FOT Forum
FOT Community => General Discussion => Topic started by: yesno on September 06, 2008, 08:36:13 PM
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Although I'm mostly a Mac user I pop into Windows for different reasons from time to time.
Holy balls, Google Chrome is the best/fastest browser I've ever used.*
"Application shortcuts" are very well done. V8 apparently makes web apps just scream. There are no unnecessary buttons or widgets. It takes the minimalist UI ideas inherent in Vista and Office 2007 and actually implements them well, unlike IE7.
* (I've used every modern browser for every platform, and yes, Chrome is way, way faster than FF, Safari, or Opera. And I wouldn't be a Mac guy unless I pointed out that WebKit (which it uses instead of Gecko) is only as fast as it is because of Apple's work at turning KHTML into something amazing. And that it still uses Windows style "spiderman" text smoothing which is way inferior to the Apple method.)
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Yeah, it is a good browser - I have a Mac at home, but I loaded it onto both of my work computers. It freezes a lot less than Firefox, as the comic explains:
http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/
There are some privacy concerns, though:
http://www.edrants.com/google-chrome-is-bad-for-writers-bloggers/
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There are some privacy concerns, though:
http://www.edrants.com/google-chrome-is-bad-for-writers-bloggers/
They've already taken that language out of the EULA, saying it was a mistake.
The best thing is that V8 and some of its other actual improvements are open source, so unless they have too much pride Apple and Mozilla should be yoinking its improvements and copying the one process per tab idea. Everyone wins! Microsoft of course almost always refuses to use open source, so I expect its javascript performance to continue to be about 60x slower than its competitors'.
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but... i really like my firefox extensions.
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I keep FF around for when I need to do some weird thingamajig.
But for day to day browsing, it's been slower than the competitors for a while now. WebKit just trounces Gecko.
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but... i really like my firefox extensions.
Hopefully Chrome will have extensions soon.
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but... i really like my firefox extensions.
Yep. I can't believe they didn't make this Mac out of the gate. This is exactly what Mac lovers eat up, fast and good looking even though you have to sacrifice user customization.
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I've had some annoying glitches on it. Besides, how fast do I need a browser to be? I click on the link in FF, the link comes up.
Chrome: I remain unconvinced.
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I've had some annoying glitches on it. Besides, how fast do I need a browser to be? I click on the link in FF, the link comes up.
Chrome: I remain unconvinced.
Its rendering speed is about the same as Safari's. Where it's really fast is with javascript. Plus, application shortcuts, which make it so that you can easily make a web app more like a "real" application, are pretty cool.
Also, its user interface is way better than Firefox's, and more intuitive except for the fact that you have to unlearn the inefficient ways most browsers work.
It would be unfortunate if web apps totally take over, though. Your average web app is better than your average Windows custom business visual basic POS, I guess, but well-designed native software is still much than what you can do in a browser. That said, the majority of my Mac-using friends use Gmail or something instead of taking the 30 seconds to set up Mail.app, so I guess web apps really appeal to the lazy in people.
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That said, the majority of my Mac-using friends use Gmail or something instead of taking the 30 seconds to set up Mail.app, so I guess web apps really appeal to the lazy in people.
Personally, I set up mail.app, used it for a few days and went back to Gmail. Other than it notifying you when you get a new message, I didn't really see much of an advantage to it, and Google Notifier does that anyway. One big issue for me is the ability to send mail from different addresses under the same account (admittedly, I could be wrong and mail.app could have that feature, but it didn't seem like it).
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Yeah, it is a good browser - I have a Mac at home, but I loaded it onto both of my work computers. It freezes a lot less than Firefox, as the comic explains:
http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/
Boy, that comic about web browsers sure looked like a lot of fun, but for some reason I didn't get past the second page.
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Personally, I set up mail.app, used it for a few days and went back to Gmail. Other than it notifying you when you get a new message, I didn't really see much of an advantage to it, and Google Notifier does that anyway. One big issue for me is the ability to send mail from different addresses under the same account (admittedly, I could be wrong and mail.app could have that feature, but it didn't seem like it).
Yep, Mail.app can do all that, and lots more. I send everything "from" my Gmail address, for instance, even though Mail sent to Gmail or my school mail in actuality routes over to Mobile Me. Or you can just have one client access multiple accounts directly.
It's way faster for dealing with lots of emails. It allows for offline access, it instantly exposes my 10+ year email archive to spotlight, and doesn't take away my ability to use a web app when I'm on a foreign computer (you can set up Gmail with IMAP, which makes your local client an exact mirror of what's on the web app; I use Mobile Me.) It gives you quicklook. It uses normal system shortcuts. It uses the normal built in Mac text editing field with all its shortcuts, its dictionary, etc.
Basically a native app gives you all of the features of a modern OS, while even the best web app strives for a System 7/Windows 98 level of functionality. Yeah, this is a pet peeve of mine.
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Yeah, it is a good browser - I have a Mac at home, but I loaded it onto both of my work computers. It freezes a lot less than Firefox, as the comic explains:
http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/
Boy, that comic about web browsers sure looked like a lot of fun, but for some reason I didn't get past the second page.
Yeah, I know. I got to something like page 17 and it started to feel like that fake "IQ test" that made the rounds a while back, where the joke is that the test never ends. I hope Scott McCloud at least got a fat paycheck out of that.
