Have you tried Chrome?

If you haven’t tried Chrome recently, you might want to give it a try. PC World recently picked Google Chrome as its top recommended browser. They said that Chrome had the best interface, best security, and best speed. (Firefox took top honors in the other category, best extensions.)

Jeff Atwood recently wrote that

Chrome was a completely respectable browser in V1 and V2. The entire project has moved forward so fast that it now is, at least in my humble opinion, the best browser on the planet. Google went from nothing, no web browser at all, to best-of-breed in under two years.

[I think someone else–Maximum PC?–also recently named Chrome their top browser. I’m on a plane now, but I’ll try to add the other reference if I find it when I get home.]

Linux Format also recently reviewed eight different web browsers for Linux. They gave Chrome a 10/10 and concluded:

The outright winner has to be Chrome. Not only did it blitz everything else in the speed tests, but it holds up in the compatibility stakes too. Although we were amazed by the speed of Chrome, we shouldn’t forget the wonderful array of developer tools that are also embedded.

Looking at the analytics for my blog, about 22% of you use Chrome. So for the other 78% of you, what’s keeping you on another browser?

P.S. Here’s a pro tip: you can use Chrome in four different levels of bleeding edge: stable, beta, developer (also known as “dev”) and canary. I prefer the dev version myself, because you get access to great features early, but it’s still been very stable for me. Here’s how you can download and install the dev version of Chrome. Or if you want something rock-solid, you can download that too.

157 Responses to Have you tried Chrome? (Leave a comment)

  1. Chrome started off as a “test” for me, but slowly became my default browser at home and work. It lacks some customization that Firefox does, but the overall package is excellent.

  2. I love minimalism of chrome. Recently disappeared the http:// awesome. Without the www the domain names look terrific!

  3. nice info matt πŸ™‚
    i use the ordinary chrome

  4. Just one thing i don’t understand: There’s no google bar for chrome…

  5. I’ve tried it on a PC, but the PC was so fast I didn’t notice the difference between it and Firefox, or even Explorer to be honest.

    Chrome isn’t available on the old Mac I use most. Firefox on the old Mac is dog slow in comparison to Safari but I still prefer it. It’s the very few extensions on it which keep me using Firefox, and it helps to make websites on a slow browser, with a slow connection and the widest current adoption rate.

  6. Matt,

    I’m asking people the same question. Why stick with any other browser (especially IE, yikes!)?
    For me, speed is the most important factor. According to this test, http://a.deveria.com/caniuse/ (slightly old), Chrome leaves every other browser in the dust.

    I waited a few months for the chrome extensions to catch up with my Firefox addons before I made the switch. I’m amazed at how many extensions were developed in a matter of months. Ash Buckles at SEO.com even did a post about the top SEO plugins (http://www.seo.com/blog/uncategorized/chrome-extensions-seo-blog).

  7. Great…
    I think i’ll be using the dev version too..
    Thanks matt.

  8. @samuel “I love minimalism of chrome. Recently disappeared the http:// awesome. Without the www the domain names look terrific!”

    It’s exactly that reason, I heart Chrome. They are continuously improving the performance as well as the interface. For me personally, it still beats IE9 (Beta) as well as the new Firefox beta. Chrome FTW πŸ™‚

  9. My gosh I love Chrome. It seems subtly different from Firefox, yet the overall experience is so much more fluid than what’s offered by any other browser out there. Highly recommended.

  10. Chrome rocks m/

  11. Chrome has been my default browser since it came out. I love it.

    I have been trying IE9 beta lately, and while it doesn’t have some of the niceties of Chrome, I don’t think its that bad either (my impressions here). Which is something I really like too. I use SharePoint a lot, and have to switch to IE (from Chrome) whenever I do that, in order to access some of the features which are IE specific.

    So, if IE9 comes close to Chrome in terms of performance and (more importantly) usability, I might shift. But I don’t see that happening very quickly. But right now I am using both since I am trying IE9 out.

  12. But I recently uninstalled Google Chrome from both Windows 7 and Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. It causes frequent crashes on my both OS that no other browser does. I liked Chrome’s speed, simplicity, interface, and mostly its extended browsing area. But it’s very unstable in every computer I tried.

    So, I’m sorry I couldn’t say, “This time for Chrome!”

  13. I just stopped using Chrome on my MBP today. Google Chrome Renderer causing very high utilization. I could not resolve.

  14. I use chrome at home. But i use ff at office as it’s more to developer like me.
    I will switch to chrome completely when chrome provide me all the extentions i needed..

  15. Unhealthy to be dependent on 1 company for so much.

  16. Extensions are keeping me on Firefox. I even have an extension that skins it so it looks like Chrome.

    I had switched to using Chrome as my primary browser for a while, but Flash instability and extensions ultimately brought me back to Firefox.

  17. Keeping me on Firefox? Lack of menus (icons are much harder to figure out than text) – in particular, to get some semblance of a bookmarks menu I need to start with –bookmark-menu; and lack of extensions (I have some 24 installed with Firefox), most especially in the adblocking space – AdSweep isn’t nearly as good as AdBlockPlus, and I understand this is down to lack of breadth and depth in the extensibility hooking mechanisms in Chrome. Element hiding is particularly crucial.

    Apart from those two big issues, there’s a general lack of features. For example, TabMixPlus gives me a lot of fine-grained control. I get status bars on background tabs, so I can see their degree of completion; similarly, I can auto-refresh a tab on a periodic interval, very useful to avoid timeout on my investment management website. And RefControl, to spoof referrers to certain websites, especially the NYT – set news.google.com as the referrer, and you don’t get the registration-wall.

    And of course, there’s simply the need for multiple browsers. I use Chrome to interact with Facebook, and stay logged out of there otherwise.

    But largely it’s down to the lack of menus. I like menus, and resent the fashionable trend away from them.

  18. I’m switching to Chrome for one week to see if I can survive without Firefox and, more importantly, all my favorite add-ons. I’ve just completed my first full day, but there are a few things that I’ve jotted down as annoyances:

    1. No print preview – not that I use it a lot, but I did notice it wasn’t there.
    2. Configurability seems limited – I had to add an extension to prevent the Backspace key from triggering the Back button.

