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Google Chrome Beta: first impressions

Tags: Google Chrome browser Windows

Imagine downloading a brand new browser, checking it on your web site and getting an error message, the "blue tab of death".
How sad!
Well, it just happens if you click on the Page Setup link on the right top of this page and try to change the look of this web site. You'll probably (not always) get this blue tab (not in Italian):

Google Chrome blue tab of death

Google Chrome blue tab of death (click to enlarge)

The error is caused by a simple Javascript code that tries to change the current CSS style sheet, it's pure W3C DOM compatible and it works perfectly on Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer and Konqueor.
In Chrome, the error occurs only on the first try, after reloading the tab, the issue disappears.

Google promised total tab independece, through the sandbox tecnique.
So why if the user is listening to the online radio player, the blue tab also appears in the pop-up window? The issue should not propagate.

Fast rendering

The rendering engine is indeed very fast.
But rendering speed does not necessarily mean load speed, especially if the page contains a lot of images, Flash or Silverlight objects.
Also, Chrome threads demand a lot of CPU time, therefore the browser surely is fast, but it cannot be defined a "light browser".

Full-screen mode?

Chrome is a minimalistic browser, it is focused on web browsing, it has no extra features and add-ons. It has few menus and few configuration options.
The developers thought there was no use in the full-screen mode browsing, but I just cannot imagine why.

Google integration?

Although it's made by Google, Chrome doesn't seem to be designed with Google in mind.
It comes with a preset list of competitor search engines, that can be used instead of Google.
There are no buttons, menus or shortcuts that take the user to Google services, like GMail or Google Maps.

What really surprised me was the total lack of typical Google Search features, that can be found in the Google Toolbar, for instance Google SiteSearch or PageRank.
Google is a search engine, but it develops a web browser that comes with just basic search features (web search and chronology search).
Also, there is no Google Toolbar available for Chrome.

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