After a decent amount of time spent using the newly released Google Chrome web browser, I have come to a conclusion. I do indeed really like it, it is a hell of a lot dater than any of the other browsers I have used, however, that could be because my Firefox is bogged down with a lot of add-ons, Opera is a bit bulky anyway, and as everyone knows, Internet explorer is horrible.

There are a few things stopping me from making the switch completely, one of which, is because StumbleUpon have not yet released a version for Google chrome.

I use StumbleUpon extensively when I am at home. I find a lot of new and interesting things because of it, and after using Chrome for a while I felt the urge to stumble and couldn’t. Of course if StumbleUpon release a version for Chrome, I’m pretty sure that I would switch to using it full time when at home.

Work is different, as a web designer, I have to test every site and make sure it works in Firefox 2, Firefox 3, Internet explorer 6 (it’s disgusting how many people still haven’t upgraded from that shameful browser) and Internet explorer 7. I don’t test for 8 yet, as that is still in beta.

The problem is, for some reason, Chrome doesn’t want to load files from our internal server. I’m not sure why that is, but it just doesn’t. I can’t say I’d need to test for Chrome at the moment anyway. Chrome will most likely render pages the same way Firefox 3 does, and besides that, most of the end users of our sites won’t be the kind of people who would use, or even know about Chrome.

One of the features I find both useful and kind of odd, is the “most visited” home page. I like having my bookmarks laid out there for me, and it really does a good job of keeping my most visited pages there for easy access, but really, they are just the same pages that I have on my quick bookmarks tool bar, and since I am using the iGoogle homepage to have my feeds displayed, it doesn’t really seem all that important to me.

Another thing I noticed, is that pages seem to scroll a LOT smoother, which is nice, but takes a little getting used to.

Personally, I do think that Google Chrome is a truly fantastic web browser, and I would love to see it grow and have all of the features that user’s want, but still retain it’s speed and simplicity. But as for if it becomes a widely used browser, only time will tell. According to Net Applications, it’s not doing so well.

One final thing. What is the icon all about? I just don’t get it…