Recently I blogged about what I like about Google Chrome, and Philipp Lenssen asked a good question: “What do you *not* like about Google Chrome?”
Normally when I have suggestions or complaints about a Google product, I talk directly to that team within Google — the Google Chrome team is especially good about listening to feedback. They also provide a very easy way to file bugs or feature requests against Chrome, and they do triage those requests. But I’ve written so positively about Google Chrome in the past that I wanted to show the sort of feedback that I give when I really care about a product.
So here’s what I would change about Google Chrome:
– Hitting the escape key should freeze any animated GIFs on a web page.
This is now filed as a bug: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=3690
– Fixed: Middle-clicking on a tab is a fast, easy way to close tabs. But it can’t currently be aborted — what if you click your middle button on a tab and then realize that you don’t want to close that tab? On Firefox you can move your mouse off the tab before releasing the button to abort closing the tab. That doesn’t work on Chrome right now.
Update: Peter Kasting, a Chromium developer, stopped by in the comments and mentioned that the 1.0.154.39 dev channel release adds this functionality. The fact that a team member is willing to wade into the comments and address specific complaints/questions is one of the factors that makes me think Chrome will be a successful project.
– If I start typing “Google webmaster blog” into the Omnibox, it offers to search Google for “webmaster blog”:
I’m a power user, so I want a way to turn that quicksearch off. I type a lot of searches of the form [Google X Y Z] but that doesn’t mean I want to search on Google for [X Y Z].
Update: Solved. Barry Hunter made this observation:
It is possible to turn off, I also found it very annoying. Goto Options, and on the Basics tab, click the ‘Manage’ in Default Search bit. You probably have a ‘Google’ listed in ‘Other Search Engines’ – delete that – which was probably imported from Firefox via an original OpenSearch description.
(if you dont, look for an entry with ‘google’ in the keyword column)
Thanks, Barry!
– Chrome doesn’t recover submitted form data as well as Firefox if you have to click the back button.
Follow this bug here: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=2636
– There’s a weird interaction between WordPress and at least the current dev version of Chrome. If I select some text and click the “link” button when writing a blog post, I get a pop-up that already contains “http://”. The text “http://” should be selected so that I can delete it or paste over it easily. Right now I have to select the text and then delete it. This is really annoying.
Chrome 2 fixed this, but it’s broken again in Chrome 2.0.162.0. Filed a bug: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=7754
– One thing I love about Chrome is that you can type ‘t’ in the omnibox and it will suggest something reasonable like “techmeme.com” and you can just hit return to go there. But if you’ve been to a hostname that exists (e.g. if you’ve visited a valid internal server at http://t/ ) then you have to type ‘te’ before the “techmeme.com” suggestion comes up, because Chrome assumes that you want the server with that name:
I want to be able to right-click and delete any Omnibox suggestion. Then ‘t’ will suggestion techmeme.com again. 🙂
Update: Solved, again thanks to Peter Kasting in the comments:
Hit shift-delete on the item (this also works in Firefox). Caveat: You have to arrow to the item (that means that if the item is the default selection, arrow away, then back). This is to avoid conflation with the system level shift-delete “cut” shortcut.
– I’m a weirdo, but I want the ability to add user styles so that I can (say) highlight nofollow links. So I want the equivalent of userContent.css that Firefox offers.
Follow the bug to add user stylesheets here: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=2393
Update: Hacky workaround. Thanks to a friend for pointing out how to do this. This is a temporary stopgap and may void your warranty. Don’t complain if this breaks anything. Here’s how to do it:
1) Sign up for the dev channel of Chrome.
2) Create a directory C:scripts and save http://blog.bubble.ro/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/nofollowhighlight.user.js into C:scripts (the path is deliberately ugly to remind you that this is a temporary workaround).
3) Run Chrome with –enable-greasemonkey (make sure to close all Chrome instances so you get a fresh invocation of Chrome when you start). To do this, right-click on the Chrome shortcut and select “Properties”. In the “Target:” text box, add “–enable-greasemonkey” at the very end of the line (note that it’s two hyphens before “enable-greasemonkey”). It should look like this:
Now you can see nofollow links!
– A friend pointed this one out to me: If you’re using a proxy url and get on a VPN, Chrome can take 20-30 seconds to refresh/reload the proxy script. I think Chrome might use a Windows-wide service, which is why it takes a while? In Firefox you can click a “Reload” button to force a refresh of the proxy configuration URL.
– Chrome doesn’t have that many options now, but eventually I’d love the equivalent of Firefox’s about:config method of changing settings.
– I don’t know if this is a Chrome issue, but when I use Chrome with Twitter, copying and pasting urls/text in the text box can be weird sometimes, e.g. you copy/paste urls and it copy/pastes from a different location in the text box. I don’t know how to describe it, but people who use Chrome and Twitter a lot might have seen this too.
Added: Here’s how to reproduce the Twitter/Chrome weirdism. Open http://www.cnn.com/ in one tab in Chrome. Copy the url. Open Twitter in another tab. In the “What are you doing?” box, type “One two three: “. Then paste the url “http://www.cnn.com/ ” into the box. Then type “four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve fourteen.” into the text box. Now click on the text between “twelve” and “fourteen” (as if you were going to add a new word between them). Instead, the cursor position will move to just before the “http://www.cnn.com/” text. If you double-click between the twelve and fourteen, the “http” will be selected. It looks like this:
One weird thing is that this bug only fires when you have two lines filled in that Twitter text box. If the text was “One two three: http://www.cnn.com/ four five six seven eight nine ten eleven.” (which fits on one line) then you don’t see this issue. I also didn’t see this issue in Firefox.
Filed a bug for this issue: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=7755
Do you have Google Chrome nitpicks or things you would change? Assume that the team has heard the feedback on
– Mac and Linux versions
– extensions
– perhaps better integration (Google Toolbar-like features, or Google Bookmarks)
and that they don’t need to hear that feedback. Are there other annoyances or things that you would change about Google Chrome? The Chrome team is a top-notch group of people in my experience and they release new dev channel versions of Chrome almost every week, so I’d be curious if you’ve run across specific bugs, annoyances, or niggly things that might be easy to change.
(And just to be clear, I love and use Google Chrome all the time. I didn’t mind posting this because I know the Chrome team is so strong that they can handle suggestions from a passionate user.)
Warning before closing multiple tabs would be the single most helpful thing for me after most of those in your list. This feature in Firefox saved my skin at least once a day.
Matt, I use a proxy with VPN and have close to no delay when using it.
With GreaseMonkey support coming, I wouldn’t be surprised if simple scripts to fix some of those things came up quickly :-).
Matt, to never see animated .gif images again, just enable Google Safe Search (*hint* *hint*) 😉
Hmm… so basically what you want is Firefox : http://www.getfirefox.com/ 😛
Just a couple of things:
1) I love the multi-line text box resizing ability, but I wish they would add it to the single-line text boxes too. Or at lease be able to resize it horizontally.
2) After hitting the bookmark star I would like the folders drop down to be alphabetically sorted. Also I think it would be great if they could somehow integrate a short description into the bookmarks. I’m always forgetting what I bookmarked and why.
3) Oh and the iGoogle favicon will not load. I know its because one of my feeds must be constantly loading, but the endless chasing circle is just too mesmerizing.
All in all, I’m a huge fan! Thanks team, keep up the good work!
Hi Matt,
For the 3rd annoyance, you can modify the keywords for search engines by right-clicking into the address bar and rename google by g. That’s quicker and you won’t have this behaviour again. Pretty useful when you want several search engines like Google (g), Google Linux (gl) Google Image (gi)… I didn’t find the search query URL for Google Maps. If anyone knows… All my Christmas’ gifts bought on the Net were Chrome powered!
Yea i would like to see better integration of Google Bookmarks.
The though of moving all my old bookmarks from online to browser scares me. Hope i can have a firefox awesome-bar like drop-down of bookmarks being fetched from my Google Account when i type in the URL/Location Bar.
And if the user can stay logged in for days to Google Account [always ON bookmarks, Gmail checking then i am switching to chrome :)]
One thing I would like to change on Chrome is moving the Tabs back down under the Menu Bar – ie, right above the website page. I think its a very strange UI design choice to force the user to cross menus all the time to flip between Tabs.
