I've been using Google's browser Chrome for about two months now. I've been a religious Firefox user for several years, and at first I thought, "Firefox has everything I need, what can Chrome offer?" But curiosity got the better of me, and sure enough, about one month ago Chrome became my default laptop browser.
Here's what I like:
1. One box for searching and for entering URLs. (There are privacy implications of this, but I'll put those aside.)
2. It's streamlined. No menu screens as we know them, just tabs at the top of your screen.
3. And my number one favorite thing about it: it's fast. When I click the icon on my task bar, it loads almost instantly.
That final point was what pushed me over the edge with Firefox. Once I tasted Chrome's speed, I couldn't stand waiting several seconds for Firefox to boot up.
Here's what I don't like about Chrome:
1. I like to tweak my settings a lot, and Chrome just doesn't offer that many preferences.
2. No add-ons. Yes, Chrome does have an add-on store, but it's a mess. The organization is terrible and it's brimming with spam. I really, really miss my Firefox themes, Add-Block Plus, and IE Tab.
3. Compatibility. Needs work. For example, I was filling out a survey online and the formatting was a complete mess. Not so on Firefox. Another example: for whatever reason, I couldn't upload a photo for an eBay sale on Chrome, but it worked immediately with Firefox.
Conclusion: If you have simple browser needs, Chrome is the way to go. If you like playing around and can stand to wait, you gotta go Firefox.
At least until Chrome plays catch-up...
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I'm a convert, too. In fact, I upgraded to v. 2.0 today, and it's been great so far.
To switch to the beta or developer channel, users will need the Chrome Channel Changer tool, which is available from the Chromium web site. The new 2.0.x builds are currently only available through the developer channel.
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An exciting extensibility improvement in this release is support for user scripting. This feature, which is intended to be loosely interoperable with Firefox's Greasemonkey, allows users to apply custom JavaScript behaviors to pages that are loaded in the browser. This feature is still at a very early stage of development and it's not enabled by default. In order to turn on user scripting, you have to execute Chrome with the —enable-user-scripts flag. You also have to create a scripts directory in your Chrome data path.
There are a few other nice features in this release that are worth a quick mention, including support for full page zoom, form autocompletion, support for importing (but not synchronizing) Google Bookmarks, and middle-click drag scrolling. The new version also includes a few major changes under the hood. The Chrome developers are moving away from using the WinHTTP library and are working on a platform-neutral alternative that will make Chrome easier to port to other operating systems.
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