Now the initial surprise has worn off, it's time to ask the big questions about Google's new browser: is it any good? And how does it compare to its rivals? To find out, we've been running it alongside the two big browsers, IE8 beta 2 and a pre-release version of Firefox 3.1 (the Minefield build) with the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine enabled.
On the face of it, all three browsers are excellent - but there are big differences in the way they do things, and even bigger differences in the strain they can put on your system. We benchmarked all three programs on a 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo machine packing 2GB of RAM and Windows Vista Ultimate - but as that's a fairly speedy machine we also blew the dust off our trusty and desperately underpowered Acer Aspire to see how they coped on that.
Wherever possible we've compared like with like, and for the sake of clarity we'll avoid terms such as "OmniBox" (Chrome) or "Awesome Bar" (Firefox) when we're comparing different browsers' address bars. We believe in calling a spade a spade, not an OmniShovel or MegaSpade.
Usability
WINNER: CHROME
There's been a lot of talk about Chrome's minimalist appearance, but it doesn't make that much difference to the amount of space the browser actually takes up. Disable Firefox's and IE's status bars - Chrome doesn't have one - and Chrome's header is a half-tab shorter than IE and the same size as Firefox. Had Google gone for something other than THE WORLD'S BIGGEST FONT in the address bar, the difference would have been more pronounced.
In fact, Chrome's slight space advantage disappears completely when you maximise it. Its address bar and tabs remain at the top of the screen, whereas in full screen mode IE8 and Firefox get rid of absolutely everything.
One thing Chrome has done is simplified the traditional combination of address bar and search bar. Instead, you use the same box to type URLs and search criteria; if it's the latter, Chrome comes up with some helpful suggestions. IE8 does the same but keeps a separate search box just in case, while Firefox sticks with URLs and previously visited pages in the address bar and search suggestions in the search bar.
That doesn't mean Chrome doesn't have some nifty tricks. Click on the spanner icon and choose History to see a Google-style list of the pages you've visited along with a prominent search box for finding exactly what you want, and when you create a new tab there's an Opera-style collection of nine thumbnails to show you your most commonly visited sites along with your most recently added bookmarks. We particularly liked the ability to delete a particular day's browsing history without getting rid of everything else, and the ability to resize on-screen text input boxes is brilliant.
As with Firefox and IE you can re-arrange open tabs by dragging them around, but Chrome also enables you to drag a tab over the desktop. Firefox does this too, but where Firefox then saves the page as a link Chrome opens it as a new browser window. We prefer Chrome's approach.
It's not all good, though. Bookmark management is non-existent, Chrome doesn't appear to know what an RSS feed is let alone offer any features to deal with one, and where IE and Firefox can zoom in and out of entire web pages Chrome merely makes the text bigger or smaller while leaving images intact.
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Your comments (8) Click to add a new comment
thymecypher
November 15th
8. Sorry to spam too, but I also must add, that the version of Firefox used must not be the latest. The latest Firefox trunk no longer has URL shading, but I do believe it's hidden in about:config.
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thymecypher
November 15th
7. Well along with what Ith said, Firefox does offer a feature straight from Google. It's simular, yet better than I'm Feeling Lucky, but basically type in a brief description of a page in Firefox's address bar, say, The Best Page Ever, and you will get taken to Maddox's homepage: maddox.xmission.com - "The Best Page In The Universe." I've tested it against I'm Feeling Lucky, and some searches take you elsewhere. They've seemed to kick it up for Firefox. However, there's the trick with the search bar in Firefox which typing say, 1+1 gives you 2 in the search bar.
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r4yd3n
September 24th
6. Nice article. I have done some detailed tests on memory consumptions between Google Chrome and Firefox. You can read for more details.http://reviewgooglechrome.com/google-chrome-vs-firefox/google-chrome-vs-firefox-memory-test/84/
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bhadralok
September 14th
5. In using google's chrome i have experiened the following problem: whenever a web page calls up a pdf doc and i download it, chrome makes my PC hang. Doing the same operation with same pages in Firefox, never leads to any such problem.
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dulwithe
September 11th
4. I actually thought some of the points made were interesting, but was hoping for some more insightful information.
But the judgements made were ridiculous:
Performance Winner - Chrome!
But the results you just posted show that Firefox wins in almost every circumstance. It is only slower upon first opening and 1-tab memory usage, but after that, it beats Chrome and IE on everything. Bizarre judgement.
Usability winner - Chrome
Again, a bizarre judgement. Stated is that the screen estate saved is not significant when compared to Firefox, and especially in full screen mode, there is a disadvantage in chrome. Firefox search/URL bar can be merged.
Bizarre!
Fighting Nasties - IE...
What!!! Just put in some things like adblock, no-script, and others in Firefox, and you are laughing at the nasties. I am not sure about Vista, but I have read many times about how IE is integrated into the Windows OS (in fact, you can't uninstall IE without losing OS functionality or causing problems in Windows XP), so I would assume than an update in WinXP to IE8 has the same OS/IE integration. Hence, virus/malware infection of the browser also could turf your OS.
Hence, my judgement of the winner:
Firefox / Linux.
Bye bye Windows!! (I have already said Bye bye to IE 4 years ago, and haven't looked back. Tried opera, nice look, but nothing to cause me to switch from Firefox. Also, I can't access some secure logins - banking, fedex, etc - so it doesn't work for my needs. Chrome, unless it has something earth-shakingly revolutionary, will also not cause me to switch from Firefox.)
Also, Firefox can be set to cache pages for faster back/forward performance. I work with high speed internet and prefer not to cache pages, so your point about this is pretty much moot.
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jbysmith
September 8th
3. Nice writeup, but I have two things I'd like to add about security.
First is IE and malware. It's too easy to get a rogue component installed into IE without even having the browser open. Not an issue if you're security minded and careful about what you do, but on more than one occasion I've had to remove junk like Virtumonde and the like from a client's computer. IE's major Achilles's heel.
The other is "junk javascript". The NoScript extension for FireFox is the king of addons in this department, along with AdBlock. Filters out all sorts of garbage like "mouseover advertising" and the like. In other browsers your only option is pretty much just to turn off Javascript entirely, which isn't much of an option. I would love to use Opera myself, as I found it nice and fast, but until there's a similar option, I'm sticking with Firefox.
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