The main gripe I have is that chrome is very chatty and its update process gives comodo problems and i have to alow multiple update processes to execute each time!
whilst anoying this is a real probem if chrome updates when i’me playing wow as the firewall alerts interupt what i am doing which could be a disater if it happened at a crucial pointr in the game.
It has started to run VERY slowly, especially, now, when opening Acrobat stuff. It used to go like a rocket.
Often, when clicking a bookmark, I wonder if it’s heard me! It takes ages for the little snake to start spinning anticlockwise when looking for the site
Far too many crashes. Far too many.
I guess Microsoft (Hotmail, to be precise, of whatever they’ve rebranded it as), Adbrite and Facebook (Owned! as an app is an example) and others “have the problem”, but chrome fails to work properly with them. Seems to me that they aren’t going to change. That kind of means that chrome needs to, or must at least speak to these folk.
Chrome and the Google Search cookies: I’ve lost count of the number of times the cookies for my preferences have reset. I want it my way, dammit!
There’s a lot to like, but these I hate. And these don;’t seem to have been addressed since it became open for public use.
1. When pasting you have to left-click in the field first, then right-click paste. In firefox you can just right-click and paste straight off. This one really bugs me.
2. Can I switch spell check off?
I’d like to be able to use a web browser more effectively in full screen mode. That would mean being able to split the browser window vertically and horizontally into multiple panes.
Also, when you dont select text in a input, and you do CTRL-C, your clipboard will be empty. I’ve never seen similair behaviour in other programs or windows itself.
The most annoying is the middle button mouse close no return problem.
To be honest, support for OSX would be nice 😉
Hi matt
Google Chrome is cool and very fast as well but being SEO person, I am always desperate to see PR, alexa ranking stuff for web pages, usually which i do with Google Toolbar and some other firefox plugins.
Is there any plan in near future to add Google Toolbar for Chrome ?
I have definitely noticed a weird copy/paste issue when trying to copy things in chrome and paste them elsewhere.
Sometimes the CTRL-C action doesn’t seem to register, when copying text in a webpage, and URLs from the address bar.
I agree with Rob… bring on the mac version please..
I don’t like about chrome that, if I maximise the window on my second screen (which is bigger than my primary (first) screen), it takes the size of the first screen. So I always have to fiddle around and drag the window bigger. That’s a known bug, and I also reported it, but so far they didn’t solve it.
To assume that the team has heard the request for extensions is to ignore the elephant in the room. Across the web, the number one reason that people won’t switch is because there is no adblock equivalent. Everything else pales in comparison.
Agreed on the WordPress quirks, Matt. As much as I like Firefox, sometimes it just annoys me but I don’t currently have a viable alternative that does everything I want without acting funky. I’ll try Chrome again after the next release. 🙂
Hi Matt – it would be great if Google Chrome could use the same userContent.css format as used by Firefox too.
The ability to create a desktop shortcut to launch in Incognito Mode would be useful too.
I’m really wanting AUDIO and VIDEO tags from HTML 5 with support for Ogg Vorbis and Theora. Extra cookie for allowing YouTube to support this (even if it’s just a demo page).
Hi Matt,
Your colleague John Mueller created a bookmarklet for Chrome to highlight ‘no follow’ links. I’m glad I found it because I had noticed a code transposition error on my site – but I worry that the damage may already be done. 🙁
Here’s John’s code: http://johnmu.com/seeing-nofollow-links-in-google-chrome/
1) echoing Tim: “Chrome and the Google Search cookies: I’ve lost count of the number of times the cookies for my preferences have reset. I want it my way, dammit!”
one of the most annoying things about Chrome is its inability to keep cookies permanently
2) web developer tools (Firebug for Chrome)… the stuff that’s in right now doesn’t cut it
3) make DOM inspector *not* gobble up the CPU.. it works properly in Safari
4) download manager could use some improvements
still an amazing browser, use it 99% of the time..
i agree with above comments. i guess we will have to wait for mac version. would be great if they could fix all the bugs by then.
google’s greatest problem (or advantage ? – depends on point of view) is that they have very strict release policies. look at gmail, it has been around for quite a while and it is still in beta version 🙂 well, i guess they know why, but i never experienced any bug in gmail yet.
chrome is a different story. i guess the final version wouldn’t be out for at least a couple of years.
come on google team, with such a developer potential, why is everything taking so long ?
ah. damn.
full-page scaling (instead of just text resize) is also very very important
sorry for double-posting, i’m done
An “undo close tab” option would be very useful.
I’m not sure how difficult this is, but maybe Windows 2000 support?
Also, on the Chromium website, it says that you need Mac OS X 10.5 to build it. I’m not sure whether that also means that the final (built) product will also need Mac OS X 10.5, but I hope you’ll consider OS X 10.4.x
In firefox and most other programs, I can click my middle scroll and have a little double arrow pop up. Then, I can move my mouse to scroll without touching any button. I want to do this in chrome too!
One feature that is missing and that is very annoying is support for client digital certificates. Without them, almost all of the e-banking in Slovenia is not usable…
Never judge a product so hard when its so new in such a competitive browser market. Give chrome some time and I am sure chrome will improve. Its still a baby here. Speaking more frankly, I have always been a strong advocate of Firefox and will always believe it until something aggregate comes up and says hey chrome can do it better than firefox.. would wait for the day but till then I will go with the voices of the crowd – Firefox 🙂
> “I’m a power user, so I want a way to turn that quicksearch off.”
It is possible to turn off, I also found it very annoying. Goto Options, and on the Basics tab, click the ‘Manage’ in Default Search bit. You probably have a ‘Google’ listed in ‘Other Search Engines’ – delete that – which was probably imported from Firefox via an original OpenSearch description.
(if you dont, look for an entry with ‘google’ in the keyword column)
The / key to quickly find link anchor text is one of the shortcut keys I really miss from Firefox when using Chrome. Tiny thing, but important to me for some reason! Maybe a keyboard shortcuts configuration screen would be a good option.
Lack of add-ons makes Google Chrome de facto useless. I love speed of Chrome, it’s awesome and I’m using it for my Google stuff. But speed isn’t everything and I’m still using Firefox for doing my job -> 99% of my time spent with browser. Firefox is slower and uses much more RAM, but over 30 add-ons make my life and job much easier.
In fact I’m really unhappy that Google Chrome will not be able to use add-ons developed for Gecko-based browsers. Possibilities provided by those add-ons combined with speed of Chrome could be real killer.
An auto-complete problem I have is this: I often type google.com[TAB] to get the “Search Google:” prompt. Ever since I’ve visited google.com/docs I now must manually delete the “/docs” from the autocomplete string that pops up if I want to get the prompt.
Some very good comments. I really like the idea of being having an Incognito shortcut – that would be really helpful at work:) I also think that Thomas’ idea of splitting the browser window would make things more efficient. What about similar plugins to Firefox – they have to be near the top of the list.
A couple of annoyances I’d really love to see getting fixed:
– Right-clicking in the Omnibox doesn’t select the existing URL/text. Left-clicking does, but right-clicking clearly means I want to use the context menu, most likely to copy the contents. It would be great to have the text automatically selected before the menu drops.
– Minor annoyance (more a feature request): The context menu in the Omnibox should offer ‘Paste and go’ to allow pasting a URL/search term and action it in one fell swoop.
– Using [Ctrl]-[–>] and [Ctrl]-[<–] to move around within text boxes is most non-intuitive. On right arrow it moves to the end of the current word, not the start of the next word. On left arrow, it correctly moves to the start of the previous word. Related annoyance: [Ctrl]-[Del] deletes the current word, but leaves the space behind.
Well my chrome crashes everytime i use twitter and friendfeed in real time simultaneously!
Chrome needs a better password/ID management.
Also I would like to enable that drop-down list when I start to write in a box. (about:config pane will do that)
Linux version!!