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Personally, I set up mail.app, used it for a few days and went back to Gmail. Other than it notifying you when you get a new message, I didn't really see much of an advantage to it, and Google Notifier does that anyway. One big issue for me is the ability to send mail from different addresses under the same account (admittedly, I could be wrong and mail.app could have that feature, but it didn't seem like it).
Yep, Mail.app can do all that, and lots more. I send everything "from" my Gmail address, for instance, even though Mail sent to Gmail or my school mail in actuality routes over to Mobile Me. Or you can just have one client access multiple accounts directly.
It's way faster for dealing with lots of emails. It allows for offline access, it instantly exposes my 10+ year email archive to spotlight, and doesn't take away my ability to use a web app when I'm on a foreign computer (you can set up Gmail with IMAP, which makes your local client an exact mirror of what's on the web app; I use Mobile Me.) It gives you quicklook. It uses normal system shortcuts. It uses the normal built in Mac text editing field with all its shortcuts, its dictionary, etc.
Basically a native app gives you all of the features of a modern OS, while even the best web app strives for a System 7/Windows 98 level of functionality. Yeah, this is a pet peeve of mine.
Then I'm going to cop to being lazy and resistant to change. If I can make a semi-legitimate point in my defense, though, I like the threading of replies, and if I need to read email offline I can just look at my iPod Touch (where I do use the mail application).
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If I can make a semi-legitimate point in my defense, though, I like the threading of replies,
Mail does that too!
Ok, I'm done.
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I liked the comic, actually I said 'so what' about Chrome until I read the comic, but I'm a comic and software development nerd, so it was practically drawn for me.
Since I am mostly using the Mac even at work now (running reviled Win in a VM), I haven't yet messed with Chrome but will check it out this week.
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Helios Creed always made me think... wait, wrong Chrome.
I like it, particularly on my laptop and particularly for this site, where I may have 15 windows open at once. No crashing, no slowdowns. Good stuff.
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Getting more and more frustrated with how Firefox is just hogging all my CPU these days... and so I'm trying out Chrome again, for the second time. The first time it was just a beta, I think, and wasn't working all that well. Now it imported all the Firefox settings, bookmarks, and passwords, and... so far, so good. It's certainly fast. I'm guessing where it can fail is with the extensions - which make Firefox so great.
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I want to change my name to Mrs. Google Chrome because I love it so much. I love that you have the tab button in the browser and can still open up tabs from the keyboard. I set my homepage to their thumbnail view option and it just makes everything so much easier. I also like their options of backgrounds. I chose the Sigerson Morrison one.
My only two problems so far is the the history has not been as easy for me to use as Safari's and the bookmarks aren't as easy to change over. In fact, adding bookmarks and folders to the bookmark bar has been the biggest issue I've had with it but that's only because Ghrome has made it so much easier for me to find stuff I like.
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Helios Creed always made me think... wait, wrong Chrome.
I like it, particularly on my laptop and particularly for this site, where I may have 15 windows open at once. No crashing, no slowdowns. Good stuff.
hm. I may need to think about using this ... I accepted the crashiness of Mozilla a long time ago b/c I liked the flexibility of it. I don't use hardly any of the add ons any more besides XMarks. Is there any other way to have a central list of your bookmarks for work and home computers? you know, that y'alls like and use a lot?
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I need mouse gestures, universal webpage zoom and greasemonkey (one that isn't a pain in the butt) before I would even consider switching from Firefox. I'm really disappointed with Chrome, it has been out over a year now and not much has changed. It's fast but of course a barebones browser is going to be faster than an all purpose one.
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Is there anything in the neighborhood of GreaseMonkey for Chrome? I thought Chrome was all about the Javascript.
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You can actually use Greasemonkey with chrome, you just save the extensions to a folder inside your Chrome folder. But, not everything works and some things don't work right. When I tried Chrome out, it worked most of the time for me. It's just not a simple one click process like Firefox, and managing outdated scripts would be a pain in the butt.
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Thanks, I will give it a shot. I dabble in the GreaseMonkey stuff.
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* Safari is just as fast as Chrome now, as far as I can tell. The main competition between them is the javascript engine. They use the same rendering technology (WebKit), which is much better than Firefox's Gecko. Everyone is abandoning Gecko. For example, Gnome's Epiphany is now WebKit-based. Whatever the best browser is, it's going to use WebKit.
* Because of its non-native UI, Firefox is ugly and behaves differently than other applications. Because it is based on Gecko, it is slow and not as standards-compliant as the competition. I keep it around for weird extensions (Download Them All, etc), but I don't need it for day-to-day browsing. The only extensions I need/use every day are 1Password, XMarks, Click to flash, and Ad Block, all on Safari. (1Password, by the way, is the best software I purchased in 2009. I ignored numerous recommendations for it for a really long time.)
* It is possible to have more than one application installed on a single computer.
* These aren't browser specific, but I use the Printliminator, Readability, and Read Later/Instapaper bookmarklets every day.
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Is Safari for Windows as good as it is on Mac? Can it do Greasemonkey and mouse gestures?
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Is Safari for Windows as good as it is on Mac? Can it do Greasemonkey and mouse gestures?
Maybe it's as fast, but I don't think it's extensible at all. I don't know why Apple even bothers with it--it made sense for a while to help web developers, but now there are other people with WebKit browsers.