Speaking Out Against Google Chrome
Echoing other bloggers’ opinions about the shiny, striped-down interface that is Google Chrome, I reiterate: a mess is a mess. The UI is nonexistent — my kid brother could draw you a box and navigate you around the web.
In fact, let’s do a little demo: take a piece of paper, cut it so that it’s one inch smaller than your screen, and try to navigate around your desktop. Oh, did you just find that you entire file menu structure just disappeared? Too bad. That’s what happens when you use Google Chrome!
It’s been hyped as super fast and super slick, but frankly, any car would be super fast too if you stripped out the airbags, ventilation system, seats, padding, and left the bare minimum of the frame. What you’ll get is a metaphor that parallels Chrome every time I load: a spectacular CRASH.
And does this thing crash. I have to reload when I visit every other webpage, and a good fourth of the websites I visit refuse to ever load, no matter how many times I hit reload, which incidentally, is a button that has taken the place of the stop button in every other browser interface. This means that every time I try to stop a page from loading, I really just compound the problem by reloading two or three times before I realize that Google has no sense of direction and that the stop button is all the way on the other side of the URL dialog. Incidentally, that stop button is also the exact same button for going to or loading a page. Not confusing at all!
So PLEASE don’t be fooled by the cute, commissioned Scott McCloud comic — Google Chrome is a total mess! I recommend staying off the accursed thing until Google reintroduces “interface design” and “add-ons” into its vocabulary; though even then I don’t think you’ll be able to get me to touch the thing with a ten foot pole. As for myself, I’m going back to my beloved Firefox, the genuinely slick little browser that doesn’t make much fuss and actually delivers.