mjm and uh (godammit???) are morons.
Chrome is beta and is nowhere near any of the robust browsers out there.. the simple lack of plugins for the most basic things is glaringly obvious.
If you like it then go with it, but please don't try and argue that it is comparable to IE or FF... it is fast, but thats because it has no underlying support for anything,., its just a speedy lambo with no brakes or airbags.

The author is right. This browser should be labeled BETA because of all things it should be able to do, it still cannot properly render pages. I can't log into Twitter with it. https://www.nevadafederal.org still doesn't load properly and it crashes often. All I may happen to be doing is typing in a web address. It's fast and I like the speed. But if it doesn't have to do any heavy lifting, I suppose it can be speedy. I wish they would fix it but it is one broken down, wasted use of anyones time, let alone mine. One more crash and it'll get a visit from YourUninstaller.

I dislike the Chrome History-skipping behavior. Update to the latest browser (gear, help, update).
Test: go to http://en.wikipedia.org . Click "Random Article" a few times. Click browser back. Instead of stepping back one page, Chrome throws up the Wikipedia Home page. Oops.
The Chrome history page doesn't show the intermediate pages either. It remembers the landing pages, and that's all.
(I already tried the History discard trick, and the uninstall, reinstall trick. No dice. It's wired in, and it's broken.)

I don´t like chrome because of the unique id every installation has. for google this is better than to rely on cookies (which could get deleted) and for the users this is a nightmare.

I switched full time to Chrome, and here's why:
1. I was sick and tired of whitelisting sites to get security in noscript/Firefox.
2. Speed is faster. I notice this directly by going back and forth to Firefox occasionally. I could care less about 50-150 MiB memory use on a system with 4 GiB.
3. I like Chrome's interface best of all the browsers. why? Screen real estate.
4. Firefox quality seems to have taken a nosedive lately. Quite a few releases are followed up by quick patches to fix something obvious broken.
5. Opera is fine except I didn't like the interface, the UI/preferences were silly, and the help system was horrid. It just took too much time to bring the browser where I wanted it to be.
6. IE and Safari are POS and I'll likely never use again.

You mean you were sick and tired to do a thing you imposed on yourself ?
Not that I blame you this IS what you should do but blaming FF for you using the noscript (fabulous) addon .... hu :)

Anything Google makes my computer puke
Along with Yahoo

I am like many of you that have posted here. I will not jump to Chrome until there is support for extensions/themes with a large selection from which to choose. The way bookmarks are handled is abysmal at best. Speed is not everything. Oh.... and this is the real road block for me...

from the Google Chrome comic http://www.google.com/go...ooks/chrome/med_04.html

"And if there's a browser bug in the renderer (and our experience is that it's almost impossible to eliminate all bugs), we still only lose one tab." "When one tab goes down you get a 'sad tab' but it doesn't crash the whole browser"

Unfortunately, this is not a true or correct statement, I have had 10+ tabs open... out of the blue the page I am on goes to the 'sad tab' and within seconds the rest of the tabs follow suit.

"When you have too many tabs open, you can close some to free up memory."

Again, this is not true or correct. I have had many experiences when closing tabs, memory was not freed up.

Yes, I am aware Google Chrome is in a permanent beta status as most of Google's apps. I realize there will be issues occasionally. I find it very annoying to have a marketing pitch that promises the world only to be handed a pebble.

As long as the other tabs are not using whatever part of Chrome that caused the first tab to crash then your situation will not happen. Ever. Your situation is extremely rare.

Initially I assumed the same thing. I was running into this issue on a Vista Ultimate 64 workstation while navigating through Facebook. So, I installed Chrome on my other workstation running Windows XP Professional 64 and it experiences the same tab crashes. I have had tab crashes on other web sites but they are very rare. On Facebook they are common place on both workstations and they are random. I have not found a pattern as of yet.

The use of a browser, and which one is best, is a never ending personal argument; which I don't debate on, but my position on Chrome is that it's simplistic, fast and reports show it's secure, but I don't use it, and in almost 2yrs my site stats only show that Chrome is 4% of my audience. And while I say Chrome is fast; when it starts adding extensions I'll revisit the topics of 'fast' and 'how much memory' it uses. We'll see how long those things last...

[smiling] anything but Internet Explorer...