If I do a save-as to some location, I would like the next save-as in the same tab/session to default to the last-used location
Chrome’s password manager doesn’t recognize/offer to remember some of the sites that Firefox’s password manager does
I think it would be cool if Chrome used Windows favourites ‘as-is’ rather than importing them, so if I add a bookmark in Chrome, it creates the favourite in my Windows favourites, and is then available to IE, and vice versa, using IE to add / edit a bookmark, and Chrome sees it right away.
I seems odd that all browsers have different favourites, history, etc, as being able to access the single Windows favourites would encourage me to try out alternate browsers.
My biggest grief about Chrome is the lack of good feed support. It needs Firefox-style auto-detection of feeds and a button that lets you view the feed and decide how to subscribe to it.
Another smaller thing: in Firefox if you hold down ctrl and press the back button it opens the previous page in a new tab. I found this very useful and would love to see it in Chrome.
Hi Matt,
I used to use Chrome as my default browser, but my H.P. laptop died a month ago, leaving me with a linux OS for about a month.
I have bought a brand new MacBook, and you know what this – sadly- means for my current relationship with Chrome…
BTW, this guy:
http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/2008/12/17/a-new-twist-in-google-information/
… seems to have a really big problem with you… Don’t ask me why, his post is ridiculus (to be kind…)
thanx,
alex
(Removed signature; I’ve got a no-sig policy on comment. — Matt. )
Ok, so this is nitpicky… But, Where the hell is the Home button?
I mean, I love the first page, because there really are about 10 sites I need to see a hundred times a day, so that is perfect, but I have to open a new tab to get that Home Screen. I don’t want to do that..
Thanks Matt…
Please tell Google developers, that Chrome should be installed into “Program Files” directory, so all users can use it. Installing it into user profile is kind of arrogant behaviour from Google. And there are no explanations why they did choose this destination.
Second thing is off-line installer, why it is so impossible to provide it?
And third: password-protected password manager. A must in corporate environment.
Also would be great to have a better bookmark manager (left-side) and support for RSS feeds …
Great question and comments! I love Chrome too.
My #1 annoyance would be Hard Refresh. In Firefox, Ctrl + refresh (f5) performs a hard refresh and redownloads everything on the page. I’m not sure if Chrome does this or not, but it definitely keeps Flash cached. I want Ctrl + F5 to refresh the Flash components.
Right clicking an image and choosing Copy Image very rarely works. It often copies the wrong image. Also, Inspect Element will often take you to the top div instead of the more specific item you were clicking on. Finally, I’d love to see a Properties option (like FF) when you right click in addition to Inspect Elements.
Cross-posting from blogoscoped, because I actually kind of care about these… 🙂
1. tab ordering. I’m addicted to the newest tab always appearing at the right like Firefox (rather than to the right of the current tab, like IE & Chrome).
2. url bar auto-complete: when I start typing a url in the url bar, and the one I want is highlighted on the top of the list, my fingers instinctually want to hit “tab” to auto-complete, then “enter”. In Chrome, “tab” successfully auto-completes, but “enter” then takes me to another random website. I think “tab” is simultaneously moving focus to some other link I don’t want.
@Jim Goudet
You can put in on (default off) in the options, first tab.
If you hit CTRL-SHIFT-T it can bring the window back to life if you click it away… though it’s certainly not as good as aborting a close.
How about no tab-completion for the Omnibox? You have to use the down-arrow key to traverse the urls the Omnibox offers. I WAY prefer to use the tab key (since my fingers are on the home row and everything), like Firefox.
I’m with Rob. My biggest peeve is the OS X support. And the plugins. When we get Firebug and a few other plugins on it, I think the adoption will go way up. For now, Firefox users won’t want to leave their favourite plugins behind.
Good ones Matt. I’d really like to see Mouse Gesture’s and Super Drag and Drop..I’m so much used to them ..
Also would like roboform toolbar very soon.
Well, there is no toolbar too. No doubt chrome is faster than IE or Firefox, but this gadgets are definitely most important. Also there is problem with download, since last two days i am facing problem with downloading files in chrome.
I only have a very small gripe. Maybe two. First, the minimize, restore, close buttons are not standard size, so when I’m click-click-clicking, minimizing all of my windows for some reason I “miss” the button in Chrome and it just restores down rather than minimizes. Drives me up a wall.
That and the spell check isn’t really up to par yet, but I’m forgiving about that as I assume (dangerous, I know) that it will be improved upon.
I don’t think I can ever make the total switch from FF, though, as I’ve spent a lot of time adding fancy-pants addons and getting it juuust the way I want it.
I dont like even using chrome… i still firefox… i will start using chrome when they offer something better than firefox…
When I use the “view source” command, I have seen corrupted source files, which when viewed in Firefox and IE, display correctly.
Also – when viewing the source of a cgi script, which is the result of information passed by a form, the source does not render the code of the page you are looking at – it renders the source as if you called the script with no form variables.
I also have issues with the copy and paste function.
I will not work with Dreamweaver when it will work with Notepad. I therefore end pasting in Notepad and then copy and pasting to Dreamweaver. There sure should be a better way to do so…
jb, the Chrome team is starting to write the specs for extensions, and they mention AdBlock-like extensions as something to support. More info here: http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/extensions
i miss full text zoom like nosquint http://www.urandom.ca/nosquint/ and paste and go http://pasteandgo2.mozdev.org/
“The ability to create a desktop shortcut to launch in Incognito Mode would be useful too.”
Ian M, this is pretty easy. There’s now a command-line switch to start in igcognito mode, using -igcognito. More info here: http://www.techdreams.org/tips-tricks/create-desktop-shortcut-to-launch-chrome-in-incognito-mode-by-default
If Chrome crashes it doesn’t always restore all the tabs like Firefox does which is annoying!
“An “undo close tab” option would be very useful.”
Wilson, just use control-shift-t to undo a close tab. That works for up to (10?) tabs. You can also use control-t to open a new tab, and if you use the 3×3 image snapshot page for new tabs, look on the right of the page near the bottom to see the last three tabs you closed.
Which reminds me: I’d like a way to remove (say) one of those 3×3 image snapshots. If I’m at a conference, I don’t want people to catch a glimpse of some internal server that I use a lot, for example.
filed them as http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=5625
and
http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=5626
Barry Hunter, you just made my day by telling me how to fix the “[google X Y Z] offers to search on Google for [X Y Z]” issue:
Thank you!
“Ok, so this is nitpicky… But, Where the hell is the Home button?”
Go to Wrench->Options->Basics and there’s a “Show Home button on toolbar” checkbox.
“Please tell Google developers, that Chrome should be installed into “Program Files” directory, so all users can use it.”
I asked about this a while agoAdded: I did some online searching (I don’t think I asked anyone on the Chrome team) and my understanding is that this is the preferred location on Vista so that users can install a program even if they don’t have administrative rights.One of my issues is that the RSS button doesn’t appear in the toolbar when you are on a blog with the RSS button.
“I will not work with Dreamweaver when it will work with Notepad. I therefore end pasting in Notepad and then copy and pasting to Dreamweaver.”
Not sure if this helps you Carl, but if you paste using control-shift-v then you paste with no formatting, just raw text. I use this all the time on sites such as Sphinn where they allow HTML-ish rich text to be pasted into their comment screen, but I just want to paste the text.
Aww, so Matt Cutts himself is not using Linux.. That sucks, seriously 🙁
That’s one less person who could personally make a difference to have a supreme personal motivation for a Linux Google Chrome. Obviously any other motivation wouldn’t be so supreme.
So Firefox, yes, it’s fine on my Ubuntu.
I second what Nick said:
The lack of middle click scrolling kills me.
@Nina that too… have u reported it yet?
I don’t like how the address bar prepopulates while I type. Sometimes I want to go to the root of a domain (e.g., http://www.google.com/) but Chrome will have a subdirectory or file cached (e.g., http://www.google.com/ig/) so it will automatically add that text to the end, and it will visit that URL unless I hit Del or Backspace first. That doesn’t feel natural to me, and I often dig too deeply into a website where I want to go to the root.
Also, ad blocker!!
I can’t stand chrome. I am definitely a Firefox lover.
+1 for the notion that Chrome doesn’t always restore tabs, e.g. if your computer freezes and you have to reboot it.
