Google Chrome Beta. Initial tests not good for UMPC users.

Posted on 02 September 2008, Last updated on 02 September 2008 by

What’s the most important browser feature for ultra mobile PC and Tablet users? Touch screen scrolling. Grab and Drag is the name of the game and if I can’t have that feature on my browser, I’m losing a ton of capability.

chrome

That’s why I’m disappointed with Google Chrome, the new browser from Google. It works well on the desktop with fast speeds and a great ‘most visited’ overview page but on a ultra mobile PC its nowhere near as useful as Firefox 3.

I’ll be testing it further over the next day or so but I’m finding it difficult to tear myself away from Firefox 3.

Other notes:

  • No full-screen.
  • No grab and drag.
  • Text zoom only
  • Fast
  • Per tab processes should help with page error lock-ups.
  • Overview feature very nice.
  • Have spotted an Ajax error with the product database here
  • Javascript handling seems to be fast
  • Incognito mode will be good for certain people!!

Anybody else done tests yet?

19 Comments For This Post

  1. lls2 says:

    full screen and grab and drag are really missing out… looks like a nice enough and fast browser but definitely in need of those plugins…

    it also seems to use more memory than firefox (at least firefox 2.0.0.16)chrome takes a rough 30 MB more space on my ram than firefox (and I have a few plugins in firefox running right now)

    will try it tomorrow on my umpc but I guess it won’t be used much before plugins are implemented.

    the fact that tabs are handled as separate processes is very nice btw :)

  2. anonymous says:

    Anybody check out the “stats for nerds”?

  3. fixup says:

    All the ads, Flash, scripts… are back, uninstalled it immediately. Loved the neat interface though.

  4. chippy says:

    ;-)

  5. dreador says:

    Poor on my Q1Ultra for Flash stuff, which seems best in Explorer 8 beta 2 compared to all others.

  6. zak says:

    i like it but it doesn’t seem to be very customisable , and no grab n drag means it wont be used no matter how good the rest of its features are.

  7. Elddric says:

    I’m using this on my EEEpc 8g right now and it seems to run fine for me. It does full screen for me at 800 x 480, unless your expecting it to resize all pages to fit the screen. It seems to render most pages I visit with no problem. Its still a beta so its due to have some issues but so far so good.

  8. Jens says:

    Hi!

    Things I dislike on top what you guys have already mentioned:

    1) Lack of a decent Bookmark Manager (maybe I’m blind)
    2) Using text search, I miss highlight all
    3) My Chrome just won’t remember any form data and passwords
    4) It scrolls way too fast. Seems to have its own scroll speed settings. FF3 behaves like any other windows window but Chrome just almost scrolls down to the page bottom if I move my finger a tiny bit on my touchpad.
    5) FF3’s address bar is more user friendly and has a better presentation of the results. In FF3 I like that I just can type a few letters no matter if they are at the beginning or in the middle of the title/url.

    Cheers

  9. blackberry says:

    like google ,Hope that the development of chrome can get better and better, than ie

  10. NobbyNobbs says:

    I really like it – but will probably only use it if I open sites that make heavy use of flash and java script. On these pages chrome seems much faster.
    Otherwise I`ll stick with firefox 3 and opera.

  11. SirAuron says:

    The interface is indeed very nice. Also the history and the seperate processes for each tab.

    I would love to use it, but that’s only possible if it gets support for firefox extensions. Then it would be perfect!

  12. George says:

    As a web developer I was concerned that another browser (with potentially yet another ‘unique interpretation’ of web standards) would cause more headaches for us, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised by its performance and compliance.

    Chrome is certainly one of the fastest and lightest browsers I’ve ever used.

    I was disappointed with FF3 and FF2 was becoming infuriatingly slow and unstable, so Chrome offers a nice alternative that should find it’s way onto the computers (and Mids) of a large number of users.

    Given Google’s clout, I would expect this to become a pre-installed application on computers from a number of manufacturers.

    I’ve yet to test it on my Everun but I’m likely to adopt it as my primary browser.

    A mac version would be welcome – I understand this is still in development.

  13. chippy says:

    Would be interesting to see how much it speeds up things like GOogle Reader and Gmail (ajax version)

    Steve

  14. Zapgun says:

    Is there any way to use ad blocking plugins yet? I won’t even look at it till I can disable them :)

  15. Fixup says:

    Google will improve it for sure, but will never add features to block flash, ads and scripts, because that’s against its business and the main reason for this chrome. So I’ll never try it again.

    Not only annoying are these flash, ads and scripts, they also use too much CPU and memory making my computer slow and HOT and running out the battery FAST. With Firefox, I can block them all, peace of mind.

  16. Dunstan says:

    It’s quite buggy on some forums. It also has some great features… All in all, I’m not sure whether I like it or not… This is a beta, let’s see where it goes. (I’m posting this on Chrome)

  17. jpmatrix says:

    yes it missed some features like a google bookmarks integrated menu
    yes it is google

    but

    i like the clean interface, the speeeeed, and turn-web-into-menu feature :)

    we needed a fast and low ram footprint browser for our umpc and google made it :) now we have to wait for the final release and see the features

  18. Mike Cane says:

    I’ve had to downgrade to Fox 2 after trying Fox 3 because 3 was just too damned slow. Fox 2 is slow too. Which is why if I could get all my Fox plug-ins for Chrome, I’d dump Fox *right now* and never look back. Chrome was *so freakin fast*, it was like I had a new PC!

  19. George Toms says:

    Google Chrome is really fast!
    Now I can sort 200,000 records inside of Browser (Chrome) just in 1 sec. (Faster than Microsoft Excel):
    http://www.ardentedge.com/ex_if.htm

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