Woah, just checked Acid 3 in the latest Dev build. Now only one of the tests is considered "slow" (maybe none if you don't have a POS comp like me). However one of the tests is failed now for a 99/100 score... also the web font test (the pink and white X in the upper right) still is not passed.

Gimme Firebug (ChromeBug) and ill convert. The 150-250mb for FF against Chromes 40mb memory usage is all I need to know

Most people have 4-8GB of RAM and a 64-bit OS. Firefox's supposed high memory usage (which I've never, ever encountered) is not a big issue. Except maybe for you.

*yawn*. Call me when they finally have extension support.

No, seriously, call me. I'm sick to death of Firefox's lousy performance, and the lack of extensability is the only thing keeping me from switching.

Firefox is the fastest browser ever created. If Google Chrome is faster then it's by such a small percentage that most people wouldn't even notice. Unless you're one of the very few with a memory constrained system.

When chrome will run on multiple platforms and gives the ability to sync my bookmarks across multiple machines, I'll consider using it. Until at least those 2 conditions are met......quite frankly it's not worth my consideration.

Chrome runs on Windows, MAC and Linux so that is covered. With the built in Google bookmarks sync you can have bookmarks synced to all computers. Looks like you are set to start using Chrome :)

Chrome runs through a MAC (more-or-less), but runs on a Mac.

For me, I'll only use Chrome when the Google Toolbar is available for Chrome version. For overall, Chrome need to have some time in order to beat with IE, or even FF.

You do realize that by default if you do not type www or .com/.org/.edu/.tld you can search the web simply by hitting enter in the address bar right?

No Google Toolbar, means Chrome is a non-starter for me. I use Google Bookmarks, and I won't switch without the means to access them.

BTW -- Why are Google Bookmarks and the Google Toolbar so much better in IE than Firefox? Ever try specifying the category for a new link in FF? Sort order...who cares. Hilarious.

"firefox developed in private, dont accept public comment until beta?"

OMG, i dont know how you can write an article about browsers and knowing nothing about the fundamental facts?

"Firefox crashes 1.5 times a day for you?"

OMG #2, I dont know how you can write an article about browsers and knowing nothing about the fact that you are just 1 user out of 300 million and your experiences might just not represent the whole truth?

Why do I find more and more factually false articles here at Betanews recently?

I use Chrome as my default browser. I really like the speed and simplicity. When I have to go back to IE, say to access something on sharepoint, it just feels like molasses. I still like the development tools in Firefox better, can't beat Firebug, Selenium, Fiddler, etc.; which all run best in Firefox.

I love the speed.. but too much missing to make this browser anything more than a test platform.
Long way to go and with the lack of add-ons/plug-ins, this one wont last or compete for robustness or security.
Nice try though

I'm tired of talking about Chrome. I just don't like it.

Let me take this opportunity to say that I thoroughly enjoy BN because of all the knowledgeable people here who post comments. It is entertaining at times but most of all, very informative. Your comments provide insight and information to me, and hopefully to others, which help me make conclusions beneficial to my web existence. I visit a bazillion tech sites each day, using Firefox btw, but I get the most from here. I also like NGOHQ.com where intelligence is rampant.

It is great to read you agree that Chrome lacks the functionality through all of its development. I have harped on this so much that I thought I was banging my head against the wall here. I'm sure it will be a great browser when it's finished, just like Maryland. (inside joke for those who live in that state) I know this post may be a little off topic, but it's a compliment to all!

"I'm sure it will be a great browser when it's finished, just like Maryland."

roflmfao! I love it! That was brilliant. I'll have to snag that one and use it if you don't mind.

Thanks for the heads-up on the other site as well. Haven't run across that one previously.

Are you saying that I-695 is still under construction east of Baltimore?

What part of 95 near the BW area ISN'T under construction? That's like asking if there is an area of road near Fort Gordon (I-20, 520) that isn't under construction. Like Googles perpetual beta status, those roads are always in "Beta" condition.

...and here I thought Jackson, MS was the orange barrel capital of the world.

The Google developers need to get their heads from under the car. It's time you get some real Google ingenuity into this browser.
I have been following Chrome since the start, and not much seems to have changed since its introduction. Surely they might have been working at it, but that's all under the hood.
The 'new' bookmark sync strikes me as just plain foolish.
I've been using google bookmarks for year and what does Google decide... lets store bookmarks in a google doc and not use google bookmarks (http://www.google.com/bookmarks/) at all.
Do the developers even know whats in their portfolio allready?
I agree with the author, Google needs to get with the program.

