Google Chrome Review

Well, it's only been out for a few hours, but already I've been putting Google's new Web browser Chrome through the paces. Want to see my first impressions? Well then keep reading!

The installation process was very quick and painless. It asked about importing from IE (for some reason it didn't recognize/ask about Flock, which is a variant of Firefox) and asked if I wanted to keep Google as the default search engine. All of the passwords and account info I had ported over seamlessly from IE.

The interface is very sparse and lacks much in the way of customization. One of the biggest issues with it right now is the lack of themes or ways to customize it. I have no idea how friendly it is with assistive technology, as Google never addressed accessibility in their comic. Pages do seem to load very quickly, and anything downloading appears in a little bar across the bottom - a nice touch. Error messages seem pretty standard (allowing you to expand them for more info). Surprisingly, SharePoint works fairly well (it's known to not work well in anything other than IE, although Explorer view is as always an IE-only feature).

I tried out a multitude of multimedia sites, and all of them played without issues. I'm going to keep pushing the realms to see what will break it.

One of the neatest features is the built-in 'Inspect element' - right-clicking anywhere on a page will let you, well, inspect that element :) This is something that should really appeal to developers. There's also a Developer tab which houses a task manager, a javascript console and debugger, and a view source option that opens a new tab w/the source code.

So far, so good, but for me to really want to use it, it has to have some sort of plug-ins and themes to make it more customized. Right now I use Flock mainly because I can customize it so much, as it integrates all of my social networking information as well as the Firefox plug-ins I use. Google's stance on plug-ins right now seems to be 'the developers can make them,' so hopefully they will soon. Anyone up for some theming?

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