| This morning i downloaded the Google Chrome browser and gave it a try to see if i could form myself an opinion about the browser. The time i spend on trying was intentionally not long because i want it to be a first impression in discovering the features and problems i encounter as a user. Today i am looking at the installation process, the general browsing experience, the view page source option, the DOM inspector and the JavaScript console. Later on i will write about the JavaScript debugger and the Task Manager. After the download which was very fast i installed the application. A first few things i noticed is that the download is so small because the rest of the data is downloaded by the installer.   This is something i always see in two different ways, one is that the download from the website is small which is nice, the downside is that if you want to install the browser in a company which has a quite number of computers it means that every computer will download it's own copy. After the installation it asks me if i want to start Chrome directly, with this it will by default import the bookmarks and settings and password from Firefox. The first time i installed it i did not notice that there is a link in the dialog that allowed me to change this setting so it will import the settings from Internet Explorer.  As you may notice, the dialogs are not in English by in Dutch, this is because my Windows XP is set to Dutch (although the Windows XP is an English version). This is something i don't like, i use English on my computer for software but Google doesn't allow me to choose the language that i want. So now when i continue and press ok i get the actual browser in front of me.  And again, i get the Dutch starting page and the whole browser is in Dutch, so the first thing i try to do is to see if i can make a change in the settings to see if i can choose a different language. In the options i can find a button with the font types and languages, i change the language of Chrome to English and it asks me to restart, so after the complete installation it is finally possible to choose a different language, why this can't be done during the installation process i don't know, but it is something that i think of should be improved. So now lets take a look at the design of the browser, some things i notice:
The first thing i try to do is look at a new browser from a developer perspective, how can the browser support me with my development activities.  The view page source is better then the one in Firefox and Internet Explorer, here the links to style sheets, JavaScript and images are clickabe so you can directly see what is behind the link. There is syntax highlighting which is an improvement compared to Internet Explorer but Firefox also had this. There are line numbers!, this is something that Firefox lacks, Firefox does mention on which line you are but doesn't show the line numbers on the side of the screen. Another tool for developers is the DOM inspector, in a page right click on a piece of text or button and select Inspect Element, which will display the DOM inspector highlighting the part which you right clicked before.  I have to say that the DOM inspector looks very fancy, it displays the styles of the selected element (including inherited styles) and it displays the metrics of the element. One things you have to look out for is that you keep the page open in the browser, if you close it then the DOM inspector shows some strange behavior with moving code and not updating the information in the right palette. There is a nice breadcrumb in the bottom of the screen which allows you to jump higher in the node tree. There is also a console option in this screen (the 2nd most right lower button), it allows you to type in JavaScript and execute it. It supports code completion but you need to use the right arrow key to let Chrome fill in the rest of the syntax, this feels strange to me because most IDE environments support the use of the enter key. This part is also the JavaScript console menu item that is in the Developer menu.  The most right lower button is the Dock to main window option, when i press it nothing happens, maybe i don't understand this feature but i would guess that it should attach the DOM inspector in the Chrome browser. In the DOM inspector there is also a Resources 'tab' which displays the time it took to load the various files for the page, sadly this only works when you have the DOM inspector open, if you use have the page already open it will not perform the statistics so then you see nothing.  But i have to say that i really like this feature. Also something nice is the problems view, when there are problems in the page like missing end tags or not matching tags it will tell you about it. In the bottom bar on the right side a red icon will appear with the number of problems it has discovered, double clicking on this will display the list of problems. When you now click on a row it will show you in the page source where the problem is.  The only downside to this feature is that it can only display the problem in the page source and not in the DOM tree, so you need to locate the problem in the DOM tree by yourself (it is also not possible to use the Inspect Element function to see where the problem is). But it is very possitive that this feature is present. Also nice is the search box in the DOM inspector, when you search it will display all DOM elements that contain this piece of text in the list, in this way you can directly select the element to where you want to go instead of constantly pressing Next or F3 or whatever key.  So this concludes part one, hope to see you back for part two soon. |
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My first impression of Google Chrome Part Iposted Sep 2, 2008 10:00 PM by Ronald Mathies [ updated Sep 5, 2008 4:15 AM ] |