+1 for the notion of warning before you’re about to close multiple tabs.
+0.5 for the notion of controlling where new tabs show up (near your current tab or at the end of the tabs). The difference is stack vs. queue in programming terms, and it seems like some people innately prefer one or the other. 🙂 I used to be a Firefox (queue) person, but I’ve gotten used to the stack-like behavior of Chrome, except…
+1 for the notion of “pinning” a couple tabs all the way to the left. I always have Gmail in my far left tab and Google Calendar just to the right of that. Always. If I click on a link in Gmail and it opens up a tab, the new tab opens between my Gmail tab and my Calendar tab. After a while, my Calendar tab has migrated somewhere far to the right. 🙂
+0.5 for the idea of RSS support (clicking on an RSS icon should take you to Google Reader or somewhere else — I don’t want an RSS reader built-in to my browser). I don’t add feeds this way, but I know other people do.
I frequently get this error in Chrome for too many sites: “site does not exist or is not available” message and the page won’t load.
Anybody else get this error? I get this error on a 2003 HP laptop running Win XP. This (and lack of adblock) keeps me from switching to Chrome completely.
Chrome runs just fine on my newer Thinkpad.
The other thing I don’t like about Chrome is that, sometimes when a picture doesn’t load in a webpage, I can’t right click on the spot where the picture should be and select ‘show image’ or ‘show picture’ menu option. I am used to having this in Internet Explorer.
Cheers for this Matt:
“I want to be able to right-click and delete any Omnibox suggestion. Then ‘t’ will suggestion techmeme.com again”
I tried that, and then tried the middle-click instead, and found that you can use middle click to open an item from the list of suggestions in a new tab 🙂
Please talk to your colleagues and get ’em to fix this. Chrome is my preferred browser, but it’s slowing me down in Gmail compared to the competition.
I do everything in Gmail with the keyboard. Makes things so much faster, so when I want to label something (or remove a label), I mark the conversations (x), open the More Actions dropdown (.), type the first letter of the label I want until it’s selected, then hit Enter.
On other browsers (except Safari, so this might be a webkit problem), I’m immediately put back into the proper browsing context, so I can start using the keyboard shortcuts again right away. In Chrome, the focus has been moved elsewhere, and I have to hit TAB 6 times in order to get back to where I can use keyboard shortcuts (and even then, I’m moved back to the top of the page).
Thanks for the soapbox.
You can’t right-click and delete URLs in the omnibox, but you can press Shift-Delete à la Internet Explorer.
Matt, thanks for info regarding the default installation folder. Yes, it has been speculated, that the user profile was chosen in order to circumvent Vista UAC. I find it quite strange and perhaps laughable. Those, who don’t have administrative privileges are mostly in office environment. And those people expect that their PC-s are already loaded with software, which does meet company’s policy. Believe me, many people don’t know (or don’t care) how to install a program. I want to prepare a PC for the employees so they can use whatever program without installing themselves first. If Google is really afraid for some reason of “program files” folder, then install it on C: like for example Total Commander does. To me the Google way of doing things is a little bit evil and disrespectful to common windows programming guidelines.
Another thing that bugs me slightly is that in Chrome mouse wheel scrolls like IE does, that means 3 lines per click. FF and Safari are much better in that regard.
Thanks again, Matt for communicating with us, the users. Even if you are not part of the team who develops Chrome, I very much appreciate your help in information sharing.
I always liked the idea that Chrome gives the option of disabling any right-click “copyright infringement” style notification. The problem I’ve always had with it is that it does so after the first right click to a page. Is there any way in which these scripts can simply be disabled outright (in other words, right click always does what right click is supposed to regardless of circumstances)? There are very few, if any, web page navigation ideas that require right-click functionality.
I’ve recently bugged my web host’s support department because a DNS change seemed to take forever to propagate. It turned out that every other browser on my system was already displaying the correct new location, except Chrome.
Does Chrome cache DNS results longer than other browsers do? If so, I guess there should be an option to change this for us webmasters…
Tom, I tried to find an official comment and couldn’t easily find one, so don’t take my word on this with any particular weight. Treat it more as personal speculation.
“Aww, so Matt Cutts himself is not using Linux.. That sucks, seriously”
I use both Windows and Ubuntu, Silver. And if Chrome works well on Linux, there’s a good chance that I’ll switch over.
By the way, Philipp has gotten another good set of Chrome suggestions at http://blogoscoped.com/forum/147076.html
Ooh, one more: I use control-b to toggle the bookmark bar on and off to get more screen real estate. It’s a great shortcut. But control-b interacts badly with Writely in Google Docs (maybe it means “bold” in Writely?).
Another is that printing (maybe PDFs? maybe images?) often creates pages that look a little blockier than printing from other browsers.
+1 for the idea of a “Show Image” option when you right-click on an image. But I also understand the need to avoid overwhelming people with too many right-click options.
Update: I’m an idiot. The option is there as “Open image in new tab” and that’s exactly what I want.
I absolutely must have a blank, new tab or a customized new tab that I control.
What if my coworkers or clients saw me open a new tab and my favorite websites revealed that I’m gay, I voted for the other guy, I worship a different god than they do?
I also need the Google Toolbar. That’s where I keep all my bookmarks.
Matt,
My main problem with Chrome is it beats on my hard drive for no apparent reason. Every time I use Chrome, regardless of what sites I visits, I can hear the hard drive on my laptop cycling away, as if Chrome is determined to help me through knowing everything about me:-)
morris
+1 on being able to highlight nofollow through customizable CSS defaults.
I also hate that it renders popup windows. This means if some site has a popup that has flash embeded that plays talking, music or whatever, the little Popup Block thing comes up and it plays it anyway. This needs to be fixed.
I can see the argument for rendering the popup for speed if you really wanted to see it, but 99% of the time, I don’t want to see it. Make it an option or at least stop the sound some how.
Chrome needs Firebug.
Also, it needs “show selected source”.
* When printing, I can’t select “Selection”. I can’t print only selected text or portion of web iste, only full page(s). 🙁
* I would like to see “new tab” button on toolbar, instead of + sign near tabs
* Since there is no dedicated button for “new tab” on the toolbar, I have tried Ctrl+Home icon click to open new tab. That works in Firefox (but FF also has a dedicated new tab icon) but it doesn’t work in Chrome.
* Enable drag&drop on personal homepage so I can arrange sites that I have visited on my own way and order
* Ctrl+Enter adds www prefix and .com sufix, that is fine. But in Firefox Shit+Enter adds www. prefix and .NET sufix and that doesn’t work in Chrome. There is also a combination Shift+Ctrl+Entere for .org
* Add-ons
Chrome has a fantastic text-finding feature (Ctrl+F) EXCEPT that if you find text in a link, you can’t press ENTER to follow that link.
That’s an incredible time-saver for me in Firefox, especially on pages with lots of small text links. If I need to log into my CMS intranet, I just type /LOG[ENTER]. Way faster than hunting down the tiny link with the mouse or tabbing around.
Maybe I’m the only soul in the universe who uses that feature, but I’d love to see it reproduced in Chrome.
Nicholas
Here are a few answers to some of your issues (I am a Chromium developer):
* Middle-clicking to close tabs now ignores the click when you release it off the tab, just like Firefox. This is fixed on our trunk and (I believe) in this morning’s 1.0.154.39 Dev channel release.
* Items in the Omnibox can be deleted, but it’s tricky. Hit shift-delete on the item (this also works in Firefox). Caveat: You have to arrow to the item (that means that if the item is the default selection, arrow away, then back). This is to avoid conflation with the system level shift-delete “cut” shortcut. In the future, I would like to provide a “delete” icon at the right edge of a selected/hovered entry in this dropdown, to make this discoverable.
* More customization/control over the New Tab page is definitely feedback we’ve heard a lot, though I don’t have any specific plans I can point you to for how we’ll address it.
* Warning people when closing multiple tabs seems like a poor solution to a real problem (“I didn’t mean to close all these”). We’re gradually working towards better solutions on our trunk, where we can restore entire closed windows at once and preserve the list of recently closed items across restarts; eventually we want you to be able to “undo” a mistake like this, instead of just popping up an annoying “are you sure?” box that you habitually click “yes” on, only to realize that _this_ time you _didn’t_ mean it.
