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jasoncala... jasoncala...
 
M$7 August 14, 2009 05:54 PM

Google Chrome for Mac Reviews

What do you guys think of Google Chrome for Mac?
How does Google Chrome for Mac and Windows work with Mahalo.com?

download here for Mac:
http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/chromium-rel-mac/23439/

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maxb maxb
 
 August 17, 2009 07:20 PM
I'm running version 3.0.198.1 (Official Build 23116) of Google Chrome on Mac OS 10.5.7. Compared to all other major browsers available on Mac OS, Google Chrome is definitely the fastest one. Starting the browser is almost instant, and surfing the web is noticably faster too. This is especially true for sites with a lot of JavaScript.

The User interface takes a little time to get used to. Tabs are part of the title bar, like in early versions of the Safari 4 Beta. You can drag tabs out of a window to create a standalone window for this tab or move a tab into any other Google Chrome window. Because the tabs are part of the title bar, I sometimes accidently drag a tab out of it's window which is a little bit annoying.

A nice feature of Google Chrome is it's automatic update. Google Chrome has never asked me to restart it, and yet it's always up to date. Having the latest version of a browser is quite important and if updates are deployed without distracting the user, that's definitely a good feature.

Google Chrome handles every tab in a different process. If a page causes the browser to crash, only the tab showing it will go down. All other tabs will stay alive.

The good thing: This feature really works.
The bad thing: You really need this feature. The current build of Google Chrome crashes. A lot.

Google Chrome for Mac used to be really stable. But the latest update brought support for Flash. On the one hand, that's a good thing, because without flash you won't be able to watch videos on Youtube. Unfortunately this build is very unstable, crashing every couple of minutes of normal usage. For example, switching to HD videos on Youtube always brings down the flash plugin. The tab itself will still work, but what's a Youtube page without it's video?

Another thing I miss in Google Chrome are extensions. Firefox extensions are the reason why I won't switch to Google Chrome as my everyday-browser yet. I really hope that Google Chrome will get support for extensions in the future.

So, is Google Chrome for Mac worth checking out? Definitely. Will it become your default browser? Not yet.

Pros:
  • Fast. Really fast.
  • One process per tab
  • Automatic updates without restarts
Cons:
  • No extensions
  • Location bar not as awesome as Firefox "Awesome Bar"
  • Unstable



Tags: chrome, mac, browser

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kerryk kerryk
 
August 19, 2009 08:13 PM
I like your response, you explain everything well and give pros and cons. Godo job!

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echuu echuu
 
August 14, 2009 06:06 PM
I've only tried one of the earlier releases and to be honest it lacked in features and the speed was equivalent to safari.
Source(s):
Experience


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newtonappl... newtonappl...
 
August 14, 2009 06:20 PM
I'm using Chromium on Mac right now. It's a bit buggy. It just got (spotty) Flash support a couple days ago (Aug. 12, 2009). Overall, it's way faster than FF3.5. It's feels snappier than Safari. I'm a web developer. I did noticed it had some issues when dealing with Ajax calls from jQuery (not a problem on all other WebKit based browsers).

I've also been using another browser called Stainless (also WebKit based, also in Beta): http://www.stainlessapp.com/ It has better Flash support. It's just as fast as Chromium if not faster. You should give it a try.

If you can handle a bit of command line, I wrote a script that will automatically pull down the latest version of Chromium for you: http://gist.github.com/167668

Tags: chrome, stainless, mac, chromium, browser

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mysterygir... mysterygir...
 
August 18, 2009 11:51 PM
Wow, great detailed answer!

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millerj millerj
 
August 14, 2009 06:27 PM
Google Chrome for Mac is FAST, sleek, sexy looking, and it does everything that I need to have done and it does it well. It doesn't appear to have the extensibility of Firefox (e.g., Greasemonkey-ish), but it handles everything web that I throw at it. And did I saw it was FAST?
Source(s):
personal experience


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kemmott kemmott
 
August 14, 2009 06:31 PM
When Chrome came out on the PC, it was a revelation for browsing for me. The speed was absurd both in comparison to other browsers and judged by itself. The user interface brought some fresh ideas (I still think it is the best implementation of tabbed browsing available), and a nice transformation of Google's aesthetics to a Windows application. One drop down selection away from creating standalone browser apps (think a dedicated GMail application, or an app dedicated to your banking site, etc.), seamlessly implemented right into the default setup. Oh, and it almost never crashed. If it did, it was compartmentalized - one tab might go down, but everything else continued unabated.

Chrome on the Mac continues to astound me. Incredibly fast to launch, snappy response loading and rendering pages. It doesn't feel quite as polished as the Windows version does, but it could certainly serve as any person's main browser as is. Whether it succeeds in the long run or not, however, may be up in the air. On one hand, Mac users are familiar with not using Internet Explorer. On the other, they also have a standard browser (Safari) that works, and is quite fast as well, being based on the same underlying page rendering engine.

One of the best things Chrome can offer for Mac users, however, is viable competition. This is because, even though they do share the underlying Webkit code for page rendering, how they work as an application and how they interpret JavaScript code differ. The latter amounts to a speed war (always good for end users), whereas the former leaves room for both applications to flourish. Safari fits very much into the Mac "way of doing things", and is obviously Apple's own. Chrome, in both its software architecture and it's user interface, brings fresh ideas to the table.

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bdegrande bdegrande
 
August 14, 2009 07:12 PM
It is definitely a very fast browser, but speed isn't my highest priority in a browser, stability and features are. I will continue to use Chromium, I use several different browsers on each platform. It is far from a fully developed program on the Mac yet, so I won't make a final decision for quite a while yet,

However, speed enough won;t be enough to get ma away from my preferred browser, Firefox. It has many add-ons that I use on a daily basis (I use Speed Dial with multiple tabs as my home page, for example) and it runs and runs well on Mac, Windows, and Linux, so I don't have to make adjustments when switching platforms. I do like Chrome on Windows, but not enough to displace Firefox as my main browser.

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ibook ibook
 
August 15, 2009 04:48 AM
Yes it is fast. And it has some great tab management features that put it ahead of Safari in some ways. But it is still way to buggy for me to use as a default browser.
It crashes when used too heavily despite Google's claims of the sand boxing for each individual tab. For me it will mess with the window manager so that all of the sudden the Chrome window I am on will suddenly be de-selected without me switching to another window. It will also de-select other windows in other applications when Chrome reloads a tab, which makes it impossible to use when you have something that refreshes often (like a financial website) in Chrome in the background.
I haven't even gone into the rendering instability especially when a website uses any tiny piece of flash. I have gotten the "Aw, Snap" page way too many times to consider it useful as a web browser. Try going to gigabyte.com.tw/
I definitely like Chrome, it is in beta and therefore I won't fault it for these problems but on Mac it is really half-baked. I will use it to look something up quickly, but for browsing I will stay with Safari. Firefox is too heavy for just casual browsing because I have four windows with an average of fifteen tabs a piece open whenever I click that pretty logo.

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colonial b... colonial b...
 
August 16, 2009 04:10 AM
That link didn't work for me. Maybe because I'm on a powerpc and not an intel.

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stanar stanar
 
August 20, 2009 03:48 PM
I dont think hw matters, but the OS for a browser app.

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