Experience Planner

When I learned about the release of Google Chrome, I was filled with apprehension and dread, but I was still very interested.  In my former role as a writer, my current role as an experience planner and my long-time role as a curious person, I have an LTR with Google and Google Scholar (for when I’m a nerd). I also have an LTR with Firefox, so I’m not sure if I’m ready to give that up. And getting to know another browser is not exactly at the top of my wish list.

But change is afoot, and I had to get my curiousity satisfied.

(BTW, I’ve got pretty decent connectivity [although, I'm pretty certain that I lose my connection every few minutes]. I’m testing on my workhorse, a T61 ThinkPad provided by agency X. I especially like her because when I see the “T61,” it reminds me of the Terminator–the original–who was a T-101.)

Downloading Chrome

Superfast. Supereasy. The download screen was classic Google… clean and to the point. Good balance of imagery, text, and white space. As my boss likes to say: Just enough, just in time. I opted to not help make Chrome better (you can opt-in to auto send usage stats and crash reports), but I did appreciate the opt-in/out aspect. And it installs nice and fast.

Chrome required that I close out Firefox (domination begins with the first click) so it could import my bookmarks, settings, and logins/passwords from Firefox. Awesome. (Seriously, this would have been a significant barrier to adoption. I cannot remember every login and p/w combo.)

I’m not a person who does points, but if I were: Chrome, 5; Firefox, 0.

Upon First Opening Chrome

Chrome’s first action was to show me (via a small bit of text in a little box) that the address bar is also the search field. The helpful hints continued by explaining that the empty boxes on the screen would be filled with most visited websites.

I’ve seen users access sites in many different ways, and using the address bar to perform search was one of the most used paths. For less savvy users, these little nuggets of info can be very helpful to them and can also grow adoption.

I’m not crazy about the start page. At. all.

I love my feeds. I couldn’t see how to sign into iGoogle from the start page. But, it wasn’t too painful to bring up Google, sign into iG, and then find out how to set my page as the start/home. Of course, to set iG as my start page, it took a minute or two to figure out what I needed was the wrench (icon, not the tool).

Chrome, 2; Firefox, 0.

Plays Well with Others

I’ve heard that some people are having problems with Flash (clunky) or CSS (obeying alt CSS). I’ve gone to a few sites now, and it does seem like Flash is slow. Overall, Chrome is speedy, so the slower Flash load was surprising.

I’ve not had any CSS issues though. I’ll continue testing this. 

Chrome, 0; Firefox, 5. 

Initial Takeaways

Chrome is:

• Fast
• Simple
• Blue
• Cheeky (language-wise)
• Recommended