Es Tea Double Eye

I’m ecstatic! Finally the wait for the Google Chrome browser is over. I have to say, my first impressions justify the long wait. I’m in fact putting Firefox on the same shelf as IE, only using it to test web sites.

On the Mac and OS X Chrome does not disappoint one bit. It is as intuitive and nimble as we’ve grown accustomed to. I don’t know how it behaves on Windows, but it just feels so native and good in OS X. Well done Google. It is FAST! I hope the speed does not degrade over time, but the first couple of hours have been a noticeable speed improvement even compared to Safari.

Stability is key. If you consider that Firefox brings an entire system down if you have more than 10 tabs open at a time. (Okay, I may be exaggerating… but Firefox irks me these days!). Chrome does it well enough. I’m impressed so far. Funny, it loads a new helper for every tab open, so technically it should kill your system, but it just keep going and going. They did it properly, I assume.

If you’re used to Safari and its developer tools, Chrome would feel right at home. Since both are powered by Webkit it uses the same developer tools. Now, here I do miss Firebug, still, Firebug alone won’t make me forgive Firefox!

What also impress me is how intuitive the search functionality behaves. You won’t see a seperate search box like in other browsers. That is because you don’t need it. You simply enter your keywords in the address bar and it defaults to a Google search for your keywords. Very, very slick.

It has been a bloody long wait. I can honestly say, the last time I’ve been this excited about anything was after I installed Leopard. Unfortunately Slow Leopard was a big let down, but since I spend most my day in the browser, Chrome makes it great again! I hope I won’t have to retract most of what I’ve said here. Time will be the true test.