My first impression of Google Chrome was not so good.The first time when I downloaded and started using it, felt very uncomfortable without the Google Toolbar. I got so used to using Google toolbar and my first thought was this browser is not for me at least for time being. So after a few hours I was back to Firefox and IE 7.
Few days went on and heard somewhere Chrome works better with google’s products like GMail and Youtube. So again I went back to Chrome and started using with Gmail and to my surprise, Gmail was very fast in Chrome and I decided to try it for a few more days.The other main factor which was refreshingly good was how fast the browser itself opens and in this Google Chrome seemed to beat Firefox and IE by a quite a margin. But this could be because the current version
of Chrome doesnt allow support addons or extensions and does not have a separate toolbar like Firefox or IE. Maybe this might or might not change in future versions.
Now coming back to Missing toolbar issue, after a few hours with Chrome, I started using the address bar of Chrome to search, jus like the way we type site addresses. Type any word and enter and your search results are there for you. Still Im missing the suggest(and Autofill) feature which is present in google toolbar, which will bring related
keywords and help you in searching.
One more notable feature is the ‘ Browsing history view ‘ when you open Chrome, It brings up to nine most visited website thumbnails, and most of the time I use these thumbnails to navigate these websites. This is definitely a very useful addition. The incognito tab option, which is basically private browsing which would allow any tracking files(cookies) to be stored in your computer or wouldnt leave any browsing history / Search history in your computer. Chrome also maintains browsing history in a calendar fashion with thumbnails and allows to search the browsing history. The browsing history can be deleted by day or completely.
Though Chrome doesnt have many new features now it has replaced Firefox in my laptop as the primary browser, I still use IE for what I used it for even before I got Google chrome. Nowadays I mostly dont use Firefox, this could be because firefox isnt faster or lighter anyomore and Chrome offers what I need. I believe Chrome will definitely eat into Firefox’s market.
On the negative side FTP downloads doesnt work in Chrome and even some other sites which use Flash also work differently in Chrome. Hopefully this will change with the newer versions of Chrome, afterall Chrome is a newbie in Browser market. If you go sheer speed of Browsing and JavaScript rendering Google Chrome seems to be the best browser in market.
Download chrome – http://www.google.com/chrome
Download Chrome Beta (New version with more features) – http://www.google.com/intl/en/landing/chrome/beta/
Google Chrome Blog – http://chrome.blogspot.com/
Google Chrome’s Features – http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/features.html
[PS: I recently downloaded IE 8 and quite impressed with it, Not like Chrome but still will come out with its review soon]