"With Mozilla, the newest code is developed under a private track, which only means that the developers aren't taking comments from the public about it, even though it's publicly available."

Not true. You can get on Firefox's "nightly channel" and get updates to Firefox every single day. If that's not enough, you can download tinderbox and tryserver builds pretty much hourly. It is absolutely not developed in private in any way.

- A

It's called a "private track," but you're right in that it doesn't mean you can't download it. Of course, we have because we test it ourselves. But it's private in that the testing is conducted privately, and that public comment isn't entertained until the official public beta.

At least this is how Mozilla explains it to me.

-SF3

As a Chromium developer, I'm utterly boggled by this article. You accuse us of not having a clue, and cite as evidence that only in Chrome 4 are we testing a bookmarks bar and a home button. The bookmark bar (not just on the new tab page, but everywhere) and home button have both been available since the initial Chrome 0.2 beta release last September.

On extensions, I'm not sure what you're trying to say, precisely, but it sounds like you think that all there is for Chrome are themes. It shouldn't be a surprise that there is more focus on themes than extensions when themes were part of Chrome 3 and extensions are part of Chrome 4, but themes are mostly hosted at Google and the third-party extension sites I've seen have generally been focused on extensions, so I'm not sure which sites you were visiting when you missed all of them.

Besides these complaints, the only ones I can find are that we don't have history and bookmarks sidebars. Perhaps it would surprise you to know that we look at automated usage metrics, usability studies, and user problems and questions to gauge what works and what doesn't, and these things aren't things that bug most of our users. In fact, your conclusion that Chrome is "gaining" a reputation for being feature-free is the exact opposite of what we see, where this point of view was prevalent at the time of the initial public launch and has steadily become scarcer.

Show me the "get more extensions" button in Chrome. Oh, its not there? Well, how about Google's collection of Chrome extensions..I can just download them there with a simple click-to-install, then. Oh, can't do that either? Well then, guess what? That means that they effectively DON'T EXIST. For a so-called "developer" you need to get a clue about design. You should be lighting a fire under Google to make your work actually visible. Until they do, I strongly recommend you focus on supporting Mozilla-based browsers. At least you'll actually get some users.

I heard so many good things about Chrome that I downloaded it to try it. When I opened the bookmarks, I was very frustrated by the lack of a scrollbar. I have over four hundred favorites and having to wait to scroll through them to get to the one I want with no thumb to speed it up is torture. That's the one deficiency that made me go back to IE.

Thank you for your comment, and I truly do appreciate the good work you're contributing to Chromium. However, I can't help but think your explanation that these omissions must not be truly meaningful to the people you're listening to for feedback, sounds very Microsoft-ish in a Windows Me kind of way. The world isn't screaming bloody murder about it, so obviously it's not a problem.

I would invite you to listen to the folks who yell in my direction every time we post a positive article extolling the virtues of Chrome's JavaScript engine. If those folks are truly a minority, then they are the most vocal minority I've ever heard since the days of Jerry Falwell. There's a sizable group out here who want to see the V8 engine married to a front end with some functionality to it, and with all the great work going on in the open source realm, we're wondering why that's too much to ask for.

Respectfully,

Scott Fulton

If you are a developer then tell them to put in a drop down address bar! You will never get me or most people that I know until this happens. There is no reason for this not to be there! Sure you can start typing and then select it, but it is easier to just click on the damn thing.

"There's a sizable group out here who want to see the V8 engine married to a front end with some functionality to it,"

YES! One thousand times; YES!

Is V8 OSS? Is there a possibility we might see it in a usable browser some day?

"put in a drop down address bar!"

I seriously lost count of all the customers that thought their "bookmarks" or "favorites" were gone once their history was cleared out, thus clearing out the contents of the address bar.

A lot of people that I know use the address bar as their "favorites"... and essentially, that's what it is.

So yes, I agree that a lot of people will balk at the idea of not seeing a list of all their most frequently-visited sites using that method with Chrome... if that method existed, that is.

Well it is just easier to go to your daily visited websites with a drop down address bar. I just work my way down the list.