    Most of my other complaints are about the extensions (or lack there of):
    1. Chrome-Poster – while functional, it is a poor substitute for the FireFox Poster plugin and I haven’t seen any other extensions that provide similar functionality.
    2. Screenshot extensions are limited – the two I tried were missing some features. Webpage Screenshot didn’t allow you to scroll while cropping and Awesome Screenshot didn’t have print functionality.
    3. No HTTP listener. I haven’t found a chrome extension similar to HTTP Fox which allows you to listen to HTTP traffic.
    4. Firebug Lite is…well a Lite version of Firebug and missing some features.
    5. Poor Delicious extensions – I tried three but still don’t like any of them as much as the Delicious add-on for FireFox.

    Chrome does feel faster, although it seems slower periodically but that could possibly be because it seems to provide less visible cues when it is fetching and rendering. I’m looking forward to seeing how the rest of the week turns out.

  19. I use Firefox most of the time. I used to use Safari as it came pre-installed on my Mac, but there are some add-ons and toolbars that I wanted to access that are only available with Firefox, so I switched.

    If Chrome had these same features, then I might consider switching if everything else (speed, etc) was better, but if the add-ons I want for SEO, etc aren’t available, there is no way I’d consider it.

  20. Chrome is a wet dream come true. It’s what Firefox could have been and probably wanted to be in the first place.

    I probably don’t have to tell you guys everything I love about Chrome, because it feels like it’s the first browser created with the stressed and frustrated end-user in mind.

  21. If you guys need any help on Chrome or request new features, please let Chromium know! They are pretty fast at responding to any request from within the forums, irc, mailing lists, and issue trackers. Very very nice community!

  22. Oh, and one more thing.

    It usually takes a while for people to abandon their favorite browser for a new one. At least from my experience. When I demonstrated Chrome to a few colleagues at work though, they switched INSTANTLY. The “barrier of entry” is that low. The interface just feels intuitive.

    Hope this helps you lower those 78%. πŸ˜‰

  23. We use chrome & it’s really very fast as compared to other browsers. Various chrome extensions like Resolution Test, Chrome SEO tools & many more are very useful. It will be nice if we can have Google tool bar for chrome extension too.

  24. I was an early adopter of Chrome. It’s feature list then was innovative, so I had to try it. At first I just used it for javascript heavy websites. Once extensions hit the DEV build, its been my go-to browser ever since. Adblocking has come a long way (AdThwart is the best one). It should be the geek browser of choice for some time.

    It’s also pathetic that Firefox is playing catchup to a browser that is only 2 years old. I only use Firefox for web development purposes now. Such diehard fans they had. . .what a pitty.

  25. I’ll shift from FF as soon as there’s something obviously wrong with it. There’s no killer web app that requires more speed, and it doesn’t seem worth the effort to ditch my developer plugins and learn something new. But whenever I find a poor soul using IE, I send them to Chrome.

  26. I use chrome and FF side by side. Both are my default browser.

  27. I’ve been with the dev build for a long time and the benefits outweigh the drawbacks – it is worth loading the Canary build as well though (you can have both with no interference) just to try out the stunning hardware acceleration and HTML5 demos.

  28. If I need a browser that’s fast and efficient, Chrome is the one.
    If I need a browser that looks like a plane’s cockpit (full of extensions), Firefox is the one.
    If I need a browser that does multimedia (and more) sharing, Opera (w/ Unite) is the one.

    Just one thing I really hate about Chrome is the tendency to access my data without even asking. Thanks to Little Snitch (Mac firewall for outbound trafic), I can stop the spying.
    You will probably tell me Chrome has plenty of extensions, but why change something that works and I’m used to ? I did look up if I could replace my powercharged Firefox w/ Chrome, but it’s not possible (yet). There is plenty of extensions, but not everything I need and definitely not all the exact same.

  29. @ Matt,

    Having multiple tabs open (not more than 6 or 7), chrome in windows 7 crashes with a beautiful message that reads “Google Chrome has stopped Working!” In my ubuntu, it used to crash less often (still it did). But before I uninstalled, it was quite impossible to close chrome. Most of the time, having multiple tabs open, if I try to close one tab, Chrome crashes. Sometimes without any reason. As the crashing continues, one day it caused a total system failure. And then I booted Ubuntu, opened chrome and then tried to close it, the system crashed again. Simultaneously, 3 or 4 times this happened. I first thought it was something wrong with my ubuntu. I did a total re-install (because I didn’t want any problem to exist). Every other application went fine except for chrome.

    Now I removed Chrome and chose opera for linux as a secondary browser. As I said above, I like chrome for many reasons, but I wish it didn’t crash that much (I’ve heard it crashing on some of my friends’ computers as well).

  30. But I will be more than happy to have a solution for this. As I’m a google fan, I will love to use Chrome. These days I seriously miss this lightweight, simple and elegant browser with extended browsing area. πŸ™ But I can’t have it back until I find a cure to this problem.

  31. With Chrome I’ve a tab bar, then the box where I just write what I want to do & Chrome works it out for me, then the bookmarks bar where, as long as a web site has a Favicon like your MC, I can store all my current favourite sites without descriptions. I can pin the tabs too & when I close Chrome it will restart with what I was doing when I closed it. To be honest when I’m using IGoogle in Chrome, it’s like I’m using a different OS to Windows, It All Works!!!

  32. When Google Chrome launched, I downloaded and installed the browser to test it…. After 1 hour of using it, I made it my default browser because of its simplicity and speed!

  33. I started to use it, just to give it a try.
    Then I quit using firefox and since i am using it as my default browser.

  34. I’ve been using Chrome since day one. I’m in love with Onebox Chrome feature. I’ve grown with Chrome and can appreciate it’s evolution. Now I’m all excited about Chrome 7 which will be up to 60 times faster than current Chrome and oh yes, Google Instant will be available directly through the URL/Search Onebox field. WOW!