* RSS handling (in the form of detecting feeds on a page and providing users a way to send them to a feed reader) is something we have recently shared mockups for on our public mailing list.
* “Open Image in New Tab” is our equivalent of “Show Image” in the image context menu. Personally I’d rather view the image in the current tab, but I’d rather pick one way or the other than have both (reduce option clutter).
Much of your other feedback is stuff that we have heard, but it never hurts to hear users reiterate what’s most important to them. Thanks for being passionate and not being afraid to constructively criticize 🙂
To some other concerns here (Note: if I say “solved on trunk” that means it’s solved in the code we’re working with right now, which hasn’t yet made it to users’ hands; you can check out and build our trunk, but most people should just wait for this stuff to see an official release):
@Tim Trent: Many of your issues sound like ones we’ve solved in more recent releases, such as problems with Facebook or cookies being deleted too frequently. Are you still testing Chrome or are these impressions from a few weeks or months ago?
@John Cronin: Yes, you can switch spell checking off. It’s a little tough to find. Go to the “Minor tweaks” section of the Options dialog and click on “Fonts and Languages”. In the “Languages” tab of this dialog, uncheck “Check spelling” near the bottom. Also, on our trunk, we’re working on making spell checking better in a lot of ways, especially for users who write in multiple languages.
@Thomas Guest: On our trunk we’ve added some basic tiling UI that lets you drag a tab near one edge of a window and turn the two windows into a horizontally- or vertically-tiled pair. I think this still needs some tweaking but we’ll see how it goes.
@Michael: The “maximize on second monitor gives window wrong size” problem is solved on our trunk.
@Luka Kladaric: Full-page zoom (as opposed to text zoom) is present on our trunk, but has some bugs and performance problems. We’ll need to make it better.
@Douglas: We’re not planning to provide Win2k support.
@Nick: Middle-mouse autoscroll is in (though buggy) on our trunk.
@Jamie Brown: For various reasons, we’re unlikely to provide / as a default shortcut. User-configurable shortcuts are not a bad idea, but creating usable, intuitive UI for this seems tricky. It hasn’t been a high priority but people are welcome to submit mocks to our mailing lists and we’ll certainly consider them.
@LandStander: Visit (not search on) google.com itself a few more times, and the autocomplete system will learn that’s what you want. Or simply type in search terms (if your default engine is set to Google) and hit enter to do a search. We have some speculative ideas about how to do better on this class of problems in the future, no timeframe though.
I don’t like when you forget that you’re downloading something and close Chrome just to find out that you in fact were downloading that 300 mb file and it was cancelled without prompting. It should have at least a warning if there’s something being downloaded. Already submited this tip to google.
Thanks
I love Chrome and had to buy a new Acer Aspire to get Chrome – so I have a new COOL mini PC and Chrome,
I tend to flip between Chrome and FF these days
I suppose it has a few faults but I LIKE IT!
David
(con’t.)
@Rohit: The Omnibox context menu _does_ offer Paste And Go. Not sure how you missed it?…
@Chris: Unfortunately, there are various technical and UI reasons why we’re unlikely to ever modify your Windows “Favorites” store directly.
@Brian L: Stop hitting Tab :). That changes focus out of the address bar and onto some other element, or switches you into the “search” UI mode.
@Brian: Unfortunately is overloaded to mean several things already (see just above), so it’s pretty much impossible to make it mean this as well.
@Sankeerth: It’s not roboform, but our trunk does have a limited form of form autocomplete (dropdowns for form fields a la Firefox).
@Ian Chilton: We don’t auto-restore tabs to avoid immediately crashing again in cases where one tab caused the crash; however, we do show an infobar on startup in this case so that you can restore everything with a single click.
@Tom: Per-user installs comply with Microsoft guidelines, work for more users, and make installation simpler for many home users by avoiding unneeded elevation prompts. I don’t think trying to make users’ lives easier and follow Microsoft’s guidelines is “evil”.
@Roy Tanck: Like other browsers, Chrome uses the OS level facilities for DNS resolution, rather than keeping its own DNS information. I’m not sure what could have caused the problems you saw.
@Morris Rosenthal: Excessive hard drive usage is usually related to our Safe Browsing implementation. On our trunk we have developed a new implementation that uses the drive dramatically less; hopefully this will solve your problems.
@Chris Bartow: Due mainly to scripting issues, many popups/sites don’t work correctly if you don’t actually open the popup when the site wants. However, I agree that playing sound inside blocked popups is annoying (if, thankfully, fairly infrequent), and we’ve kicked around ideas to stop this, such as not instantiating plugins inside blocked popups.
@Alan Rimm-Kaufmann: While our built-in Inspector is not Firebug, it is better than nothing; hopefully you have tried it.
Better visualization for RSS feed and inbuilt detection for available RSS feeds on any web page!! (Just like IE7/8 or firefox!!) These are pretty basic things, how were they missed!!
Also, if advanced features like ability to mail an RSS item or share it on my network with just one click would be awesome!!
Peter Kasting, thanks for showing up to answer questions and comments — much appreciated!
Matt I’m still not sure why I do *not* use Chrome because after a brief trial I concluded it was a better browser, but I’m so familiar with FF that I just felt more adept using it rather than Chrome. This reminds me of moving from IE to FF years ago – for some time I’d go back and forth but now almost never use IE.
As someone with Debian GNU/Linux desktop at home and work gripe number 1 is obvious, I can’t use it more!
Gripe 2 is that it isn’t a proper windows application, doesn’t use the standard controls (and it’s own controls have bugs — this phenomenon is called “not invented here”), so it looks ugly, and because the borders (chrome? sic) are not the Windows theme colour blue (it is always the same blue(s) – even if the borders are some other color – yuk), it can get very confusing as to whether Chrome windows have focus or not. Which is pretty basic. There is a bug on this, but looks like the developers detest making the user experience easy in terms of UI consistency.
Gripe 3 – it runs the web application I work on in the day job so much better than IE does, and we spent so much effort making it all IE compatible. Urm Chrome gripe 3 seems to be an IE is lame rant, but I think that is probably fair (especially today!).
I’ve had a couple of crashes, and I suspect that running the the Javascript debugger thingy causes some errors that don’t occur without debugging enabled, but it is erratic so hard to nail down. But I can forgive that, this early in the release process, with a whole new super fast Javascript engine to get fixed.
Gripe 4 – I detest icon only interfaces – you have to learn what the icons are by reading the pop-ups that appear when you hover. Guess this is related to gripe 2 and the lack of a normal menu. We assumed this was desperate attempt to grab screen real estate, but then I hit “F11” in Firefox and realized it must just be more insane UI design.
On the upside it is slightly less hideous UI than Safari for Windows, so if I have to test netkit stuff at least I can do it slightly less painfully now.
I’d use it if it came to Linux – heck it is part of my day job to check stuff works in all browsers, but I don’t think it would yet tempt me away from Firefox^W Iceweasel/Firebug/Web Developer/NoScript/YSlow/User Agent Switcher combination that currently is my preferred browser.
I don’t like that when there is only one tab, and I close it, the whole browser closes.
One more. If I middle-click on a link, I want to open that link in a new tab. But if I’m on http://www.example.com/page.html and the link is for http://www.example.com/page.html#internalfragment, then doing a middle-click appears to just load http://www.example.com/page.html#internalfragment in the existing tab instead of opening it in a new tab.
Peter Kasting, you’re invited to chip in at this thread too:
http://blogoscoped.com/forum/147076.html
I wish Google would also consider working on the quality of the search results instead of coming up with browers and new products and features like search wiki
IMO, Chrome needs to be stable and out of BETA before adding more whistles and bells. It also needs to cater to the average Joe and NOT the Geeks, Webmasters etc. That is, it NEEDS to be as forgiving as IE for non-strict HTML. Unless Google is targeting that specific Niche?
