I found chrome to be smooth and a bit quicker than firefox which i was using by preference (because of the add-on capabilities) but also by necessity as ie7 was acting peculiar and unusable even after a repair attempt. I have not tried any other browsers other than these mentioned but i am a chrome fan as of this juncture and no matter what google itself is getting out of this venture, I feel that I too gain.

Tried it, didn't like it, removed it. Chrome looks too plain. Not enough buttons on screen. Needs a lot of work done to it before I even think of using it again.

You'll probably never get more buttons. One of Google's "things" is their minimalism.

It's not for everyone, to be sure.

my first install of Google Chrome , led me into the problem of the install in Spanish, yes, I am in Costa Rica, but English is my preference
I had to uninstall Chrome , and even that presented a small problem.
In Add and Remove programs, it stopped the uninstall, claiming that Chrome was running, It was not running.

Task manager, and a reboot solved this

Upon a fresh install,and Picked English at the install page, it still installed in Spanish

But this time, the Change Font and Language Setting, and a reboot worked

I trade currencies, and have not been able to find out how to have certain web pages to run my charts. The pages claim that I do not have the proper plug ins, and normally, like in Firefox, it would allow you to install the correct plug in and continue, Chrome , seams to have a problem for me running Java Script Charts, like at www.fxstreet.com

I look forward to an array of add ons and plug in's similar to Firefox

If anyone can assist me in having Chrome work charts, I would love to make Chrome my main browser. I am a big Google Fan

Also, would love to be able to open and access multiple Gmail accounts, or at least a "notifier" for Chrome

Richard

Well, after more use...

Printing webpages (price quotes and such) needs work.

It seems to play havoc with my desktop icons (if Chrome is the first app launched, I can no longer drag my desktop icons....only noticed this in XP, not Vista.

It absolutely hates ASP, at least the one site I still go to that uses ASP...

All in all, a good run, but still needs a *lot* of work. Very good for a Beta, though.

edit

Looks like the ASP issue was site related. Other sites using ASP seem to render without error. Heh...Oops.

Thought ASP was server-side only like PHP is.

Like I said in the edit... It ain't chrome's problem, the site was borked. ;)

Finally, a browser that's completely immune to malware. It's about time. It's even possible to have free ad blocking in Chrome like Firefox does with the Adblock Plus add on.

Completely immune? Where on earth do you get this outrageous statement?

Keep smoking it, man. Pass it around if you're feeling generous.

"...immune to malware."

OOOOooooooookay.

http://www.us-cert.gov/c...le_chrome_vulnerability

http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1843

http://blogs.pcmag.com/s...rome_tries_to_raise.php

Beta bugs aside, this type of design has the ability to block all malware. If your running software in VMware, for example, then it's impossible for that software to affect the host OS. Chrome's design is no different.

I too switched from FF to Chrome. Chrome has a powerful web development DOM inspector that rivals Firebug and Web Developer (of which I use b/c Firebug is bloated courtesy of Mozilla's application framework being slow).

First -- BN was a little unfair when comparing the browsers' toolbars. Chrome included tabs. It would have been fair to have had a tab bar included for Firefox and no bookmarks toolbar in FF (or add a bookmarks bar to IE and Chrome)

Second - 'thequietthings' complained about 'GoogleUpdate.exe' being slipstreamed in. I agree - there's no reason to have this running as a service, the browser should phone home on startup to look for an upgrade. Or Google can place trust in the default page that shows up and include upgrade notices there. I agree with PC_Tool about 99% of the time and am disappointed that he supported this idea. I don't personally care that this is on my system, however, I prefer having less things running just for the sake of simplicity.

I am glad to see so many user tesimonies on the web about Chrome though ... very few people are talking about the AWESOME Javascript Console which in its own right is a powerful DOM Viewer, Debugger, Manipulator - whatever you want to call it. You can also right click on an element on a web page to immediately display its details by clicking 'inspect element'. This is a fantastic feature that has allowed me to use Chrome as my primary browser and what kept FF3 and it's persistent memory leaks as my primary browser before.

Antioch,

The updater updates *all* Google's applications. Instead of re-inventing the wheel and putting an updater in each one, they decided to limit the functionality of each app to that applications main functionality and left the updating to a separate app.

Kind of like Ubuntu and Synaptics, just not as broad in it's support.

Instead of using 3 different apps to update three apps, they use one. Seems more efficient to me...

Ditch the tinfoil man, it's not a good look on ya. ;)

You are missing the point. Yes slipstreaming an updater is frowned upon, but yes everyone implements one. The biggest issue is that it persists even after being uninstalled from the PC, absolutely zero Google services exist on that PC. The uninstaller does not even prompt you to remove the updater, it just uninstalls Chrome, but leaves the updater service to run on your PC and probably (I would not be surprised) phone home every so often. THIS is a no-no because there is no Google software on the PC to be updated, and thus the uninstaller should be removing the updater as well, as many other applications do. One uninstaller suite that allows you to select what applications are uninstalled / reinstalled /etc from that suite.

