Google Chrome: A Month In Review

Google Chrome. A fast new browser: Now available for Mac.

So it's been a month since I switched over to Chrome. I've had a lot more time to stress test it and even through some of the bumps, I'm still using it.

Pros:

The ability for one tab to crash and not affect the whole browser is a lifesaver. I've run into multiple occurrences where a tab will stop responding, yet I'm able to continue on in my other tabs. More often than not, I'm able to close the offending tab and try the page again. It's a drastic change from Safari, which would crash and bring down all your tabs with no way to restore them.

Another lifesaving feature is the ability to restore your tabs if something does happen. A few other browsers have this, so it's not new, but I'm glad it wasn't omitted.

Something new, or at least new to me, is the "recently closed tabs" which will appear at the bottom of the 'new tab' page. When you open a new tab, it will show your top sites as well as your recently closed pages, which can really come in handy if you've closed a tab accidentally.

It's also consistently fast. I mentioned in my previous review that it launched fast, but it continues to operate fast, weather it's been running for minutes, hours or even days. It's never gotten to the point where I've noticed any major slow downs.

Cons:

Although it's a solid browser, Chrome still has a few things to work out.

I've noticed that some types of video are unable to be controlled when played in Chrome. The movie will load and play fine and the controls will display, but sometimes clicking them will yield no results, so you're unable to pause, scrub the timeline or control volume.

More consistently, I've noticed issues when loading a few types of sites. Most notably, Wikipedia, gMail settings and phpMyAdmin tend to cause Chrome to display their "Something went wrong" page. Most often than not, you're able to see part of the page load before being re-directed to the error page and refreshing/trying again tends to yield success after a few tries. Never the less, it's a bit annoying.

One thing that really bugs me is the lack of support for extensions on the Mac. I'm not a huge extension user coming from Safari and a bit of Camino, but there have been a few that I'd like to try, but am unable to at this time. I hope Google integrates extensions very soon.

Neutral:

Facebook Lite still tends to load slowly for me. Be it a Facebook issue or Chrome issue, I'm not fully sure.

Also, though it lacks a Bookmark Manager, I haven't really run into much issue. The ability to add and edit bookmarks is there, which is all I've really had to do so far. I figure that they'll integrate a manager soon enough.

Final Thoughts:

Overall, I'm still very pleased with Chrome and it will most likely stay as my default browser. Google has made a great effort thus far and I'm confident they will continue to do so in the future.

If you haven't tried it out yet, by all means, give it a shot. It's well worth it. If you can live without a bookmark manager and extensions for now, then it just might be the browser for you.

Note: MavRev was in no way paid for this review.