BTW, I don’t believe “speed” has anything to do with what Browser average Joe is using (Download speed is THE main factor along with a long chain of other events). IMO, marketting based on the ignorance of average Joe is NOT good.
my only issue:
i like searching in the omnibox, but i want a dropdown arrow as well so i dont have to start typing and hope chrome guesses where i want to go. i prefer to see my usual list and click one, simple.
bring back the dropdown
thanks.
Another problem..
I accidentally clicked “Never Remember” (password) button for gmail..
there is no option for restoring it!!
I tried Chrome and ie8. My opinion is that Chrome is much better. Great article!
Dave (originial), it is out of beta.
Hi Matt,
sorry, nothing about Chrome, but about robots.txt.
Has Google changed something in the handling of robots.txt Disallow directives? I find more and more sites in the index which where excluded in the following way:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /directory/
Disallow: /*.dxf$
Disallow: /*.zip$
Disallow: /*?
Now, there is no possibillity (except password protection) to disallow word documents or pdfs for example. That’s not user-friendly if you will make content downloadable.
greets
Robert
Matt, then how about ensuring Chrome can properly handle non strict HTML, Java etc, like IE does. Or will that evolve over time?
Also, I think ” to make the web faster” is a misnomer for 99% of Chrome users.
Robert, that is something I have noticed too.
You guys should just download Opera and do what Firefox did – just copy the features it has. E.g. when accidentaly closing a tab, Opera actually allows me to CTRL+Z undo that. The wheel is already invented.
Robert, that’s not about Chrome, but check out http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/07/robots-exclusion-protocol-now-with-even.html because you can use the X-Robots-Tag: in HTTP headers.
One question – although the individual tabs run (according to the comic) with all their privileges stripped, does the main process run with administrative privileges if run from an admin account, or does it also keep it’s privileges down to a minimum?
(at the very least it should run as a “normal user”, but running lower if possible is always nice)
Also, are Google going to attempt to create a standard so that plugins can run with reduced privileges on all browsers (well, nsplugin ones anyway)? (it’s sorta hinted at in the comic)
Bouhou,
I was the sixth comment and I was giving the solution for the 3rd point and you have given credit to Baary Hunter. So sad…
Anyway, that’s why I like Chrome: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms08-078.mspx
Adding to your big list of issues, let me key-in the following URL,
http://www.info-svc.com/news/2008/12-12/
It’s not extensible. There are 7-11 firefox extensions that I cannot do without. For now, when I need to present something in an uncluttered browser I use Chrome but Firefox is my workhorse for the foreseeable future…
Hi Matt,
thanks for answere. And to not end in an off topic thread, but to be sure, that you get what I mean, one more statement about the robots.txt problem. Maybe we can discuss it elsewhere or you redirect it to the Google crawler team, so they can think about it. I will not peeve you again in this thread, unless you ask for it.
– The article in your link is from last year, but the behaviour I mean is a few days or weeks old (german index).
– I know about the X-Robots-Tag directive in the HTTP Header, but the robots.txt has worked until the last few days or weeks.
– If that’s the new way Google deals with the robots.txt, webmasters don’t need a robots.txt file anymore and you can remove it from the Webmaster Tools, because a robots.txt is pointless.
– The average webmaster or clients aren’t able or haven’t access to handle Apache configs or .htaccess files, but it’s easy for them to add a new disallowed directory in the robots.txt file.
greets
Robert
@Peter Kasting:
* “Open Image in New Tab” is our equivalent of “Show Image” in the image context menu. Personally I’d rather view the image in the current tab, but I’d rather pick one way or the other than have both (reduce option clutter).
I’m used to use the mouse middle click to open stuff to a new tab.
Not the best discoverable idea, but i can work for power users
@Peter Kasting:
“@Rohit: The Omnibox context menu _does_ offer Paste And Go. Not sure how you missed it?…”
That was me…. I meant the keyboard shortcut. ctrl (or accel) + shift + V
Except of these should integrate Google Toolbar as soon as possible.
Also chrome doesnt supports rich text editor, while trying to forward emails from my yahoo account, the mail is fwded as simple text and all rich content gets disappeared.
On the WordPress interaction you talked about, the issue isn’t just with WordPress. It’s with anything that pops up a fill-in box (my favorite that is having issues is the Shortwave bookmarklet). It seems that anytime there is a pop-up box, Chrome doesn’t insert the cursor in the text box by default. This is a major issue from me, as I’m tiring of having to click.
Matt, I discovered a weird thing. As I previously moaned about Chrome not installing into “Program Files” directory, I discovered today by accident, that when user installs Chrome as part of Google Pack (via Google Updater), then Chrome gets installed into Program Files directory! If installed from http://www.google.com/chrome the executable gets copied into the user profile. Perhaps Google should explain this behavior on Google Help.
– Greasemonkey seems to apply to all URLs no matter what – makes it mostly unusable for the majority of scripts
– Search box for the code inspector window does not work.
– You cannot add new css properties (like in Firefox) in the inspector window
– Lack of master password for securing the browser
– GoogleUpdate.exe should die.
– The context menu (right click) is missing many of the options that other browsers have (e.g. properties, view background image, etc…)
– Spell check language change from context menu is missing…do not want to have to go into options every time to change it.
@Peter K.
“* Warning people when closing multiple tabs seems like a poor solution to a real problem (”I didn’t mean to close all these”). We’re gradually working towards better solutions on our trunk, where we can restore entire closed windows at once and preserve the list of recently closed items across restarts; eventually we want you to be able to “undo” a mistake like this, instead of just popping up an annoying “are you sure?” box that you habitually click “yes” on, only to realize that _this_ time you _didn’t_ mean it.”
Actually, the firefox solution works quite well. Sometimes I want to restore my tabs and sometimes I do not. That warning allows me the choice of when I want tabs restored. For individual tab restoration you have the “recently closed tabs” submenu as well as Ctrl+Shift+T
+1 to complaint about installing everything in profile folder instead of Program Files
I love Chrome and use it half the time. Half because I use a Mac @ work, Windows @ home.
Besides not having extensions (I know, I know. They’ve heard it enough), I would like the option to control what is on the “Start” page, ala Fast Dial. The “Start” page also adds some sites that are NOT big hitters in my browsing. I’ve had sites that I’ve visited once kick out sites I hit several times a week.
I would also like the “Start” page to be a little smarter about the sites. I end up with multiples for Facebook & Craigslist. One for the login page, one for the home page.
I’ve taken to deleting my history a couple of times just to clean that up (I know it’s a drastic measure, but I get irritated when I have to see little “bugs” every time I open a new tab.
Another bug I’ve had effects window sizes. I had the Incognito window open once when I fired up a good ol’ session of Doom 2. Now whenever I open an Incognito window, it sizes to a smaller window (somewhere around 600 x 600). I resize the window, go about my biz, close the browser, maybe even restart my computer before my next browser session and every time I open Incognito, again the window size is small.
Cant use Firefox add-ons that’s why i prefer working on Firefox also it makes me lazy by allowing me to type less 🙂
What i like most about Chrome is –
1. rocket speed
2. can reach a website much faster as it displays their URL
I’ve noticed this each time I want to compose an email through Hotmail: I can add the recipients email, the subject of the email, any attachements, but when the time comes to write the actual content in the email, the content box seems to freeze. Don’t quite understand the reasoning behind this.
I’d really like to be able to open a tab in icognito mode, instead of only a new window.
Only complaint I have is that our sales report uses div’s that are longer than the box they’re displayed in, so I like to scroll to the current month. When FireFox refreshes, the divs stay scrolled. Chrome goes back to the top.
Otherwise, I’m really liking chrome.
1. Allow me to remove specific pages from showing in the new tab page. I don’t want my porn history appearing in there nor do I wish to delete my entire history. Using incognito mode is far too much effort.
2. A method by which I can selectively remove particular domains or individual items from my history.
3. Middle click on tab area should open a new tab!
4. INLINE FIND!! why are we having to hit ctrl+f in this day and age ffs. it should be “/”
5. Show ‘paste and go’ in more than just the damn address bar.
6. Fix the really crappy text highlighting/select.
7. Middle clicking somewhere on a page should display the little auto scroll function as per EVERY OTHER BROWSER. I.e, allows you to middle click, lower the pointer slightly so that the page will auto scroll.
