Here's mine, I've been having a fun time trying to figure out half of your bookmark bar, damn man.
Gmail
Google Torrent search
Google Reader
Hotmail (requires me to log in every 30 days to keep forwarding to gmail)
Canucks Forum
UVic website
Popurls
StumbleUpon
Hacker News
Slashdot
H-Online/Security
Intern0t
Stack Overflow
programmers.stackexchange
Cracked
College Humor (never visit, since removed)
xkcd
Cyanide & Happiness
Penny Arcade
Dilbert
SMBC
ZDNet
Ars
Wired
Engadget
TechCrunch
Al Jazeera English
The Onion
CBC
/b/
wikipedia watchlist
Wolfram Alpha
Grooveshark
Pitchfork
SurfTheChannel
Sidereel
Youtube
TPB
Torrent Butler
----------------
I have a bunch of individual pages favorited in a number of areas, but those are the ones I visit frequently.
Edit: It's times like these I wish HN used Markdown, so I could compact this into a table. Sorry for taking up so much room.
2) Title Bar - You can actually drag using any empty space up there, including all that space to the right of the new tab button and around the close/maximize/etc buttons.
3) Massive Preferences List - Sorry, that's a feature. As for being hard to find what you want, without those options, you couldn't find it anyhow... Because it wouldn't be available.
4) Favicons - Humans are visual people... It's much easier to determine location by an icon than text.
5) Search Field - The complaint is that it covers some of the UI and you have to close it to use the page? Sooo... How does a massive search dialog work better? I've actually found very few sites that are rendered useless by that search field, but almost all are rendered useless by the giant box that all other browsers use.
6) Lack of Attention-to-Detail throughout - Still trying to find the 'broken gradient'. Everything looks fine to me.
7) Network tab - I find this tab massively useful. It (wait for it) let's me see what was transferred over the network. Surprise! No guessing if something munged the HTML or if it was transfered that way. No guessing what parameters were posted. Etc, etc.
Some of the criticism make sense, but most of it is just preferences or misunderstandings.
Oh yeah, the thing missing from her list of good points:
1) Stretchable text boxes. I use this all the time now. Especially on HN.
I'm having trouble figuring out what you're talking about here. "All other browsers"? Safari and Firefox did away with the old big and centered find-in-page dialog box; they both use a find bar. I just downloaded Opera and checked it, too. It also uses a bar.
Regarding "rendered useless [in]… all other browsers", neither Opera nor Firefox obscure any part of the page with their find bars. Safari temporarily obscures the part of the page that exists in the space where the find bar appears, but still lets you scroll up to reveal that part if you really need to.
I realize people form an emotional attachment to their software of choice and get defensive, but ease up. This is baseless stuff you're speaking here.
It's definitely there. Open the Web Inspector, pop it out into a new window, focus another window or application.
Edit: Here's a side-by-side screenshot of the unfocused Web Inspector dialogs in Safari and Chrome: http://i.imgur.com/WftBr.png Also, it turns out that you can make it even worse by focusing the Web Inspector window, then moving an icon on your desktop: http://i.imgur.com/WvEIq.png Safari's Web Inspector handles both cases properly.
Also, Safari has resizable text boxes. I agree, they're wonderful.
1. There's no small, unobtrusive way to monitor the progress of downloads.
Actually, in OS X, the Chrome icon in the dock has a small pie chart overlay during downloads that indicates both the number of pending downloads as well as the aggregate progress of all downloads. If your dock is hidden, you can quickly and easily check the progress by hitting Cmd-Tab. In Windows 7, the "tile" in the Windows "Dock" fills from left to right, like a progress bar, to show the aggregate status of downloads. You can also click on the in-progress download, dismiss the dialog, and the file will open once the download completes.
2. The large number of options makes finding what you want hard.
As mentioned, the search feature is handy, but not always sufficient. One nice aspect that gets overlooked is that the in-tab preferences are fully addressable: you can actually link to specific pages and panels. Though this doesn't help you find a preference in the first place, it does make communicating the location of known preferences much simpler.
3. The search field covers the content of the site, if you were searching and a match was under the field, or you wanted to click a link/button under the search field, you’re out of luck.
Actually, the search field will intelligently slide out of the way to reveal matched content that it covers. If you need to click something underneath it, you can hit Escape to dismiss it, and your previously entered text will be saved and pre-filled the next time you hit Cmd-F.
1. You're right, I hadn't actually noticed that until after I wrote the blog post. I think it's because I hide the Dock by default (still doesn't explain why I didn't notice it in the app switcher)
My point was, there are three places to manage downloads. I have to manually close the Downloads bar. Worst of all (and this is something I forgot to point out in the post) is that closing the downloads bar actually makes the browser window smaller!
2. You're right, there are nice parts of having the preferences be in the tab.
3. I didn't mean the search field covers search results, it covers the website's UI. Here's another example of it blocking the UI, this time in github: http://cl.ly/1t450T1S0s2J2V0I3O1W
Also I don't really understand your complaint about the bookmarks bar. Why do you have it up at all if you don't like the UI? If I want to go to a bookmarked page, I hit ctrl-shift-b to bring up the bar or, much more often, I open a new tab. I think the thing that separates Chrome from other browsers is the huge content real estate, and keeping the bookmarks bar up there takes away from this in a big way.
