At long last, Google has released an official version of it’s Chrome browser for Mac OS X. It’s only a developer preview but that won’t stop me from making it my default browser! I’ve been using Chrome as my default browser on Windows for months and I really like it.
With the exception of Internet Explorer, the choice of browsers on Windows and Mac is now largely the same. As well as Google Chrome you have Safari, Firefox and Opera plus a slew of niche browsers. What I want from a browser is speed and standards compliance, plus a clean interface that doesn’t get in my way. Being a developer I’m more keyboard centric than most users and therefore I don’t like having to resort to the mouse unnecessarily.
Up until now, my preferred browser on the Mac has always been Safari. Whilst I use Firefox occasionally it is slower to start, slower to browse and slower to use because it’s interface is less slick than Safari. I’m not a plugin junkie so Firefox’s greatest strength against it’s competition does little to persuade me. I also found that it used to slow the rest of the system down although this seems less of a problem since V3.5. I like Safari because it is simple and fast, exactly the same reasons why I like Chrome. Except I like Chrome more!
There are a few features that really make Chrome stand out from the pack. First of all it is the fastest of the browsers that I use. The SunSpider benchmarks show that Safari is about 30% slower than Chrome, and Firefox is over 150% slower! The V8 benchmark tests confirm these results.
I built Chromium for the Mac a few months ago to try it out, and ran the SunSpider tests against Safari and Firefox too. Since then it appears that Chrome has gotten faster whilst both Safari and Firefox are going in the wrong direction! Both Safari and Chrome also score 100% on the Acid3 test (not surprising given that they are both WebKit based browsers) but Firefox is still lagging behind at 93%.
The second thing I think Chrome has got right is it’s implementation of tabs. I’m quite a heavy user of tabbed browsing and Chrome’s tab feel the most natural to use, and once I got over the initial shock of them invading the title bar area, I’ve grown to really appreciate them.
But the killer feature for me is the omnibox. One box into which you either type a URL or a search term. I don’t know what else you would expect from the search company that is famous for it’s minimal web search interface but in the very first releases the omnibox was a bit of a pain. You would enter a URL and it would incorrectly interpret it as a search term, but now it has lost it’s rough edges and it is the one thing I miss more than anything when I have to use another browser. There is no need to have a separate search box, either I know the URL I want or I don’t. If I don’t enter a recognizable URL then send it to a search engine for me automatically. All other browsers need to implement this feature as soon as possible if they are to stay in the game.
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Copyright ©Craig Aspinall 2011