Hey all, Im a self confessed unashamed Chrome user! I can feel the heat from the flamers now, but its worth acknowledging the good side of a new browser from my favourite company.
I used to be an IE devout user, never had time for anything else, then I got onto Avant, which still used IE, but had its own shell, had tabs before IE did, plus a bunch of other features. All of which i found to be in Firefox, and after long deliberation(its not easy making the work choice to switch), i moved to Firefox, thus enjoying all the benefits of every kind of imaginable plugin, theme, add-in, script, ubiquity etc that was going.
Well, then i saw the leak about Chrome, i downloaded the cartoon like everyone else, was so impressed i even printed it, in color! And stapled it, and showed it to friends, who didn't understand a word. So when the launch finally happened, i think i was about the fourth person to download and install at some ungodly early hour from some unidentified source that had managed to grab a version. Awesome, first cut and I loved it.
Simple, no clutter, fast(noticeably so), and after setting the option to show links on the toolbar, i was in almost engaged to it. I promptly set it as my default browser, told FireFox and IE to stop hassling me to about being the default browser and lived happily ever after.
Almost....
Then the cracks started to appear, first people started finding privacy issues with the terms and conditions, then there was an old Safari security bug that wasn't patched in Chrome, then people started moaning about no plugins, no this, and no that...
But i persevered, i had a few problems with sites that didn't render properly, graphs and stuff, also popups, Chrome blocking things which was good, but some sites used those and you couldn't continue with what you were doing.
I did miss the google toolbar, and I'm still amazed it wasn't in the first cut, why the rush and miss that out? Then i found some ways to get around that, javascript shortcuts/links, i managed to get the Send to Blogger, and a few others working, as well as Instapaper etc. I'm happy as.
Now, my latest problem, as you can see from a previous post, is the browserist elitism of some companies that block my poor little browser. I used to laugh at the people that complained about sites that said 'Best viewed with IE' etc, but that was because they used Netscape and FireFox etc, now they don't complain when its Chrome that's being blocked.
But being fair to online companies, it is hard to support multiple browsers, and it has to be weighed up with the costs vs the benefits. For instance a car manufacturer has to make their car compliant with many countries manufacturers rules, but there is big money there. How far do you go. To the credit of the company mentioned as blocking Chrome, they will be supporting it shortly, and I guess they are in beta and still testing, easier to get the basics working then expand the supported browsers.
So i will continue on my quest to keep using the one simple uncluttered, fast, stable browser. When your on a good thing, stick to it, until something better comes along.
Feel free to comment on your thoughts about the browser as a tool, not whats best and whats not, but more of a holy point of view, "does it get my job done", and "what makes you switch"?
End of thought, browser off!
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