  35. IE 9 does not impress me. Still use FF because I am used to it but Chrome is faster.

  36. It looks like IE9 is going up hard against chrome. Personally, I use Chrome but you’ll see how MS is definitely trying to get in that β€˜minimalized browser’ space.

    http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/

  37. Google Chrome is an incredible browser. Since about 2003 I have been using Mozilla Firefox, but when I started playing around with Chrome perhaps early 2009 I immediately fell in love with it (a bit severe, maybe). The updates and iterations to the software have been immense too.

    I think the latest user interface update looks fantastic, even more slick and easy to use.

    I’m on a Windows laptop at the moment, so I can see how the lack of menus could be a problem for some people, but when I’m on a Mac (motherflipper, take a look at me) there are always menus in the taskbar. Fortunately I’m a bit of a power user anyway, so it’s all keyboard shortcuts for me… hell yeaaaaah 8o)

  38. The lack of page setup for printing and print preview is keeping me from switching over entirely. Gmail is wicked fast and works proper in chrome so I usually have a chrome window on one screen and a FF window on the other. Some extensions like Outwit for FF just don’t yet exist for chrome or are in their infancy and lack features.

  39. I’m using chrome since day 1 and would never switch back.

  40. I’ve been using Chrome on 64 bit Ubuntu 10.04 for several months now. Never experienced any stability problems. Also never get the random pauses that you do with Firefox. I think the random pauses are because Firefox does everything in one thread and is doing some SQLite work which then calls fsync on a database which on ext4 translates into an entire filesystem sync.

    The web developer tools are fantastic – I even prefer them over Firebug. I did have a bug in one of my server side scripts that was supposed to output one line of progress information every 10 seconds, but forgot the sleep. Firefox of course immediately choked on receiving a gigabyte document. Chrome soldiered on, letting me kill the tab and see what had actually happened. (I have 4 cores and 8GB of RAM).

    The only disappointing of Chrome has been the address/search field being somewhat useless in searching my history. For example I go to “reddit.com/r/AskReddit” fairly frequently but if I just type “AskReddit” into the bar then it won’t show the link, or will pick one of the subpages from the past. Typing in “r/Ask” doesn’t do anything at all. If I start with the beginning of the URL “reddit.com/r/A” then it works fine. Firefox got this stuff right – type in *any* part of a previously visited URL and you got them as matches.

  41. Looking at the analytics for my blog, about 22% of you use Chrome. So for the other 78% of you, what’s keeping you on another browser?

    This screenshot will help explain why I loathe Chrome.

  42. I have been using Chrome since the first beta was out and I loved it ever since.
    Somehow you can’t beat speed! πŸ™‚
    I discovered I can live perfectly without Firefox extensions.
    Right now I’m using the Canary build and I only switch to other browsers to test how my blog looks or when I stumble across a major bug (like when LastPass stopped working in Chrome).

  43. I love Chrome. So fast! Love the minimal UI.

  44. Best security? I don’t think so somehow. Chrome has been subject to some very shocking exploits such as the ability to run exe files as frames or buffer overflow by putting a % in the address bar etc.

  45. I think many people dont use chrome because there a tracking cookie in. πŸ™‚

  46. trying chrome ? I am doing that from the day one it released πŸ˜€ and blogging about it .. I love it !!!!!!!!

    and with next update, chrome will be 60% more faster….
    extensions ? dont worry about it, when chrome web app store is released, it will take firefox’s place for that one too πŸ˜€

  47. I don’t use for its speed but for its stability. I work on my computer all day opening and closing tabs all day. IE can’t handle it. Even Firefox goes loopy and locks up.

  48. The only reason and I’m not using Chrome – and a very important one for me – is that when I browse through bookmarks there is no URL echoed in the bottom left, like in Firefox.
    It may seem trivial but I have a ton of bookmarks from many years and I often go exploring in the old ones, and it’s a real pain to not see the URL, it gives me a better display of the site and if I want to visit it.

  49. Matt, in days of hype and hyperbole, Chrome has performed and demonstrated itself to be a very high quality product indeed. Thanks!

  50. I did try using Chrome as my default browser for a while, it lasted a couple of hours. πŸ˜›

    Primarily I use bookmark keywords, a lot, and Chrome’s support of those just isn’t up to par with Firefox. Yet. I wrote about the experience on my blog. If you want to read about it, here’s the English Google translation of the blog post.

    I love Firefox but I’m also looking forward to the day when I can put the memory hog behind me and start using sexy Chrome. πŸ™‚

  51. If it only had support for “Tree Style Tabs” i would leave Firefox for Chrome. I know you can get sidebar tabs but i can’t live without the “Tree” part.

  52. For me, I want to use Chrome but keep coming back to Firefox because of the extensions.

    Even without the extensions though, there are two killer things that would make me default to Chrome and just suffer without my extensions: sync with Google Bookmarks AND sync those bookmarks with the bookmarks on my Android device.

  53. I’ve tried google chrome but I still use Firefox. I ‘ve seen there is an equivalent to Firebug on chrome, so I’ll reconsider the question.

  54. How about this? http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=523
    For me there’s no point to even try it.

  55. I love chrome, what the added advantages I notices is of colors, you can feel the subtle color differences in it, where other browsers completely fail in it.

  56. I like Chrome, but it is one of the worst browsers for youtube. It is too slow compared with the performance of Firefox.
    I doesn’t look good when google’s browser works bad with youtube, does it?!

  57. I *was* a Chrome fan. For some time it was my default browser, but I switched back to both FF and IE (now IE 9). Both run circles around Chrome. Why? Among other things read the following threads:
    http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Chrome/thread?tid=668afecd95c35705&hl=en
    http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Chrome/thread?tid=407120e408cb1e0f&hl=en

    • Luis, I noticed that Chrome does allow you to remove individual items from your history now. Do Control-h to bring up history, and in the top right look for “Edit items..”

  58. I use Chrome about 30% of the time. I’m not sure if this is still the case, but I was having major errors with my joomla back end using chrome – mainly when using the jreviews component. Also I prefer firefox for firebug vs the chrome “inspect element” feature…

    Sounds like I’m being harsh, but hey – you asked, right πŸ˜‰

    I do use chrome for my gmail and regular browsing – much faster that IE and FF!