It actually doesn't -- or at least, it doesn't seem to on the Dev Channel or Canary. If there's enough screen real estate, the downloads panel grows out of the bottom of the window, and shrinks away when dismissed. The viewport retains the same dimensions before and after.
If there isn't enough space below the window, the panel does indeed overlay the bottom ~47px of content, but in that case, dismissing it doesn't change the size of the window, restoring the viewport to its previous size.
That's the most frustrating thing about Chrome: it's inconsistently polished, and in many cases, it feels like its relationship to ChromeOS is akin to the tail wagging the dog.
A) The content _is_ the UI element that's being covered and the search box moves out of the way.
B) The content _is not_ the UI element that's being covered and you are looking to find something else on the page.
I don't leave the "Find on Page" box open when I'm normally using a page. So when searching I'm not really interacting with that UI, and when not searching it isn't being obstructed... so does this really constitute a UX issue?
- The downloads bar works in the 90% use case - we just want to download something and open it. When you click a download(s) in the bar, the bar closes after the download is complete.
- The dock icon lets you know how the download is going, when you're in another app / away from the browser.
- The download tab gives you your complete download history, for when you want to look back for old downloads.
Whole pixel anti-aliasing looks bad and is inconsistent: both with other parts of Chrome, and with the rest of the broader operating system.
The font rendering in Chrome must be a Mac compatibility issue because side by side, Chrome renders text much cleaner than FF or IE on Windows. HN on FF looks murky by comparison.
Good point, but the UI's still inconsistent. If you open Options there is a Search options box. The passwords screen is modal, so that search box isn't accessible and you have two methods of search - a search field for Options and Ctrl-F for password. The other issue is that Ctrl-F doesn't consistently scroll to the highlighted item. When doing a Ctrl-F I often have to use the scroll bar to find the highlighted phrase.
Pernicious browser caching. (Just when will you update that edited favicon?)
Continuing assault on the address bar. (First they came for "http", then they came for me.)
Crappy session management, restoration. (Is there a clear leader in the extensions that add better support? I find myself much less able to rank Chrome extensions that Firefox extensions, based on community signals.)
EDIT: To be fair, a relative's 10 year old laptop still runs acceptably (sans video), due in good part to Chrome's dramatic performance improvements.
Could you please explain why this is an issue to you?
If they stuck with "copy what you see", at least for me, it would resolve one of my biggest peeves with Chrome. The other being useless tab text if you have too many tabs open (and I don't really like the side tabs.)
I'd be interested enough to take a look. Thanks!
Same goes for resizing in Awesome WM, which is well... awesome: WM key[2] + right mouse button + mouse move to resize. Written down it looks cumbersome, but it actually works really well.
[1] I think I use the WM key nowadays, it's muscle memory I can't actually remember! :-)
[2] One of the 'Windows' keys.
I bought a Macbook a month ago, and window management being more cumbersome there when compared to properly-configured window managers from the rest of the world of Unix clones is pretty surprising and the third most annoying thing to me about my Macbook experience. (Where the second most annoying thing is the ~half second delay between lifting my finger from the touchpad and the actual release during a drag operation, and the first most is the lack of an equivalent for middle clicks.)
Off the top of my head, try looking at Cinch, SizeUp, MondoMouse, or Divvy (there are definitely more out there that I can’t remember). I’ve set MondoMouse so Fn-Shift drags a window, and Fn-Ctrl resizes a window. It really helps.
Sure, these hacks are shareware and aren’t as elegant or infinitely configurable as tiling WMs for X, but they’re pretty close.
I mean, shit, Safari does, Firefox does, even IE does. As someone who loves photography and graphics, as Chrome usage takes over, the ability for people to view these works drops.
Why this hasn't been implemented (actually it has, it's been there in the dev branch since forever but has never made it into the regular release), is beyond me.
And color profiles aren't some obscure thing that only graphics people care about - there are a lot of photos online right now where people look like zombies (or tomatoes) because the embedded profile isn't being accounted for.
If you Google for it, there are plenty of complaints from non-techy people who are confused why their pictures look fine from Windows Explorer/Preview, but look completely different when uploaded to Facebook.
I rather like the downloads UI - I was just wondering why Safari doesn't have a downloads tab like Chrome does. The separate window is a little clunky for me, esp. since OSX doesn't make it easy to cycle through tabs of a window with a keyboard shortcut (that I know of - Cmd-Tab does applications, Ctrl-tab does Safari tabs. How do you get the Download window with a keyboard shortcut?).
Preferences: what? Too many? I see Chrome as minimalistic in that area. IE, Opera, Firefox and Safari all offer just as many preference options or more.
favicons in the tabs: Is a bunch of text or icons a better solution for tiny tab markers? Icons make much more sense to me there.