Just a question for anyone out there. I currently am using Firefox with the Default Full Zoom level add-on. I have been wanting to switch to Chrome but can someone tell me if there is an add-on or extension that can provide me with ability to change the default zoom level for all pages in Chrome? I do not want to have to manually change the zoom level each time in Chrome. Any info would be appreciated. Thanks.

It took me a long time to move from IE to Opera, then on to Firefox. I am extremely happy with firefox, so until I get fed up with it, I certainly won't be changing, sorry Google.

I've said it before: The moment Chrome gets some decent community addon support (and maybe modifies webkit to allow for content-filtering, thus making an AdBlock Plus extension even possible), I'm there...until then, it has little use to me other than being a pandora-app.

(Yes, there is an adblock+ extension for Chrome, but it doesn't block ads from downloading...it simply doesn't render them. The gecko engine allows filtering of content which allows AdBlock Plus to actually stop the ads from even downloading...still, it's a start)

Ad Muncher 4.8 blocks everything and is compatible with more than one browser.

Beat me to it.

But it isn't free. Besides, the point I think was implying that they should improve the extensibility and flexibility of the software, allowing more advanced extensions.

Lotheric: No. It doesn't. It is a stand-alone application, not a browser add-on.

...why is it some people see "AdBlock" and regardless of the comment's meaning suddenly feel this irresistible urge to turn the thread into some commercial?

Yes, KaOSoFT...the comment was in reference to the browsers extendability and it's support for such functionality.

Plus, Ad Muncher costs you yearly now for list updates (ABP is free and run by the community) unless you want to fork out 100 dollars for lifetime updates, yes that is updates not upgrades meaning stuff like USB Portability will likely cost extra when/if it finally arrives, ad muncher is not a viable option financially.

Doesn't Google Chrome use the Webkit engine? So how does it compare with Safari and other webkit based browsers?

We're talking two different engines now....for HTML rendering it is WebKit, for JS, it's Google's own "V8" JS engine...so when they say Google is "teh fastest", they are talking about the V8 JS engine...which is all well and good...if all you do is browse sites that are JS-only.

When you put FF, IE, O, GC and S side by side you don't see a difference in speed.
Sure, in benchmarks you can see a big difference sometimes, but one thousand of second does not even register to a user. What does make a browser faster is the usability and ease of use. And that's where FF kills all other browsers. Ad-dons makes a browser. With the right add-ons for that particular user it can make his or her your browsing experience very fast. This makes FF, in my opinion, the best browser on the market.

It's all right I suppose.

' "I wish they could make it look and act like Firefox," wrote CyberDoc999.'

What an utterly pointless statement... Use friggin FF then! I loathe FF except for the AdBlock plugin. It brings my betbook to a crawl with its incompetent cache management and disk access.

Chrome is excellent in its simplicity. There are enough alternatives that force their junk onto you. Please stick to those and ideally get a pretty Mac along with it and you'll be happy - and leave Chrome alone so the rest of us can get on with it.

Chrome's bookmarks system suck and because of this very reason I switched to a different browser. Have you noticed when you hover over a bookmark you have no idea where the bookmark is pointing to because there is no status bar? With some other browsers when you hover over a bookmark, on the status bar you get the URL of the bookmark.

Oh come on, the Home button and attached Bookmarks Bar have existed since the very first release (toggleable in the Options and in the Tools menu (or by Ctrl+B), respectively). Sheesh.

But given the Home button complaint, I'm surprised you didn't bring up the Stop button too, or lack thereof. (For the record, it's on the opposite side of the screen from Reload, and only appears when loading. Sucks.)

Yes, the article is riddled with inaccuracies, like a lot of the articles on here. You can't trust a word any article writer says on here with gaping big holes in the accuracy of the story.

Remember that a Google representative for Chrome said that the numbers did not really represent anything but a progression. 4.0 might as well be 0.4.0, right? When Firefox was Phoenix 0.4.0, it was fast and light and good to see how quick a Mozilla browser could be and it took its cue from Chimera, now Camino, a Mac OS X browser that is still quite light and quick, though missing the extensions functionality.

Google are more concerned with giving their online applications somewhere stable to reside and what could be better than a browser that they control.

Using the developer preview of Chrome 4, I see some things to like but every time I try to type "beta" for instance to get www.betanews.com, I get a huge web search with the bookmark buried somewhere within the first 50 entries.