  59. In my 5 browser comparison I wrote a few months ago, I gave the top spot to Chrome 5, here:

    http://www.filterjoe.com/2010/06/09/best-browsers-2010-five-browser-comparison/

    Chrome 5 was the best interface I’ve seen for a browser. However, I have been disappointed by Chrome 6 interface changes, causing me to use Firfox more. The two changes are:

    1) Distracting notifications on favicons when an open, pinned tab like Google Reader or Gmail receives an additional item. So far as I know, there is no way to turn this off.

    2) Elimination of the “phantom tab” or “ghost tab.” (Description: When closing a pinned tab, the favicon became dim to represent that it was closed, a β€œPhantom Tab.” But then you could open it up again later, so it’s like a visual bookmark).

    My impression is that most people who actually know about phantom tabs really want them back. Here is why they were so great:

    a) You could control memory usage on machines with limited memory

    b) With auto refreshing sites, individual tabs on Chrome can take up ever larger amounts of memory due to caches that don’t get released. But you can use phantom tabs to control this, as I describe here:

    http://www.filterjoe.com/2010/07/05/memory-hog-chrome-gets-slower-and-slower-a-workaround/

    c) Phantom tabs are really closed, so it is a way to turn off notifications.

    All of my machines have 1GB of memory because I just do everything in the browser. I can do that easily with Firefox (and Chrome 5) but with Google Chrome 6 this has become unwieldy due to distractions from notifications and having to actively manage memory each session.

  60. I use Chrome when I am NOT using WordPress. I reported a bug with the way Chrome intercepts Javascript POSTS back in February that is still open. Issue 35139. That issue appears to have been forgotten about and is still open. Fix that and I’ll use Chrome 100% of the time.

  61. one thing that i dislike about Chrome is that there is no change log in download page – there isn’t even the version number. why? having said that, it is a superb browser and my default browser from home right now. for office though i prefer Firefox due to number of choice of and ease of extensions.

  62. “I’ve been using it since a [very] long ago, in Dev, Canary, and Chromium build”
    Yes, Google Chrome [also Chromium] are the best browsers I’ve ever use. It’s greatly open sourced and Developers [also Designers] are excited about it. Like it a lot.

    Don’t forget the upcoming Chrome Web Store!

  63. I’ve gone back and forth between Chrome and Firefox since Chrome was released for the Mac. I’ve been favoring Firefox for the last few months, mostly because I really like Mozilla as an organization and I think they make a really good browser. I already use a lot of Google products and I like to work with other organizations that I like when I have the chance.

  64. I like chrome very much. Yet to get it installed it to my Centos box due to some technical difficulty. Any way managed get it installed to Lucid. But Firefox remains as my default browser @Work && @Home to this date. Firefox extension repository is unmatched to any i would say. The problem I’m having with chrome is; it not allows me to use my favorite font. I prefer customized browser font instead of the default browser font. Even if i change the font, default font settings seems not get overridden.

  65. The big reason is extensions. Chrome’s extensions feel like more of a hack than real browser extensions that Firefox has. And I don’t find the differences in speed between Firefox and Chrome that big of an issue. So I am sticking with Firefox for the foreseeable future. Once Chrome’s extensions are up to par, then I may switch, but until then, Firefox works just fine for me.

  66. Yup, since version 1.

    Runescape still flickers, pogo still doesn’t work, it has serious memory leaks with flash. My laptop only has 1gb memory…I’m forced to use firefox 4 beta 6 due to it’s low memory usage.

    Fix those and you’ll win me back.

  67. I use chrome half of the time, the other half I use Firefox because:
    * StumbleUpon works way better on FF
    * Hootsuite works way better on FF
    * Webmaster toolbar

    Also I’m a web developer so I use pretty much every browser for testing.

  68. Chrome browser is slower than firefox when tabs opened is more than 7-8. All the snappiness then just disappears after 8th tabs. I have tested experienced it on multiple machines.

  69. I use safari 5. It definitely beats firefox in speed and memory use, but I have never tried chrome. I am a web developer so all of the built in features in safari 5 are awesome for me. What does chrome offer in the way of web dev?

  70. I like the minimal Chrome presentation also. I’m on Ubuntu and Chrome still does lock up and I have to restart it – but it even remembers all the tabs I had open at the time. Most videos are jerky so I have to run them in FF. Still annoying. FF was locking up Ubuntu so I guess Chrome’s the lessor of two evils.

  71. Matt, I’ve been using chrome pretty much since it came out and I have to say that it’s light years ahead of the other browsers in terms of speed and Html 5. We are currently working on a new self service terminal and I’ve convinced the business to keep the app in the cloud and use HTML 5. The only problem is that we’re going to need to use Firefox or Safari as the browser. This is very disappointing because chrome has “almost” everything we need except multi touch events. But hopefully in the not too distant future, chrome will gain this functionality.

  72. I use chrome, but not as the primary browser – the main reason – is Firebug. If chrome ever gets a FULL firebug extension, I will switch. Until then – Im sticking with FF.

  73. I only use it for Google Reader and GMail in app windows, and when clicking a link from those, because you can’t set Chrome app windows to open a different browser.

    I’d give it a better shot if the extensions weren’t neutered Greasemonkey scripts. You removed all the good stuff in GM scripts!

  74. I just about “live” in Chrome and have done since its initial release. Come to think of it, if there was a netbook that just ran Chrome, I’d have one…

  75. In a 5 browser comparison I wrote a few months ago, I gave the top spot to Chrome 5. I think it has the best interface I’ve seen for a browser. However, I have been disappointed by Chrome 6 interface changes, causing me to use Firefox more. The two changes are:

    1) Distracting notifications on favicons when an open, pinned tab like Google Reader or Gmail receives an additional item. So far as I know, there is no way to turn this off.

