Today is fracking about with Google Chrome day. Check it if you can.
The download was quick and after 2 mins I was flying along with it.
The rendering speed rocks, though it's not filled up with my add-on crap yet and it'll probably slow down as that open source gets chipped add by 'indispensible' add-ons. I miss my spell checker in Blogger as I write, but I'll live. Loved the quick, if a bit scary, import functionality. Up and running in seconds.
I like the 'tear off' tabs (especailly as a duel screen user), and instead of traditional tabs like those in Firefox Chrome puts the buttons on the top of the window, not below the address bar. Thank god for the standard FF short cut keys and an address bar with auto-complete.
The default homepage gives you an intuitive kind of “speed dial” feature, part of it's visual bookmark system, similar to the one with Opera. I like the idea of the Chrome privacy mode; you can create an “incognito” window “and nothing that occurs in that window is ever logged on your computer” specifically for 'left handed surfing time' (well, what else is it for, really). Like Prism, it seems apps can be launched in their own browser window without address bar and toolbar.
I'm an old school Firefox die-hard, and I'll have to spend some time tinkering to see if the multi-threaded architecture is really that robust and how the Gears can be cobbled to 'enliven my browsing experience'. I see it has it's own JavaScript Virtual Machine (called V8) which also open source and seems fine so far ('cept for a few niggly bits with upload in Flickr). I appreciate them adding the task manger too, which lets you see which processes inside Chrome are running, taking up how much memory, network resource and CPU.
Editing my Blogger posts is a bit weird in it. Oh, and Lively doesn't seem to be supported (like anyone gives a shit anymore). Ironically, Google Analytics shows Google Chrome visitors as being from Firefox which strikes me as a bit of an oversight. I know it's a beta, but way to coordinate a product launch there folks.
First impressions? Yup, I like it, I’ll be fiddling all day.