My comments had *nothing* to do with the uninstall issue. They were regarding your and others' complaints about it being a separate service that ran outside of the applications themselves.

No need to argue about bad install/uninstall procedures, on that, I agree with you 100%.

Google needs to run a check during the uninstall of their apps for the other apps and if none remain, launch the uninstall of the updater or at the very least provide an "uninstaller" for the updater.

So far I'm very impressed with Chrome and the length that Google has gone to describe the fashion in which it was created. I do believe that the only chance it will have to catch up to Firefox, however, is its lack of customization features and add-ons in the nature that Firefox uses them. If Google is able to build in that sort of functionality and keep it performing at this level, I think Firefox and IE will have a major competitor on their hands.

I think with them supporting Firefox for the next 3 years they are not in direct competition in that they look like keeping it lite not with all the add-ons that the devotees of Firefox love.

A nifty footnote: This app does *not* set off UAC in Vista.

Proof that programs *can* be coded and installed in a way that doesn't annoy users. :)

Tim,

Give us some site stats since the release:

How much has chrome use on Betanews grown since release? Day by day...hour by hour?

It might be an interesting look at what the users of a tech site might be doing with it.

Hey, Tim?

*poke*

You awake? ;)

" (Opera 3, which does score better than chrome, still only ekes out an 83% in BetaNews tests.) "

You mean Opera 9.5

Btw, Chrome's interface is more close to Opera than to FF or IE.

"...and open source code..."

What? It uses WebKit, which is open, but Chrome itself isn't.

From http://googleblog.blogsp...sh-take-on-browser.html

We've used components from Apple's WebKit and Mozilla's Firefox, among others -- and in that spirit, we are making all of our code open source as well.

From http://www.tech65.org/2008/09/03/google-chrome/

However the code is powerful and it’s open source. Google is actively inviting developers to take their code and run with it;

Someone is grossly misinformed, or trying to grossly misinform others.

"It's notably better than Firefox 3 and IE7, though in BetaNews tests, it took Chrome about 90 seconds to get as far as 77%."

No sh!t. FF3 scores at 85% in 2 seconds. Tim, what acid are you on?

Firefox 3.0.1 scores 71% in 2 seconds which is worse than Chrome. What acid are YOU on?

What acid are the both of you on to not realize that ACID3 doesn't mean anything when it comes to real world rendering? If all sites cared about web standards, then yes, but until that day acid3 is just a pipedream and something for each browser maker to boast about when they get a higher score. Show me a browser that can render 98% of pages correctly, then we can start boasting.

Install Chrome and you will find GoogleUpdate.exe running in your task manager. Killing it does not stop it from returning however, you will also find it in msconfig. To make matters worse, before I removed it from msconfig I had uninstalled Chrome and the updater still reappeared a short while later in my running processes. I had to kill the associated exe and remove it from msconfig to be rid of it completely. Who does Google think they are? Apple?

http://build.chromium.or...apshots/chromium-rel-xp/

No updater OR EULA and get your latest build.

Failure to provide a method of keeping software that interacts with the internet up to date is a major no-no.

If such a feature was not included, many users would fail to properly update their browser because they have come to expect this functionality, and would therefore be vulnerable to any future exploits that they would normally be protected from.

Hate to break it to you, but updater apps are part of computing now, like it or not.

Sure, it's an increasingly common and beneficial practice to provide a method for automatic update. But is there any good reason to check for updates *when the software is not running* (and hasn't been run in weeks or months)? A software update checker that is a part of the program itself, and not a separate service, works just fine, and has the added benefit of checking for updates at the most relevant time: When the user is actually using the application. The majority of software I use works this way (Firefox, Filezilla, OpenOffice, etc.) and I see little reason to do otherwise, unless it's more in the interest of the software company and not the user.

But is there any good reason to check for updates *when the software is not running* (and hasn't been run in weeks or months)?

Most definitely. Do you wan them all to be out of date when they *do* launch it again?

A software update checker that is a part of the program itself, and not a separate service, works just fine, and has the added benefit of checking for updates at the most relevant time: When the user is actually using the application.

So instead of one updater for Google Desktop, Google Chrome, and Picasa, you'd rather have 3 built into the code of each application? Whatever happened to the fight against bloat? Why re-invent the wheel for each application? One for pictures, one for browsing, one for search, and one to update.

The majority of software I use works this way (Firefox, Filezilla, OpenOffice, etc.) and I see little reason to do otherwise, unless it's more in the interest of the software company and not the user.

None of those applications are from the same vendor.

As an aside;

Ubuntu users have one of these things as well. It's called Synaptics, but it's even better as it can update *any* program in the repository.