    2) Elimination of the β€œphantom tab” or β€œghost tab.” (Description: When closing a pinned tab, the favicon became dim to represent that it was closed, a β€œPhantom Tab.” But then you could open it up again later, so it’s like a visual bookmark).

    My impression is that most people who actually know about phantom tabs really want them back. Here is why they were so great:

    a) You could control memory usage on machines with limited memory

    b) With auto refreshing sites, individual tabs on Chrome can take up ever larger amounts of memory due to caches that don’t get released. But you can use phantom tabs to control this.

    c) Phantom tabs are really closed, so it is a way to turn off notifications.

    d) Phantom tabs are a way of doing “recent bookmarks” that you might want to open again soon – the dimmed favicon makes them less distracting (and take up less space) than the bookmarks bar.

    All of my machines have 1GB of memory because I just do everything in the browser. I can do that easily with Firefox (and Chrome 5) but with Google Chrome 6 this has become unwieldy due to distractions from notifications and having to actively manage memory each session.

    I’m hoping phantom tabs come back, as it takes care of my issues with Chrome 6.

  76. I was using Chrome when it first came out. Then I went back to Firefox. Then Chrome was updated — interface, menus, etc. — and I came back. And now I can’t leave.

    Firefox feels bloated by comparison, and as much as I love Microsoft’s improvements with IE8 (and now IE9), it just can’t compete with the speed of Chrome. But at least they (Microsoft) are taking cues from Chrome, especially in terms of UI design.

  77. Chrome for Mac is excellent for one big reason. Haven’t tested it on a PC.

    The feature: a sales reps can drag and drop images into emails they sent to their customers. No embed issues. Tested it with a gmail account and with our webmail service.

    Otherwise, regular user of FF for its many features.

  78. RE: what’s keeping you on another browser?

    The question is, why should we change? The “speed” thing doesn’t wash with me.

  79. I didn’t fall in love with Chrome.. so i’m still using Firefox!

    Chrome seems to have improved since I first saw it thought.

  80. Here’s an honest review from someone that’s used both:

    IMO chrome is definitely the best browser.. it has a ton of great extensions that match up just fine against firefox, plus you can search google right from the address bar. It loads faster, searches faster, and keeps eveything very simple

    Firefox is certainly better than internet explorer or safari, but its not as fast as chrome. I would say that chrome is at least twice as fast, if not more. The few extensions that may be exclusive to firefox all have similar extensions for chrome. The only thing that firefox has an edge on is web history.. if you type even one word into the firefox browser, it brings up every possible web history match.. chrome makes it a bit tougher to search web history.

  81. Not using chrome doesn’t mean not liking chrome. ;p

    I use IE for most work surfing because it has google and alexa toolbars and given the choice, I’d rather be a “Neilsen Family”. I use Firefox for actual work work because it’s an amazing tool… (hello firebug? speed tool?) and I’ve seen you advocate for its use yourself on SEO videos!

    That basically relegates chrome to being both my favorite and my least used browser. =(

    You find a way to get us firebug, speed tool, and seo x-ray into chrome though and I swear I’ll never use firefox again XD

  82. One of the show stoppers for me is the lack of NoScript functionality.

  83. Always a crowd pleasing topic – browser wars! I recently reviewed Google Chrome and took it for a test drive for a couple of weeks – i think overall it depends how you use your browser.

  84. The question is ‘what’s keeping you on another browser?’

    And my answer is ‘Some wonderful plugins available for Firefox keep me with it’

  85. I think Chrome is a great little browser. Its light on resources and super fast. I run the beta version and have had very little in the way of problems.

    Some of the extensions are great and i have even tried to write my own. I use firefox and chrome in about 50 / 50 split at present as there are a couple of extensions rely on that have not come across yet.

    initially i tried it because of the speed increase but have found very intuitive to use. Browser choice is always something of a personal taste.

  86. I’m still using firefox because chrome is missing the “master password” feature

  87. I love Chrome – Been using it for ages as my main browser.

    One issue though – My extensions keep vanishing off the face of the earth, or at least off my PC. It has been happening across 2 laptops and now my new desktop and for around a year now.

    I wrote a brief blog about it here: http://tinyurl.com/3xh289n (hope that does not flag your spam filters and apologies for the profanity!)

    Not sure how many other people are having this issue but I know some are, posting it to the google forum did not giver me any answers. πŸ™

  88. Even if Chrome is not the most popular browser in few years will be on top.
    Is my opinion.

  89. What finally makes Firefox unnecessary (other than for testing) is the release of Chris Pederick’s Web Developer Toolbar for Chrome. http://blogs.sitepoint.com/2010/03/23/chrome-web-developer-toolbar/

  90. What finally makes Firefox unnecessary (other than for testing) is the release of Chris Pederick’s Web Developer Toolbar for Chrome.

    Hmm, nothing in that seemed to fix the issues I raised.

    Not sure how you can claim then that it makes Firefox unnecessary.

  91. I use MS on W7 and FF on OSx, but if Matt says it’s time to check out Chrome, I’ll give it a check out and see if it works for ME.

  92. I use Chrome (and Firefox) and also think that Chrome is the best now. A few things is missing, e.g a drop-down menu with the most visited sites, but there are extensions which can do the work. It is very fast and stable, far better than the others.

  93. “What’s keeping you on another browser?” How much time have you got?

    – No title bar and no option to enable one. I don’t know why browser designers don’t want us to see the titles of pages anymore, but it needs to stop.

    – Having no title bar breaks Aero Snap, one of the most useful new features of Windows 7. I drag my windows between different monitors all the time. When the tab bar is full, as it usually is on my system, there’s no good place to grab if you want to move the window–you have to aim for the tiny little triangles between the tabs.

    – On Firefox I can press / to search for text on a page. On Chrome I still have to press Ctrl-F. Silly perhaps, but, um, you asked.

    – And while we’re on the subject of my personal pet peeves, I like having separate fields for URLs and search queries, rather than one monolithic thing that treats them both like so many AOL keywords.

    – Not only did Chrome upgrade itself to version 6 without asking me, it didn’t even tell me about it after the fact. As far as I can tell, there’s no option to change this behavior. Stop doing that.