8. Force chrome to follow OS wide scrollwheel settings. Chrome scrolls faster (more lines per scroll click) than every other app.
9. back/forward page mouse gestures.
10. WORK WITH MY GOD DAMNED ONLINE BANKING!! I get this: Error 500: Missing message for key “css.win.safari.version”
If all those are fixed, Ill be happy as hell. and most of them arent asking much… the scroll stuff is absolute basics and should have been implemented prior to release.
Nice list Matt. Glad to see you can be critical. My biggest complaint is that it’s harder to highlight things in text areas. In blogging I’m often highlighting things to copy and paste them again or somewhere else. I can get it to work, but I have to be more precise in highlighting than I did with Firefox. I understand this is hard to explain, but there’s definitely a difference highlighting text in chrome than Firefox or IE.
Sorry, but I don’t care if they don’t want to hear about Linux version any more. Its one of the biggest issues, at least for me.
Who are the early adopters, who spreads the word?
Yes correct, the geek people. The ones working 10 hours a day in the Internet. Those are the ones who might be using Linux a lot.
The normal folks will not switch their browser – what the hell are browsers btw??? – I have my internet here on my computer – its called IE…
I will not try Chrome unless there is a native version for Debian and I am pretty sure a lot of people think the same way.
Give it a shot, create a native Linux version!!!
Some minor things that I don’t think have been mentioned yet:
1. I wish addresses displayed on hovering weren’t abbreviated so aggressively. (I’d also prefer a static status bar, but that’s just cosmetic.)
2. Settings->options could be organized better. The tab names (Basics, Minor Tweaks, and Under the Hood) are not very helpful, and there’s too much stuff in “Under the Hood.”
This must be the first time that I’ve seen a Google employee acknowledge that Google sometimes doesn’t do everything perfectly!
FWIW – I love Chrome and use it all the time, but it’s not good enough to replace IE and FF for me. So I’m currently using 3 browsers!
It’s amazing how the absence of one seemingly tiny feature is enough to stop me from using Chrome. I don’t know if it’s a feature that has been added since the initial release, but one thing I do often in Firefox is middle-clicking on the Back/Forward/Home buttons to open those destinations in new tabs… very useful.
Matt, you asked if my release is up to date: Beats me! I let it handle it! It says I have 1.0.154.36
if you solved these things then autoupdate hasn’t delivered yet
Try to reply in the new exciting(!) hotmail and you get no ability to reply, for example.
why can’t Chrome have a separate proxy setting different from IE proxy setting ?
Matt,
Thanks for this. I still haven’t tried Chrome yet. I’d love to see a similar post for Gmail (and I could contribute items to it user generated content style if you’d like – let me know.)
Happy Holidays.
I love Chrome. I hate that there’s no “STOP” button to stop a webpage from loading.
The one thing I really about Google Chrome is that it still doesn’t run on Linux. 🙁
To Jon Said, yes you have it. You can find it at he right of the address bar near the two menu buttons. It is only visible when loading. If the page is loaded, you see a “Play” button. While loading you can see a “Cross” button. You can see it while laoding heavy blogs like http://thomas.marteau.org.
never knew about that middle click stuff…. great tip.
i would like chrome NOT to close when i close all my tabs, but instead give me a (new) blank tab, just like FF and Opera.
I greatly miss having Google Web History track the websites I visit. When I use Chrome, only the searches I did in Google appear in Google Web History.
I just noticed that the front page with the 9 last pages doesn’t do any concatenation. So I have the following two slots taken up:
domain.com/dir
and
domain.com/dir/
Obviously the same exact thing. Would be nice if Chrome didn’t take up 2 slots for this 1 page.
Hey
I agree with you in both articles (likes and dislikes). But I want to add something I couldn’t find over there very clearly (I am spanish native so perhaps was said and couldn’t find it anyway, so sorry). It is about one thing I like very much (showing previous visited pages) and I don’t like (relationship with google is no clear enough on working with it). I feel like fainting on trying to get to some points like, for instance Google. Do I get it directly or have to write first Google and afterwards the question? Isn’t a way to make it snappy?
Thanks for the answer
And by the way, very good observation about the tabs; it’s true !!!!
Thanks you again
Posicionarsitio
Right! I agree with your previous likes and your actual dislikes. And I would quote a couple of things:
– One good thing: Chroma is clear while working on it
– Clear is not the same than easy.
– Some things could be (and must be handled) better for us – the users. I can’t find a way to make it more suitable for my work
But, we all know they are just starting. Wish you merry christmas
http://www.posicionarsitio.es
I had a suggestion that maybe you could pass on to the Chrome guys.
There are 2 groups of people browsing the internet, those with high speed and those without it.
What if Chrome had a button you could select that would allow your slow broadband connection to move along very fast on the Chrome browser as if you had high speed?
I suppose you could try to cut out a lot of the things that slow them down like pictures and whatever else. You could come up with something they could click on if they wanted to see the picture clearly.
Anyhow, I hope this makes sense to you. later.
Hi matt,
Your colleague John Mueller, was absolut right on his comments.
So lets give them all a chance
I love the speed — especially with Google’s stuff. I use a lot of the Google services. I’m sure they optimized Chrome for these and it shows. Even makes Google Docs usable. I like Google Docs a lot but on other browsers it’s painfully slow.
However, I agree with the “elephant in the room” comment: ads are the showstopper for me. So I use both Chrome and Firefox. Chrome for sites that don’t go overboard with all the moving and flashing and jumping crap; Firefox for everything else.
Firefox had (maybe still does) an extension called “Open in IE” for sites that required Exploder. Maybe someone could build an extension that would pull in the current URL from Chrome to open that site in (adblocked of course) Firefox.
I think Chrome is fabulous but after getting used to blocking the more obnoxious ads in FF, it’s just too jarring to consider going back to that craziness.
Interestingly enough, I don’t mind Google’s ads. They are apparently smart enough to realize you can communicate without beating someone over the head to get their attention.
Google Chrome on my XP machine doesn’t like PDF files. It takes an eternity to load them or just gives up. Doesn’t seem to be a problem in IE.
Prefer Google Chrome, but would like move screenshots on landing page around since I’m using them as quicklinks to go back to frequently visited sites. Can’t easily delete a one-off visit from front page history. Would prefer to do this…
Ok, off to IE to get PDF… Chrome just given up (again).
Regards, Fiona
Should have added that it would be good to remove duplicates from landing page as well… I’d like this to be my visual quicklink to all the sites I visit… don’t need two or more of the same site appearing.
Google Chrome and Google Blogger are slightly incompatable, When using Google Chrome Tags do not Auto Complete.
I have another problem. It deals with the autocomplete feature. I visited geekpress.com. Later I want to visit geek.com, so I type”geek” and Ctrl + Enter. It takes me to geekpress. It would be nice if Ctrl + Enter would ignore autocomplete. If I am trying to add www and .com, I have typed in the whole URL part, so I don’t need it to send me to another URL.
Just simply, how can I open a new tab without having my history broadcast to the world??? That should be an option, not the default!
Peter wrote:
* Warning people when closing multiple tabs seems like a poor solution to a real problem (”I didn’t mean to close all these”). We’re gradually working towards better solutions on our trunk, where we can restore entire closed windows at once and preserve the list of recently closed items across restarts; eventually we want you to be able to “undo” a mistake like this, instead of just popping up an annoying “are you sure?” box that you habitually click “yes” on, only to realize that _this_ time you _didn’t_ mean it.
Ummm, actually it WOULD solve the problem. There are many times that chrome is “frozen” or at least appears to be, and when it finally wakes up I find that one of my clicks to close a different application was captured by chrome, which then disappears without a whimper. If a multi-tabbed window of chrome is closed and there are other chrome floater windows open at the time, then restarting chrome does not restore the now-closed tabs. Also, I sometimes track sites that change daily and keep several tabs of the same site open. Chrome has no way of restoring those pages that are now lost forever… why not just listen when a customer asks for something rather than assume they really know not what they ask?
Chrome Vs Google Products
Hi matt,
I’m having some real problems with using Google products on Chrome. First the new adwords UI – displays perfectly in IE, and not so perfectly in Chrome – issues with fitting the UI onto the screen etc.
