After 2 Hours of Using Google Chrome: Email and More.
Submitted by Taran on Wed, 09/03/2008 - 10:10
After my first impressions of Google Chrome, I have been avidly using it and have come up with a few things that need to be sorted out. For example, even with Google Chrome set as the default browser, links in Seamonkey's email open in... Seamonkey. I understand that I can have my email on someone else's server (like gmail), but hey - I don't want my data sitting on someone else's server. I want it on my machine so that I can maintain archives without having to connect to the internet to do so - especially when traveling.
Granted, this may be Seamonkey's issue rather than Google Chrome - but as a user, I want an email option with my browser and I don't really want 'yet another standalone application'. The architecture of Google Chrome does permit for this to happen within a tab, and it should be there in a tab at the least. I don't know how many times I have to write that I want my data where I can get to it at all times. Work with me, Google.
And architecture: Don Marti makes an interesting point about the architecture that I hinted at when mentioning Kirix Strata:
...The idea of tabs being first class citizens makes a lot of sense, but why have a sub-window-manager that just manages browser windows in tabs, when you could have a tabbed window manager that can manage everything? I might want a browser and a spreadsheet to share a tab...
Well, Kirix Strata does do spreadsheets/relational database(s) in a web browser as I mentioned before - and as a browser it's on par with just about everything else out there (though it lacks email, but with a relational database engine... it can be done). Kirix Strata isn't open source, but then neither are most of the web services being built on Free Software/Open Source (fodder for another post).
The crux of the criticism here, in the context of Google Chrome, is that it doesn't do what this user wants: it doesn't do offline email. That's a liability for me, despite how fast it is and how cool the architecture may be. Sure, there are masses of people who use gmail and other web based email clients, I grok that - but at the end of the day, there are people out there who want more than that. And that's where Google Chrome falls flat... That and the fact that it could have been more but hasn't become more. It's a darned spiffy web browser with good ideas, but it makes this user's desktop have multiple personalities... and that just clutters my system instead of helps me.
Google Chrome
i'm willing to try it out just to see if it works more efficiently than FireFox... if it's faster than Firefox and isn't IE, then i'll use it
It's faster than Firefox...
or at least it has me fooled.
Are features what Chrome is about?
Hey Taran,
I am all for feature-driven development of software, in fact I agree with your assessment of Chrome in that if it doesn't have the features the end user wants, it's not going to fly.
However, as a developer, and a power user, it does have a feature I want, which is faster and more stable Javascript execution.
This is something most regular users need right now, if they haven't recognised it yet, since sites like GMail and Facebook use heavy AJAX components that could do with better execution times.
I think Google started where it figured the long-term benefit lay first, in the belly of the beast which is Javascript execution technique and time, and by showing users a better way (via V8, which is truly a better Javascript engine till TraceMonkey/Firefox 3.1 comes). Hopefully as time goes by the features that make a browser a more complete and complimentary user experience will find themselves into future versions of Chrome. It is, after all, open source too.
P.S. Feel free to browse my blog at http://redditech.blogspot.com and check out the javascript execution comparisons between Chrome and other released browsers. Chrome is exceptionally faster...IE7, is also strangely exceptionally slower!
You mean Chrome isn't about features?
I read a comic book about that. Seriously, it is. And seriously, despite all the good things that I have seen in Google Chrome - without POP ability, it's handicapped and is of little use. Wonder why IE/Outlook/Outlook Express are used so much?
Because web service email is not what most people need. Why? You can't read archives for a specification when you're offline on an airplane. Come on.
Software is about features. Chrome is faster, but it sucks because of a lack of integrated POP email. As does Firefox, though Thunderbird at least makes it usable.
NEXT.
Absolutely rocks in every
Absolutely rocks in every way. Google has once again proven that it has what is needed to deliver great products. it’s a decent browser…download time may be a dash slower than other browsers but the app load time, smooth rendering, space utilization etc are great.
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