there is one.  Which just makes this worse/more frustrating/more annoying.  Perhaps I’m just being hyper-vigilant to it and Safari et al. are the same way.  But I’m not so sure.  [UPDATE 1/12/10: I think this is just a matter of waiting for Chrome to catch up with me and my browsing history and habits.  It does in fact seem to prompt-and-fill-in the same way as Safari.]
4. Double-clicking the tab bar doesn’t start a new tab. This is a behavior in Safari that I use all the time.  It drives me nuts that this minimizes the Chrome window.  I hate being forced to use the little “+” icon.  [ADDED 1/12/10]

What I’m undecided about:

1. The auto-completion in the address bar. Perhaps I’m just too used to how Safari auto-completes, but Chrome’s does not sit right with me.  I mentioned this immediately above w/r/t/ how the up and down keys are bound to the suggestion box; but I’m also expecting the address bar to instantly try to auto-complete my typing.  When I type “ama” I’m expecting it to instantly suggest Amazon.com.  Chrome does not always seem to do that.  Again:  it’s inconsistent.  Maybe it will learn as I go?
2. The way you close tabs. To quote the venerable and inscrutable Gruber, “It’s a grammar thing – in the Mac UI grammar, close buttons go on the left.”  But that said, Gruber writes that in response to a thoughtful missive of Chrome’s tab closing behavior by Basil Safwat at The Invisible.  The nutshell version of Safwat’s argument is that putting the tab closure icon on the right allows users to quickly close them with mouse-clicks with minimal mouse movements regardless of if they are closing from left to right or right to left.  I won’t go much further with that because you should really just read the article.  But that said, tabs in a browser are pretty wily and protean beasts by their nature, and while Safwat has some great points about tab praxis, the pedantic part of me wants desperately to reject the closure-on-the-right more/less out-of-hand because it’s a pretty fundamental violation of (there’s that phrase again!) the UI’s grammar.  Could it be that we need a corollary for the “closure on the left” rule?  Does praxis override all else in this case?  Or is there a way to accomplish this same fluidity without violating the placement assumptions?

1. As opposed to “development” browser.[↩]
2. Though Camino spent (almost?) a year or so as my day-to-day browser before it got displaced by Safari again.  So, who knows, eh?[↩]
3. Of course, they put the close button “the wrong side” w/r/t/ this platform’s UI grammar; but we’ll get to that in a bit.[↩]
4. All right, I am exaggerating.  It’s more like fifty times a day.[↩]

About Rob Friesel

43 Responses to a week with Chrome