hackbash

An earlier gush on Twitter (I refuse to pander by calling it a twush or anything equally facile) provoked a couple of replies, revealing that I’m not alone in my admiration for Google’s Chrome browser.

I came to it late – about two weeks ago, truth be told. I’d been struggling with IE, and have never liked FireFox enough to settle on it, resulting in an unhappy, slow and memory-hungry mix of both, depending what I was doing.

The billionth intrusive, annoying and slow FireFox update made me give Chrome a proper look. Within a day it was the default on the three computers I regularly use, chiefly because it:

-doesn’t crash
-starts quickly
-opens new tabs quickly
-has tear off tabs
-actually fucking remembers passwords if you ask it to
-doesn’t have an intrusive update every time you open it

But even once you accept that it’s just going to work properly and be useful, the details keep giving:

-if a site isn’t in your favourites, the star icon on the favourites button is unfilled. If it already is, the star is full.
-Chrome remembers the last favourites folder you saved a site to (Internet Explorer 8; why did you make this such a monumental pain in the cock?)
-the status/preview bar at the base of the screen is only as big as it needs to be, and it only appears when it has anything to tell you. It’s repositioned to avoid your mouse cursor
-the default new tab screen (detail above) is actually useful; containing thumbnail views linking to your eight most visited sites
-whether you type an address or search in the address bar, the appropriate result appears straight away
-Chrome can sync your favourites between multiple computers

It’s ironic, really, that I’ve discovered how good Google’s browser is at a time when I’m increasingly disappointed with the quality of its search results, but there you go.

Tags: browser, Chrome, Firefox, Google, IE, Internet Explorer, twitter