Firefox may not be the ultimate speed demon, but it's a better browser overall and it's more efficient than anything else I've used on Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux.

Finally some truth from you Scott. Chrome does suck. It's like Vista(a unfinished idea). Windows 7 is a finished idea and product. But we are talking about google today.

Regardless the lack of a favorites sidebar was a major issue for me. Cause i keep my sidebar open at all times. I got room for it on my 30inch monitor. Plus i use things like folders to organize my favorites so it makes things easy. Chrome lacks functionality in favor of speed.

Example hxxp://img97.imageshack.us/i/63790824.jpg/\

Now Nothing is 20 times faster then IE8 or 7 for that matter. We need to get to the bottom of this BS lie. I'm not here to say IE is the fastest. But when you say 20 times faster you lie point blank.

IN MY INFORMAL testing it took Firefox 6 secs. to fully load msnbc and IE took 5 secs. Betanews took 3 secs on IE and 2 on firefox.

Now i am no Scott M. Fulton the 3rd. But if you do the math i say if in fact IE is 20 times slower i should still be waiting for these pages to load. My Safari browser on my iPhone isnt even that slow SCOTT!

Please dont waste our time with lies. If you testing refers to some test platform or something that is not a real world useage item, get rid of it. I dont see a major difference in speed between most of these browsers. Cause maybe i have a brain perhaps. I WILL NEVER SAY IE IS FASTER, CAUSE I DONT CARE. I am saying it works, it doesnt crash for me. It does what i need it to and it does it as fast as most other browsers from what i can tell in my informal testing. I don't need to know how fast it renders a javascript test file. I need to know how fast it loads my porn. Which it does really well.

I do thank you Scott for shedding some light on the fact chrome stinks like a egg on features. I also dont like that recently viewed page i counldnt get rid of that shows whoever the last 8 or so pages i viewed. I got kids people, i dont need them knowing i was looking at porn last night. At least IE, Firefox and Opera at least all share a common look and functionality that makes it easy to switch between the 3 without pulling your hair out. Safari is just no fun. i used it once a year or so ago and it just felt like crap. Chrome felt better. But not by much.

SCOTT please give us some real world testing. Cause if betanews loads on firefox in 3 secs. then it should take a full min. according to you.

I am tired being made to look folish cause I cling to IE. IT is NOT AT ALL that slow. Be honest for once. It seems you keep plugging away with this browser war just to anger people. I dont think anyone cares about this made up browser war betanews created. We use what we like, not what you want us to like. And we dont use something cause we are dumb and dont care. Most of us have tried them all and settled with what FEELS GOOD TO US. It's personal choice.

Bigsexy is right about personal choice in your browser. Most of you have seen my stupid posts about all the speed tests from BN, which puts Chrome in another universe, insulting our intelligence here on earth. Probably everyone here has tried them all, I know I have. I just prefer Firefox. That's not to say it's the best, it's just what I use and it's the best for me.

Betanews with yet another lackluster out of touch article! way to go!

Agreed. It's also inaccurate, especially about the bookmarks.

Wow. Are you serious with this? This has to be a level.

"Chrome, which is already gaining a reputation as a browser that makes up for its performance superiority with slow and cumbersome functionality."

"All indications that Google only projects its browser will be used lightly and occasionally... one wonders why Google actually bothers making its underlying JavaScript engine as good as it is -- effectively mounting a V8 engine to a tricycle."

lolololol @ this crap. Are you even aware of HTML5 and what's in store for the future of web apps?

You definitely provided the lulz with this nonsense. Seems like you're completely disconnected from web development technologies.

I find it very disingenuous that Betanews makes Chrome seem like the work of divine beings in all the other reviews, only to slam it now as only partially usable.

I've known this was so all along, and those who have clung to Firefox and Opera have been treated as though a trip to the psych ward was in order - not good form, but typical of the computer press that must try to keep itself relevant by whipping up a frenzy about something new on the order of every two weeks.

Great post guru, you head it smack on top of the nail head.

So let me get this straight: We can't do a series that focuses on the good virtues of a product, followed by a series that focuses on the opposite side, without being disingenuous?

