Scott Berkun

Google’s web browser (Chrome): early review

I’ve written often about web browser design, so I happily downloaded Chrome, Google’s new web browser (download), a few hours ago. Although I’ve been running it through its paces, this is an early review, as its over days and weeks of use that some features shine, or disappoint. Disclosure: I worked on IE 1 to 5 for Microsoft in the 1990s, and currently use Firefox 3.0.1.

Summary: Chrome is a low-frills, light-weight, stable (for me) beta quality release. High points are the simple design, easy import of FF/IE bookmarks, and (promise of) greater performance. Low points are beta level completeness in UI, and few of the familiar frills from IE or Firefox. There are big bets in here that challenge existing browsers, but will take several versions to fulfill.

UI: The most notable move is starting with a thumbnail view of most recently visited pages. I’ve advocated for this in the past: anything a browser does to use past user behavior to accelerate future behavior is a win. Showing the choice of the ten most frequent places I go as the first place is downright basic UI design goodness. Otherwise there isn’t much UI to speak of. The the actual browser chrome is thin, making the name ironic. No menus. No home button (option to turn it back on). Dropdowns to the right of the address bar provide access to tools and options, much like IE7/Vista. Bookmarks, in a generic scrolling list, are accessed via “other bookmarks” in the lower right corner.

One clever perk is an improved find. Hitting Cntr-F extends the top right of the toolbar into an edit box, with a up/down arrow combo for moving through hits on the page.

Features: The big news is Incognito mode. You can open a window with maximum privacy: no cookies, no history, no nothing. Gripe is this can’t be a tab: it forces a new window. I was intrigued by this until I realized realized previous cookies still worked. So its not an entirely anonymous browser mode – it’s anonymous from the moment you create the window forward (either that, or I experienced a bug). History search is provided through the Most frequently used home page – it’s simple and worked well, and runs full screen (unlike FF or IE).

Another big move is task monitoring by tab. You can look at each tab as a separate process and kill individual tabs. Right click on the title bar, hit task manager, and there you go. In a couple of hours I didn’t get a chance to use this, but if it works as promised whole-browser shutdowns should be uncommon.

Performance: There doesn’t seem to be an easy way to test javascript perf – no stanard test suite i could find. Across the board of 3 different (kane, WD, SunSpider) test suites i ran, Chrome won. Margins ran between 20% to 100% improvement over FF or IE7. For subjective measures I spent a good half hour on Jay Is Games, as flash games tend to push browser & system perf to its limits, but didn’t notice significant differences. This is an ad-hoc perf analysis, and focused purely on Chrome’s strength (javascript), but it was nearly all in Chrome’s favor.

Platform . Much of the promise described in the Book about Google Chrome (Charmingly cartooned by Scott McCloud, but a 2 page doc would have been an easier read) is about the platform. Improved security, enhanced performance, and an architecture that makes plugins and extensions easier. It’s hard to test or evaluate these things in an afternoon. I definitely liked their story for what they’re doing and why, but platform plays require getting FireFox and IE developers to take advantage: a long and slow process, no matter how amazing the new kid on the block is.

Bugs/Gripes:

• Tools.Options. There should never be consumer facing UI with labels “Minor tweaks” and “under the hood”. Anything in Tools.Options is under the hood. Call the different groups something that helps me pick which grouping I need: Browser Preferences, Network Settings is easy split. This UI is a conceptual mess, which is fine for a beta and common for the UI ghetto that is often Tools.Options, but a proper UI designer should get in here and sanitize.
• Wrong Shortcuts. Rule #1 of being the new browser: make it easy for people from old browsers to switch. At best even early adopters will be switching back and forth between Chrome and something else for months. Most of the IE7/Firefox shortcut keys do not work in Chrome. Easy to fix, and hope to see this in the final release. It’s easy code. Why not have a FF or IE user mode that swaps in the right shortcuts (Firefox is guilty of this too)?

Chrome info and download

Browser review: Opera 9.02

Rounding out this week of browser reviews: to be honest I can’t recall the last time I took a serious look at Opera – regardless of when it was, 9.02 is a much improved and simplified experience. The toolbars look sharp, the clutter and over-featured UI of previous releases is gone, and I felt invited to spend some serious time putting Opera through its paces.

The good:

• Opera has the correct UI hierarchy for tabs – they appear above the address bar, as conceptually the tab is the highest order UI element in any browser (I complained about this in my first review of Firefox). To take this all the way, tabs should be above the menus too, but there are some problems with following the model this far.
• The notes & links sidebars rock. I’m a sucker for good sidebars as I designed them for IE4 & IE5 when they were new (and I was young). Everybody else has stood pat, but the notes field says “hey, I know you need scrap paper” and the links field says “Dude, relax. Here’s an easier way to use this page as a launching pad to other sites”.
• Tight, lightweight, clean visuals. I never thought I’d see the day, but Opera has a cleaner visual design than IE. It’s not even close. They handle the new tab usability issue gracefully (no birth defect button).
• Lots of unique clever goodness. The ability to start where you left off, save sessions (your suite of tabs), undo close page (Holy shit!), hotclicking and more. These are mostly done well and at worst give you the vibe of thoughtfulness: these Opera guys have clearly thought about what’s annoying in the browsing experience and tried to fix it.

The bad:

• Shortcut keys - if you’re a market trailer, you must support the shortcut keys for the market leaders. No questions. It’s easy to implement, at least as an optional mode. Most frustrating: Cntr-H, which is history in IE and FF, closes Opera! Pressing Alt-D (Address-bar), my most used shortcut, resulted only in misery.
• Active tab confusion: its hard to tell which tab is active. There’s not enough de-emphasis of non-active tabs, and the active tab needs stronger outline in connection to the browser frame (FF does this well).
• Help! I couldn’t figure out some of their unique features, so plunged into help for an overview. Searches for “wand” & “transfers”, two labels for features in their UI, turned up nothing. I don’t expect much from help, but with the web and wikis, I expect basic coverage of anything in the UI. (Transfers = Download manager as I eventually figured out on my own). There was a welcome to Opera first run page, but I couldn’t figure out how to get back to it (Why isn’t it listed in the help menu?)
• Vestigial weird UI. My old complaint about Opera was that it tried too hard: too many features designed in well intentioned, but awkward, goofy ways. 9.02 is much improved in this respect, but there are still some weird spots. The find on page UI is all too happy to highlight every instance of the first letter you type (shocking), and then switches to selecting the first, and highlighting the rest (I couldn’t figure out why: first instance is enough 95% of the time). There are some other oddities like this (print preview is a mode, not a separate view, the scrollbar has a bright yellow mouseover effect), but fewer than previous Opera experiences.

In summary, Opera is sweet! (Download here) I preferred it over IE7 for its personality and moxie alone, but until they soften a few more rough edges, I’m staying with FF.