So I reported a while back about the availability of Chrome (beta) for Mac.

I have been using it for a while and prefer it to the other two browsers I commonly use.

I am very used to Firefox. In fact, I'd love for firefox to be my staple browser but prolonged use of firefox has revealed some of its shortcomings. While it is still a very useable browser, I had to switch flash/html5 heavy websites like Gmail to another browser.

Firefox very quickly become a CPU and memory hog. There seem to be a memory leak that has prevailed across versions. Starting a different browser like Safari use up less memory. Plus, Firefox seems to use quite a lot more CPU than Safari in most pages. While Safari stays at a tame 10% CPU, firefox will use up about 20% CPU for a longer period.

So why not stay with Safari?

After switching to Macs, I tried to like Safari. In fact, I forced myself to live with Safari for about 2 weeks. I did not like how Safari handles its tabs. I like Command-1 to switch to the first tab. I also did not like how Safari always pops up a new window for fresh links. Tab browsing felt so detached from Safari its not exactly useable. I could (and did) force Safari to open all new windows as a tab but that is hardly useable. I did like most parts of Safari but the disagreement with how tabs are handled just broke the deal.

Until Chrome, I spend roughly 60% of my browsing time in Firefox and the rest in Safari. Chromium was totally unuseable since it crashes habitually. When Chrome was released, I was hesitant to try it but decided to anyway. Now, Chrome is my staple browser where I spend 90% of my browsing time. It seems to combine the best of both Firefox and Safari.

  • Tab browsing in Chrome is just as intuitive as with Firefox. That's a big big bonus for me as I hate having windows all around;
  • Chrome is pretty snappy and seems to be okay with the idea of prolonged use. I have at occasions left my Chrome instance running for over a few weeks without it showing the same degradation in performance as Firefox. My firefox sessions usually lasts a week with the same use. With Gmail and my other eternal stuff loaded like I did with Chrome now, I need to restart firefox every 2-3 days max;
  • Maximising the window in Chrome behaves very much like Safari (or other Apple Apps for the matter). They do not fill up the full screen but just take up enough screen real estate to display the page in full;
  • Find feature works exactly like Firefox but I like the presentation on Chrome more;
  • Typing in the URL bar autocompletes both URL, name of site (Safari does not do this), or probes google for URL suggestions (unique to Chrome). This speeds up the URL typing a lot;
  • Unified Search and URL bar for Chrome is massively useful. I still do Shift-Command-F at times but am getting very used to Command-L for everything;
  • Chrome imposes the least overhead among the 3 in terms of screen real estate for its query bar. See closing picture.


It's not all a bed of roses with Chrome. There are a few sites that does not work so well with Chrome and version 4.X simply does not handle SSL that well. Version 5.0.307.7 is a huge improvement in that department without introducing any lag.