OK, I'm impress. Google Chrome is fast. Now, let's see.....
I use IE because, well, I just do. Ever since IE 2.0. And IE 8 is actually a good web browser. I can't point to any outstanding feature but what it does, it does well. One thing I do want is a download manager. In terms of page viewing, I haven't found one that doesn't work.
I use Firefox, for a few reason; it's the default in Ubuntu, has portable version and very very customizable. But the latter seems to also be its undoing. I've found out that the more extension you install, the bloater, slower and unreliable Firefox gets. The other major annoyance with Firefox is the need to restart after every single update, be it the browser or the extensions. In its default form, Firefox works fine. In terms of page viewing, I don't find any difference with IE. I also love the so-called Awesome bar, ie, the address bar. It makes sense to have my mostly visited address pinned and sorted according to visit frequency.
For the record, I did have Opera on my system, and I have install/uninstall it a few times. It's an OK browser. One thing that bugs me about Opera (and we're talking about version 9 something here), it has this quirk in rendering images, where, if the image is not fully loaded, it will redraw (and you can see it) every time you scroll or switch tabs. Page view is fine. No extension as far as I'm aware. I can't put my finger on it, but there's something wrong with Opera. I just don't know what.
And now, I have Chrome. The sparse bare minimum user interface is so Google. I love the single address-cum-search input bar. It's very easy and intuitive. Actually both IE and Firefox can search from the address bar, but they provide a dedicated search input bar by default, which gives an impression that address and search don't mix. But with the current version (2.0.172.39), Chrome's address bar is missing something major to me; it doesn't have a drop down button! I don't get it. But I do like the tab handling. Dragging a tab out to open a new window is quite useful. I do wish they have IE’s colored tabs feature to show related tabs.
So now I ponder, do I really need another browser? Should I squeeze Chrome into my life? Maybe drop Firefox?
I do use a some Google services like Gmail, Docs and Blogger. Maybe these services work better in Chrome. I don't know, but that seems to be what I'm planning to do; use Google stuff on Chrome and see if there's anything extra I get from it. I'll report back after a few weeks.