    – I seem to be sadly in the minority on this one, but I really hate this ongoing trend toward functionality-crippling UI minimalism that Chrome seems to display with every rev. I like my Web browser to have a user interface, thank you. On those rare occasions when it gets in the way, I just press F11 and it disappears as if by magic. Pressing F11 again brings it right back–on a decent browser, that is. With Chrome, my UI disappeared in 2008 and I can’t figure out which key to press to bring it back.

    – A common theme of the above, of course, is the fact that many of these design decisions aren’t configurable, which makes Chrome feel like a browser built for newbies rather than power users. One of Firefox’s many strengths is the panoply of options for configuring nearly everything to suit the user’s tastes and style of working. When Chrome came out I had hope that many of these options would eventually be made available, but two years on it’s looking more like Chrome’s we-know-what’s-best-for-you vibe is intentional, and that’s a real turnoff for me. (“Hey, buddy, if you don’t like the way Chrome is configured, then don’t use it!” Yes, that’s my point exactly. Duh.)

  94. Firefox was my default browser for years, and I was so tied to the great extensions. Just a month ago, I made the full switch to Chrome and made myself get used to the ways things get done on Chrome. Now I love Chrome. Just a week ago, I went back to Firefox and found its speed considerably slower than Chrome’s; I didn’t notice it until after I made the switch. πŸ™‚

  95. Google chrome highly unstable and i mean it

  96. If had some security issues in the past, and adwords was kind of slow (!?). Since the latest updates its running smooth and it has become my default browser.

  97. M$ on BBC news claim that IE9 is faster than Chrome; illustrated with video of fast-moving fish.

    They dropped the term ‘refresh rate’ into the conversation.

    It appears IE9 is the best option for fish-tank watchers!

  98. Yes, tried and didn’t like it so removed it.

    I don’t use Google products because they spy on everything you do.

  99. Chrome is my default browser in the Mac, Windows and Ubuntu, but I miss some features :

    Features:
    – Print background images
    – Print preview (not a big issue in a Mac, but I miss it Ubuntu)
    – Inline PDF preview (Safari-like)
    – Firefox languages dictionaries
    – Firefox Tab Panorama

    Firefox extensions:
    – Dictionary Switcher
    – Extension List Dumper”
    – HttpFox
    – Nuke Anything Enhanced
    – User Agent Switcher
    – Zotero

  100. Another missed feature:
    Make Command+Control+D (open dictionary) works on Mac OS X
    http://bit.ly/9AnLBb

  101. its ok its a bit unstable on my fairly elderly laptop (iplayer wont work) and breaking the conventions of windows app is just silly the sort of thing an unprofessional hobby programmer would consider “Leet” and “sticking it to da man” (aka steve balmer)

    i do like some of the diagnostic tools for working out how the page is rendering though

  102. Being fast isn’t important compared with the things that are wrong with it.

    It crashes, it doesn’t save the tabs half the time when it’s supposed to and the Bookmark Manager is vile to use.

  103. The Chrome extension API is way too restrictive. Until it’s possible to have extensions like TamperData, Live HTTP Headers, DNS Cache, Modify Headers,etc. it’s not going to cut the mustard for serious development work. Also, there are privacy issues, but using Chromium rather than Chrome should do the trick in this regard.

  104. For as long as there has been Chrome, it’s been my default and I’ve tried to infect everyone with the same enthusiasm for it. Proud to be one of your 22%

  105. Over all I really like chrome. However is still has a ways to catch up with Firefox in some areas. I use chrome now as my primary browser, but with several work arounds. While there is a lot of good to talk about I will focus on the issues.

    Printing suxs from chrome from just about most web apps. PDF handling is not my fav, I prefer the way firefox hanldes it. Memory leaks, no sure what is up but I have four monitors on a MAC Pro 8 core and chrome window left open for a very long time takes for every to reload. The work around is not to have so many chrome windows open as it is faster to open a new chrome window and nav to the web site. Love sync of bookmarks. On the bookmark bar I delet all text and use fav icon for shortcuts to web apps to over come having a chrome window open at the ready for use. Much faster to load a brand new page than one that has been idle for a while. I must have features and control like in TabMixPro. One thing if I am navigating to a new domain or opening a link form anything I WANT it to open into a NEW TAB Please, PLEASE PLEASSSSSE. I miss this lot in Firefox. Nothing more annoying than open a link from a main web apps and i lose that page to a secondary link. Other things that do not work are some JAVA apps ie Runescape.com as a test example. Another is netflix and there are others. One thing that would be very nice is to sync extensions from chrome to chrome. I use Mac, Windows and Linux. It would be nice to have the same one sync without having to hunt and figure out what I had at home at work etc.

    There is more but that is enough to chew on for now. πŸ™‚
    My two cents.

  106. I was pretty happy with Firefox (I love all the SEO tools that I can use with it), but all these acclaims for Chrome changed my mind. I just installed it this week and so far I’m stoked!

  107. I’ve been using chrome on my mac for about a month and I absolutely love it!

    Gotta admit…I tried it out earlier this year and at the time firefox had too many extensions that I just couldn’t live without. But since then I found tons of new chrome extensions that are now available to replace them and then some. Plus, I’ve have become addicted to the speed. It’s a definitely homerun.

  108. It is certainly the fastest browser available and I’m getting hooked to it.

    However there are some annoying features in Chrome.

    The one which annoy me most is that when you double click in the address bar on domain name it selects the dot (.) with domain name.

    E.g. if address bar shows http://www.example.com and you double click on example it selectes “example.” and not example

    I wish they could change it so that life become easier.

  109. I almost started using Chrome as my standard browser, but then I found there was something I could easily do in Firefox, but that was a pain in Chrome.

    And ironically, it was the Google Translate tool.

    I often browse Japanese websites, flicking between the original Japanese and English regularly. In all browsers, the little translation drop-down appears and I can click on it to go to English, then I can click on it again to change back to Japanese. In Firefox, I can repeat this process indefinitely, but in Chrome, clicking on it the second time makes it vanish, and I have never been able to get it back. I have to refresh the entire page in order to translate again.