The major problem for me though is using Google Analytics in Chrome – I have a grey box over my graphs and then after a while the entire tab crashes, saying there’s a problem running Flash Shockwave – this only happens in Analytics and happens to everyone else in the office too. This started about a month ago – I’ve left feedback but still ongoing…
Otherwise – LOVE Chrome, keep having to use IE to look at Analytics and I so hate not being able to search by the ‘address bar’
Hey Matt,
I’m not sure how close you follow reddit, but here is some commentary on chrome from a pretty geeky crowd: http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/8hvvq/whos_with_me_that_the_only_reason_they_dont_use/
Cheers!
number of reasons why I uninstalled google crome !
1. am not able to use my tool bar on google crome.
2. don’t like the way it took over the way I brows.
3. when uninstalling had to reinstall internet explorer 8 as it corupted it.
stoped axcess to my yahoo mail and win live mail because of bad uninstall comands.
4. figure software should be fixed before sending out for public use “google crome error”.
5. I prefere my toolbar to googles toolbar as it is more usefull. check it out see what you think. http://letsfixit.ourtoolbar.com/
I can’t use my mouse back or forward button on Chrome. It always jumps back the one before the previous page. I upgraded to v.2 and it crashed every single time.
Google Chrome has been my default browser since it came out. The cutting edge development version works great, but I have one gripe. I use Chrome to download files from NOAA on a daily basis and whenever you go to download the second image it pauses for a good while and then finally asks if its okay to allow the site to download multiple files. Of course it’s okay, I asked the site to do it. Could Chrome please remember my decision?
Thanks!
I have noticed in the very short time I’ve been using Google Chrome that it has an issue with anything that uses Flash (i.e. my daughter went to pixiehollow.go.com and I would receive a pop up that shock wave flash has crashed I needed to run it through Firefox also I know a few people that have stated that use netflix instant watch at this time they can not use chrome to view there movie choice.
I have multiple Gmail accounts and a feature in Firefox is that when I go to SIGN IN to gmail, a list drops down of all my account, then I just click the one I need and the password pops in and it’s as easy as that. With Chrome, I never can predict which of my gmail addresses will appear in the SIGN IN field. If it’s not one I want, I have to use the keyboard to type it in. What an annoyance. Any way to fix this?
I don’t like how do the fonts looks, It should be more glide, soft, like in IE.
Right clicking on an image that’s not being displayed should give the option to reload the image so to speak, and be titled “display image”. Not having that is most annoying
When I double-click on a word in any text to select it, it also selects the space to the right of the word (this is ok – standard windows behaviour i guess). When using shift-leftarrow to compensate, the selection GROWS to the left when standard windows behaviour is to shrink the selection from the right.
I have still issues with hard refresh in Chrome. Is this something that has been sorted out now.
I am trying to get a hard refresh on this page
http://www.flip.co.uk
It now has a video imbedded and I can’t see it.
At least as an option: new tab = home page! I have a home page for a reason.
Opening an image that didn’t show up in a new tab sounds a lot like it’s supposed to be a kludgy workaround. I actually write code like that but not if I’m handing it out anywhere, it’s crude.
If I close the last tab, it should show a new tab, a blank tab or nothing.
Let me rename “Other Bookmarks” (I want to get rid of “Other”) and move it up with everything else. I already have bookmarks, why do I want more on the bookmark bar? I don’t, but I have to have the whole bar showing to get reasonably quick access to my bookmarks. Lots of wasted screen real-estate there.
Open Chrome, open anything else. Right-click the taskbar and pick either tile option. Is Chrome a phantom window?
Min/max/close are the wrong size and in the wrong place.
It simply doesn’t behave or look like anything else. Please note that’s NOT a compliment.
I’ve got multi-user operating systems that take up less space than Chrome (OK, they’re not current, but they are fully functional) does for a single user. Add another user, there goes another 100+MBs. The ability to install Chrome as an app (in Program Files!) with multiple profiles would be great. I’m not saying replace the current method (dumbing down users is always a good idea, makes them more gullible) but as an alternative.
Does skinning really have to require resource hacking? I mean, seriously.
Gives up too easily when it can’t get a file. Maybe it’s a timeout kicking in, I don’t know. I DO know that I have to reload a page or “open image in new tab” a LOT.
I’m researching replacements for IE6 since web sites are starting to drop support for it. Although I’ve had fun playing with it, Chrome feels like a beta (at best) to me. It does not feel like it’s ready for normal users. It doesn’t behave like an app should and, while simplicity is nice, you can carve out too much. I’ll simply have to drop it from the list of maybes.
And I had such hope…
I like the speed of the browser, but it needs more add ons and tool bar features. Too beta for me right now.
Choosing where the Chrome cache directory resides would be beneficial to some users – it’s possible in Firefox, Opera, and even IE.
I can understand some of the reasons for installing Chrome on Windows in the user profile, but why does my cache-less Chrome consume 190MB of disk space in this area, yet Opera 10.51 on the same machine takes 13MB?
A centralized way to set preferences (the equivalent of Firefox’s about:config) would be most welcomed. Using commend line flags can be very obscure, especially to less experienced users. Unfortunately I don’t see any initiative in that direction…
Still wanting the save-as fix (from Summervillain, 2008): “If I do a save-as to some location, I would like the next save-as in the same tab/session to default to the last-used location
Chrome’s password manager doesn’t recognize/offer to remember some of the sites that Firefox’s password manager does”
Does anyone know of a fix?
What I do not like” are:
1. Very hard to control flash and other video files. I even cannot enlarge or make a full view of video such as YouTube in Chrome.
2. I cannot control or block flash adds with any plugin or addson.
3. Very hard to scroll up and down in many websites.
4. When we copy a file, it copies all, included background and shading.
Thanks.
why cant tou see the download speed while downloading stuff on google chrome?
By far the most annoying for me: The context menu on any web page accepts t as the shortcut for opening a link in a new tab. I’ve become used to that now, so every now and again I press t from the context menu on the bookmarks bar to open all the pages in new tabs, but alas this deletes the folder. So t in the context menu sometimes means open in new tab, but other times it means delete. This is especially annoying when you’re spent hours researching something and have saved all the tabs in a neat folder to continue later.
I know the whole idea of a context menu is that it changes depending on where the cursor is (hence the term context), but it still feels strange, especially seeing as middle-click on a mouse achieves the desired result in both cases.
Secondary to that, it would be nice to get a “Are you sure?” type confirmation when you delete a bookmarks folder with a bunch of bookmarks in it that you’ve worked really hard to accumulate.
I still don’t know if chrome has auto suggest from history like firefox (LOVE this in firefox)
I have several development machines that don’t have domain names. So in Firefox I simply type in one digit, and it shows up in the autosuggest from my history. I don’t see that in Chrome.
1. If i right click on a gif image, and copy this image and paste to anywhere, it will becomes a static picture. I hate that. I want to copy the animation image, not a static picture. What can i do?
2. I like the drop down button at the right of the address box, i am too lazy, i don’t like press key in the address box and wait the box show me the address i typed recently. But there is only a star, where can i drop it down?
3. Sometimes, a lots of script in a page, they play sounds, control my mouse, change my clipboards, show boxes…, but i can not do anything, I can not select the text, can not copy the image, can not hit the mouse, can not…. Where can i disable them?
4. some website always popup the advertisement window. OK, chrome can hide the popup window. but they are running at the behind, where are them? look…look… oh my god, chrome makes a big blackbox for them, and the babies are hiding in it, and make a loud noise. Could anyone tell me? My dear Google Chrome Browser works for who? for me? or for the advertisement windows?
Thanks a lots.
On the other hand, Google chrome is a great browser, i like it. Thank you.
Yes, these are annoyances, but they are obscure and unimportant except for you power users.
How about: Google Chrome steals focus from other apps.
The “Stop page from loading” button doesn’t stop the page from loading.
In General: Chrome thinks I’m sitting at my desk in front of a really big phone.
Google chrome doesn’t correctly use windows network priority – very annoying.
So you can’t for example force it to use a wired connection if both wired and wireless are available on a Windows computer.