It amazes me the number of different, serpentine courses folks will take sometimes in their continuing effort to find novel ways of saying we suck. We work like hell to look at all sides of an issue, while some of you work miracles coming up with new ways to attain the exact same conclusion. It also equally amazes me what passes for a "frenzy."

-SF "Bothered and Bewildered...Two Out of Three" 3

I really dont understand the complaining about Google Chrome. I switched to it from Firefox and i absolutely love it. Especially now that we have extensions enabled.
Its way better than my experiences with Firefox by a large margin.

How good is a browser if its not fully supported. What good does safari for windows do for me when it doesn't work with netflix. Remember how annoying that UAC popup in Vista was. Well, with Chrome, I get a popup on a regular basis telling me it isn't supported by that particular website. Don't run into that problem with IE8 or firefox. Only with Chrome and Safari.

Wow where to start.

1) I got the impression Google shipped 1.0 not-Beta because computer manufacturers don't want to ship "beta" software with their PCs. So Google had to bump it up to 1.0 final and I'm guessing it's why they keep doing major version releases even though there's still some work left on basic features (extensions is what I'm looking forward too).

2) I agree that a sidebar-esque interface would be convenient for bookmarks... oh wait, what's this Bookmark Manager thing? Ctrl+s***+B. For a simpler interface that's more like you're talking about, I think extensions will eventually fill the void on this one.

2a) While you're in the Bookmark Manager, categorize some of those bookmarks! My bookmarks list doesn't scroll. It doesn't need to.

2b) You can search for Bookmarks right from the location bar. Either Mozilla or Google (I forget which) found that users tend to search for a page they've been to before rather than use their bookmarks anyway. So might as well just put search for bookmarks right up there to make it easier to use bookmarks, I figure.

3) What are you babbling on about "In Chrome 3, the Bookmarks Bar was only part of the New Tab screen, and was actually provided by a Google Web page."? Everything in that paragraph has been virtually the same since the first public Chrome release. Ctrl+B can dock the Bookmark Toolbar to the window, or make it only appear on the New Tab page. This is not a new feature.

4) I agree that history and download pages are a bit clumsy. In particular the Downloads page reloads every time you delete an object and it is impossible to multiselect items for delete. Again, maybe an extension will come along and take care of these problems, maybe Google will go back and improve once they have all their main features in place.

5) I don't care for many of the current themes, but a few are OK. I'd really like to see more dynamic themes, and Chrome appears to allow for custom theming DLLs. Before full theming support was out, users were replacing images embedded in the default theme DLL to customize the browser, even moreso than the current official themes allow, which are lightweight themes in comparison (think full Firefox themes vs. Persona skins).

6) I don't find Chrome slow and cumbersome; I reserved words like that for pretty much every other browser out there ever since I first ran Chrome. Firefox is trying but it can't come close in startup or running times. If I ever manage to get a new PC and actually experience multicore it may be a different story, but even then Chrome's multi-process architecture will give it a huge advantage.

Wait a danggum minute! Did Hell freeze over? Was today a cold day in Hell? Did people in Hell finally get iced water? I must have died in a fiery car crash on the way home from work! There is no way, absolutely no way that BN is dissing Google, if even a little bit. That'll teach Google to be late with their monthly "make sure we get the best review" payment.

Finally someone with the kahonas to report the lack of functionality in Google. FINALLY!!! Scott is my hero! And to Google, Speed Kills!

Well, now that you mention it, I did break out the warm Sooners sweater today, and you know, where did I place that electric blanket...?

-SF "Brrrr" 3

Good job, SF3!

OU Sooners sweater? If so, you might want to put it back for next year with the way their season is going...

gawd21 "Good job, SF3!"
Always a little something extra in your posts gawd21, notice you have not yet gathered any thumbs up, time for you to cast the first vote perhaps ?

@ece: A man can always dream.

-SF "Just As Long As That Man Isn't Bob Stoops" 3

The browser does move a lot better than before and now that IE as slow down because of the new patch Chrome, Firefox and Opera are the best to browser the web at this point.

By John Davidson
www.tsintegrator.com

Chrome is really great, but at the same time this is THE browser that have annoyed me the most. It`s good in most ways, but I`m a webmaster and I have had SO much bugs to work out; Chrome just dont wanna show my websites like it should. For no reason I get blurry pictures, HALF pictures etc. I mean, come on! Why show only half a picture, load just half of it? I dont get it.