    And that very simple, silly little thing is the reason I haven’t migrated entirely to Chrome.

  110. Been loving Chrome since shortly after it came out. The speed is amazing. I remember once when FF was still my default loading up some web game (I think it was a Tetris remake) and the framerate/gameplay was incredibly choppy. Having remembered from the Chrome intro that it was supposed to handle web apps better I decided to give the game a try in Chrome to see how it measured up. The game ran flawlessly in Chrome, I’ve been a believer ever since.

  111. Hi,

    Actually I found chrome better than firefox. But because I use firebug every day, I have to stay focus on firefox.
    Add exactly the same extension (with JS debogger) and I’ll use chrome !

  112. I’ve used chrome religiously pretty much since the day it was released, and converted more friends than Ic can count. I also typically stick with the dev build, although I’ve run into a few problems with it on my school’s network. I’m more excited than is probably healthy for Chrome OS. What I don’t get is why there isn’t chrome for android yet. I’m hoping that the releases of chrome os, android 3, and gtv (which I understand is supposed to use android & chrome together) finally brings together these amazing applications.
    I’m curious, what portion of google employees use chrome?

  113. I use Chrome here and there to test compatibility – but I don’t think I would use it as my full-time browser. Google got into the browser market for a reason, so they’re either harvesting data or advertising; neither of which I want on my machine. I could be wrong sure, but I simply haven’t felt the need to put the time into researching this theory since Firefox works fantastically.

  114. I like to keep my taskbar clean and open/close windows frequently. Chrome DECIMATES the competition on startup speeds. Give credit where it’s due; Google pushed the bar on usability, Javascript performance, and generally schooled the others in how to build a browser that does what it’s supposed to and gets out of the way for the rest of the time.

    Works like a hot damn on older computers too.

  115. I like Chrome, but I love FF. The only reason I love FF is their Live Bookmark. I subscribe to too many blogs, the live bookmark is a very handy tool.

  116. Chrome has been the default for me for over a year now. The only reason I even look at other browsers these days is to check cross-browser compatibility for the sites that I manage.

  117. I take that back: I also use the default browser on my galaxy s android phone. It works very well. I don’t know what it is though. Is it just the standard android browser? Swype works great with it by the way!

  118. I love Google Chrome! It’s totally replaced FireFox as my default browser.

  119. Since Google embedded Flash player, Chrome 6 crashes like hell! Even a simple YouTube page freezes the browser.

    I must admit, this is really the fastest browser, but became very unstable due to Flash! Google should repair this very serious issue that make Chrome 6 unusuable on my fast Win 7 desktop computer.

    I went back to Firefox.

  120. Yes, Matt, but it’s really crude.

  121. Matt,
    I can’t speak for the all of the 78%, but considering most of your visitors are savvy I am sure that most have already tried it and decided not to use it as their main browser.

    Personally, I have it for testing only, FF is still my main browser and mostly because Chrome is still a little behind on functionality (Poor printing support, no master password)

    Also, Chrome (or I should say WebKit in general) has few more bugs to iron out, where it renders differently than other browsers. In fact I did work with some of the guys at Chromium on finding workarounds for these quirks.

    I do love the speed though, Chrome will be my default browser as soon as these issues get sorted out, for sure.

  122. i love love love chrome and i’ve been using it for the past year. However, I transferred offices which uses a network proxy with authentication. i accidentally clicked remember password one time. so when we had to change the network password, my chrome stopped working using a proxy. is there a way of hard resetting the stored network password? am now forced to use firefox πŸ™ (which is generally slower!)

  123. I was a long-time evangelist for Netscape… Then Firefox… And now Chrome. I think the inertia of the “typical” computer user, who is unfamiliar with even the basics of downloading regular files or photos, much downloading then installing another application, goes a long way toward keeping IE in the top spot of browser market share.

    These types of people (blameless, to be sure…) don’t really know that there is something better out there. MANY better options than IE.

    That of course doesn’t explain the fact that only 22% of your visitors are using Chrome. For goodness sake, I hope that at least some of the remaining 78% are using Firefox, Opera, something other than IE. I would think your audience consists largely of web dev and SEO professionals, and the thought that any of “us” would use IE to visit your blog.

    It is almost blasphemy!

  124. I switched to Chrome and haven’t looked back. I still have Firefox and the dreaded IE on my system, but then life isn’t perfect.

    One question though, “I have red-dotted boxes outlining links on almost every page I view. Anyone know what is causing this eyesore? And how do I correct it?”

  125. I have used Chrome before, and I must admit, it does have a snappier feel to it. It loaded my pages much faster, but the only disadvantages I wanted was more addons, like in firefox.

    It is good to see more competition in the browser market, so we will be able to get better features much faster!

  126. @Brian – Ah ah ah! It’s the best way to describe! “blasphemy” πŸ˜€
    In my blog i still have visits from IE5 (oh my god) so you see…another blasphemy!

    For me, i use Firefox since forever and i’m very glad with it. I tried Chrome for a couple of weeks and although my FF it’s a little bit more slow, i think it still was more potential.

  127. I like how chrome is fast, slick, and efficient, but sometimes I come across pages that don’t behave as designed, and at that point I have to switch to a different browser like firefox. So – even though I’d like to be fully dedicated to chrome, the lack of compatibility in some instances forces me to fall back on alternate browsers. -Alexander

  128. As a mac user I’ve tried Chrome and Firefox and, effectively noticed a difference in speed and user friendliness in favor of Chrome. But I’m so fond of Safari even if it’s a bit slower that I think i will stick to it.

    Cheers.

  129. The only time I use IE is for work related private websites that don’t support Chrome. Other than that, Chrome is the best. It does have some Divx unstability though.

  130. I think Chrome is fantastic and every bit as good as Firefox, but Mozilla’s head start means there’s years and years of extensions to augment your browser and Chrome hasn’t had time to catch up yet. When the available extensions are more diverse I’ll give Chrome another try, but it’s a step backwards for me to lose all my favourite extensions or use cheap knockoffs.