The search field is superior to modal windows. I don't think it's better in Chrome than Firefox or Safari, but it's not worse. If you don't like it being over the content, close it.
The new tab page: isn't much different than any other browser, except for Firefox which lacks on entirely.
The tab bar: after complaining about favicons, now text in the tabs is labeled a problem: what's better?
Loading UI: Should we put a 64x64 animated icon in the upper right of the browser that cycles when the page is loading?
"Non-native behavior, Native look" : Why would you expect to drag anywhere other than the toolbar on an OSX window?
The tools UI also does not have issues like broken gradient or draggability
2 minor points:
If you don't like seeing favicons or other UI elements while reading, hit F11 for full screen mode. All browsers have this except Safari.
Put things in the "other" folder by dragging and dropping the favicons from the bookmarks bar. Useful for decluttering the bookmarks bar.
I wrote a detailed comparison of the 5 major browsers, here:
http://www.filterjoe.com/2011/03/15/best-browsers-2011-best-...
My take is that the latest version of all 5 browsers are very good, so it's a matter of finding the most suitable browser for each user. Based on the issues discussed, I suspect Opera might be preferred by the author.
But that's true in any browser, no?
"..and you can’t read the title of the tab you’re on."
This part is true. I love how my firefox looks lately: https://profiles.google.com/u/0/akkartik#1104401391899068610.... I think it's taken all the good stuff of chrome's tab bar without the bad.
Safari will not lower the width of a tab under a preset size, the rest is moved off-bar. You can always see at least half a dozen characters of the title.
> Other Bookmarks - I don't have that on my current Chrome. I think this is because this is a folder that comes with the default install - if you go to the bookmarks manager you should be able to remove it.
> Status Bar - I kinda like it - you don't want the status bar popping up and hiding your cursor. Except in your video it's a lot more erratic than on mine at the moment.
> Favicons/Too many tabs - Favicons help when there are too many tabs. A common problem for me.
> Can you tell at a glance whether this site is loading or not? It's loading - the icon next to the URL is an X and not the reload icon.
There are some things that bug me, like broken pdf support - the built-in pdf viewer doesn't support rotation, for instance.
Weirdly enough, if you use a tiled window manager (http://awesome.naquadah.org/) this is a feature instead of a detriment. On my netbook pixels really are at a premium and chrome is admirable in its space-saving efforts. I wish they would fix the download bar thing, but they're aware of that and I believe it's a priority for some of the next releases.
Isn't it a detriment for tiling WM users, too? Since Chrome tries to eliminate the title bar, it requests for the WM to not put a title bar on it and then tries to fake a smaller, kind-of title bar. So it's still allocating some space--more than any traditional application; since X apps normally leave the title bar drawing up to the WM, traditional apps should have their inner UIs flush with whatever your tiling WM puts around it, while Chrome's still got that sliver.
MRU CTRL-Tab is a well established Windows UI paradigm, don't ask power users to change without offering a way to disable this.
Also, while I really like searching from my location bar, I'm also not a big fan of the way the Google Omnibar Search retrieves history items using parts of the URL you visited. I much prefer the Firefox/Awesomebar method.
That said, I <3 Chrome because Chrome <3's Me
I have to agree about the developer tools though, it's really not as polished as the rest. Probably because only developers use it and they don't mind as much? Or the product manager doesn't use it? I can't say.
You might help yourself out if you increase your browser window's width beyond 500px. Sure, you did that for screenshot examples, but that's far from real-world usage (this is coming from someone who shuffles dozens of tabs around all day).
It doesn't appear to be very complicated. Control-D, or click on the star in your url bar (which means 'bookmark this'). Now change the folder dropdown to 'Other Bookmarks'. That's how you put stuff in the 'Other Bookmarks' folder. I can see how you'd have trouble figuring that one out...
Everything you like about Chrome is in Firefox (ok, you'll have to use Firefox 5 beta for the tab closing behavior) if you install two extensions (for the expose and unified search).
Seems like most of the things you hate about Chrome are at least better in Firefox as well. (Though to be fair, they could be a much different experience on a Mac than I am experiencing on Windows.)
As an aside what I'd really like is sandboxed incognito tabs, so I can run multiple accounts on the same service (hi Google multi-accounts!) in the same window in different tabs without colliding cookies.
However, he's right about the font rendering/antialiasing. It doesn't bug me too much on web pages, but I read a lot of densely-typeset pdfs, and Chrome unusable for anything longer than a few pages.
[1] http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=24349
Note that this happens for ordinary <P> elements, not just for <PRE> elements and other odd things.
That is something that never happened to me in the first 16 years of my use of browsers. It now happens occasionally in Firefox, but it is much worse in Chrome.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/uofn7m4kbppks5v/kirigin%20%3C3%20f...
(and I sound like an ass for saying that but anyway...)
- The favicons over text in the title bar are no different than icons over text in the OSX Dock, yes?
- Also, I LOVE that the options and downloads open in a tab and not a new window. It keeps everything chrome related in a contained environment. I HATE managing windows, managing tabs however is easier and faster for me, you can also just drag out the tab and it'll become a window.