As some one said previously it updates all Google apps in one app so each one on start up does not need to do check everytime,so being more efficient.

I honestly don't care if the application is not up-to-date next time I launch it, as long as the update check is the 1st thing done, which in Filezilla it is. In FF it doesn't seem to be, and definitely not in OO. But there's no reason it can't be. I'd rather that than a random prompt from Google Updater for software I may not have used for weeks or months (Google Earth for example) telling me there's some new version.

So yes, I *would* prefer 3 different updaters for 3 different apps. No company, Google included, should assume that I will ever have multiple applications of theirs installed. And it's not like it's hard to make a simple update checking component that they can basically drop-in to all their apps. Not really reinventing the wheel.

Now a single application that attempts to update all your software, that's cool. But *completely* different. What I'm trying to avoid is having updater services from Google, Apple, InstallShield, and who knows who else all running at once. If a single app could check for all of them I'd be thrilled. I'm not arguing against centralizing that in general, only against *each company making their own updater app that runs resident*. I'd love to see an open and pluggable updater that major software publishers supported, but I doubt we'll ever see that.

Now a single application that attempts to update all your software, that's cool. But *completely* different

Only in your mind.

And it's not like it's hard to make a simple update checking component that they can basically drop-in to all their apps. Not really reinventing the wheel.

Yeah, the same code in 3 separate apps ins't bloat, it's a feature...

*shakes head*

You are entitled to your opinion. However logically flawed and obtuse it may be (in my opinion).

Not wanting to have multiple update checkers running is a valid point. I usually kill them so that I have the resources for other things, such as distributed computing.

Would be nice if this website bothered to do proofreading. Would make it more professional.

I don't see why having the Address bar inside the tab is such an issue. To help people to think differently about tabbed browsing, I suppose. It's all about the tabs...

Personally, I'm still going to mostly use Firefox3 due to the various extensions that I use. Chrome is just be one out of 4 web browsers on my computer.

Even after chrome is on Linux Firebug, Web Developer, and User Agent Switcher Add-ons will keep Firefox my main work tool.

Doubting such functionality will ever be provided for this browser unless the demand is exceptional. I still think it's nothing more than a tech demo.

I don't find Google Chrome interesting. My Modal popups dont open up. DHTML is not working correctly. Silverlight not supported.

"The auto-suggest feature of Google's new Chrome browser does more than just help users get where they are going. It will also give Google a wealth of information on what people are doing on the Internet besides searching.

Provided that users leave Chrome's auto-suggest feature on and have Google as their default search provider, Google will have access to any keystrokes that are typed into the browser's Omnibox, even before a user hits enter.

What's more, Google has every intention of retaining some of that data even after it provides the promised suggestions. A Google representative told CNET News that the company plans to store about 2 percent of that data--and plans to store it along with the Internet Protocol address of the computer that typed it.

In theory, that means that if one were to type the address of a site--even if they decide not to hit enter--they could leave incriminating evidence on Google's servers. "

http://news.cnet.com/830...g=newsLeadStoriesArea.0

Hmmm...not such a good feature for some people.

What people?

If you are doing the kind of thing that requires this feature be non functional, it *can* be easily turned off.

For the incredibly paranoid:

Government workers access the internet through a firewall..Google is blocked.

Corporate workers on a secure LAN access the internet through a firewall..Google is blocked.

Anyone with a decent firewall (even Windows Firewall) can block it.

I really, truly, utterly fail to see a problem here. You aren't, by chance, somehow invested in making it *seem* like a problem, are you?

I was letting people know about it. Grouch.

You better put on your tinfoil hat ;-)

Yeah, but dude...seriously. You're letting them know about a feature that can be easily disabled (is, in fact, disabled by DEFAULT), claiming it's a problem.

I mean...

Really?

You're absolutely right. The tinfoil hat comment boys below are really missing the point. When, by default, your keystrokes are being sent to Google's servers it should be an issue. What if Microsoft did this? We'd see a different reaction I'm sure.

*laughs*

With a feature that can be completely turned off in 3 clicks and is necessary to the functionality of part of the browser (Omnibar)?

Get a grip, man.

Conspiracy sites are bad, mmmKay?

(please also note, the OP is totally incorrect. The CNET article he cut/pasted utterly failed to mention the fact that the box is unchecked by *default* during installation.)

As such, this is *not* Chrome's "Default" behavior, but must be explicitly requested by the user.

But hey, don't let me get in the way of the fear-mongering FUD campaign you seem to be on.

Oh, I can't resist. Please forgive me.

When the OP cut and pasted the CNET article, I hope he pasted it back so that others could still read the article, since he hadn't bother to do a copy operation instead. :D

*laughing*

Heh... jerk. ;)

http://www.milw0rm.com/exploits/6355