  131. Chrome is great – love it! I used to have some many problems with explorer. Slow to load, crashing all the time, freezing my PC. Started using Chrome after a flatmate showed me and have always been amazed how much better it it. Quicker, more user friendly, and doesn’t crash and freeze up my PC.

  132. Chrome has become my favorite browser, because it can support many many open tabs. This is very hard with IE8 and unfortunately Firefox (especially when it’s loaded with extensions). It’s stable and crashes very rarely, it supports my favorite password keeper software and the only thing I’ve noticed is that Flash player stops responding frequently when I have several tabs with Flash content open. The good thing in this case is that it doesn’t hang the whole browser but it just asks you to stop Flash and so, I can just reload the page and watch the Flash content.

    Also, my favorite browser (I use it for blogging and social media update purposes), Flock switched from the Mozilla to the Chromium engine, which is a sign for me that Chrome can undertake more related tasks successfully.

    One thing I’m concerned about, is keeping my privacy and Google completely taking over all aspects of the web activity, leaving no other choice for email, messaging, browser, searching, etc. Maybe Microsoft was supposed to be doing that in the past, but it focused more on desktop and IT solutions, rather than offering free commercial apps.

  133. I love chrome however there is one thing that needs to be changed and that is to give us in the UK the ability to change the default search from the address bar to Google.co.uk.

    I can have Bing, Yahoo even things like Myspace as my default search engine, but I can’t have Google.co.uk. So although I would love to say 10/10 I can only give it 9.5/10.

  134. I have been using chrome ever since it came primarily because firefox gets stuck sometimes or becomes too slow. Chrome is the best browser with best interface ,developer tools and HTML5 compatibility

  135. http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=28904

    why Google does not make an effort to fix this bug in Chrome?
    I have returned to Firefox because of this bug.

    Greetings,
    Jens

  136. Have I tried Chrome? Man, you have got to be kidding me. I’m like the first person out of Google, that get’s it right of the table, while it’s still hot. You know the phrase: Learn it, Live it, Love it!

  137. I love Chrome! I’ve been using for about 1 week now! It’s fast, the code is great and it’s easy to navigate!

    Also, are yall gonna come out with any plugins like Firefox has?
    IDK, just curious…

  138. Google is awesome… apart from the font rendering in windows – it’s horrid! Ubuntu and Mac look awesome though…

  139. I find myself using chrome for general browsing, as I find speed the major factor in deciding which browser to use, and having 50+ tabs open without worrying the browser might crash is pretty sexual.

    That being said, I still use firefox for work related browsing due to the added plugin functionality, I’m sure chrome will catch up eventually!

  140. Using Chrome all the time here in Fedora Works fantastically and fast. Used Firefox for years still do now and again but mainly Chrome. It took some getting used to but then doesn’t everything. Keep up the good work Google!

  141. It has been a month on Chrome and it has been the default for me . I love it.

  142. Hey,

    I must say I’m very impressed with the speed, stability and simplicity of Google Chrome.

    Has anyone have any experience with Facebook’s new browser Rockmelt?

  143. The Google chrome is one of the fastest in speed, but it doesn’t support rss2 feed the feed dose not show properly in my Google chrome, otherwise it works best , i likes it’s plugins like chrome seo one of the best it help me a lot in getting site information about indexing, linking and many more .
    thanks for this best Browser

  144. As a web developer, Chrome is really useful for me. They have natively Firebug and it is some much simplier than Firebug…

    Furthermore, it is really fast with JS, it is a really good browser. I love it.

  145. One more interesting thing about Chrome is that it have great support for HTML 5, and HTML 5 have some very cool functionality power.

  146. I have been using Chrome for about a year now and it is my default browser before FF. I really like its simplicity. There is one problem that I constantly get, namely, shockwave crashing. anybody like me?

  147. i love google chrome!!!!!!

  148. i also prefer firefox to chrome. chrome seemed to take up to much space and time.
    firefox is faster on my satellite connection.

  149. I use different browsers for different things. Chrome (Rockmelt) I use for general purpose stuff where I don’t mind logging all my website traffic and where I can also synch my bookmarks to all my Rockmelt browsers.

  150. I like Chrome almost as much as Firefox but it has problems with the Shockwave Flash plugin crashing. I Know I’m not the only one this happens to but I found a way to fix it.

    How to fix Flash Crashing?

    Update your browser
    Download Registry Cleaner Software
    Disconnect From Internet
    Uninstall Adobe Flash Player
    Remove Shockwave Player/Disable Plugin From Browsers
    Conduct Scan for Active-X, Registry and Flash Errors
    Reinstall Flash
    Reinstall Shockwave Flash Plugin

    It is important that you carry out these steps in order to fix the problem effectively.

  151. A friend recommended Chrome a while ago, finally took the plunge. I like it, very quick, smooth tab browsing.

    Lately it’s running a bit slow, perhaps there is a newer version or I should regularly update it. It get’s hung up usually on the first site and some sites seem to just stall but that could be more about them than the browser. Must admit I’m in the Firefox fan club but it’s pretty slow compared to Chrome. Once I figure out how to move my bookmarks, it’s Chrome for day to day use.

  152. Absolutely tired it. As a matter of fact, its my default browser. Lets put it this way, once you use Chrome, you will never use anything else again.

  153. I love Chrome! I just figured out how to make a desktop shortcut for websites I visit in Chrome.
    It is my default browser, and saved my butt in a recent computer crash, because it remembers favorites!
    Google Rocks!

  154. Today I when I came across your question “Have you tried Chrome?” Dated 9/17/2013. I wondered if you were referring to the Chrome I had yesterday? Or did you know about the big change they were making to Chrome?
    Guess it makes very little difference since this New Chrome is now it! I do not like it. It feels so archaic! I really liked the previous version and I usually don’t care one way or the other as long as the program gets the job done.
    Weird how the statement, “IF IT’S NOT BROKE DON’T FIX IT!!!” seems to ring true. Time will tell. Maybe I am wrong about it but why go backwards when you were going forward with leaps and bounds?
    Thanks for the time.

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