I’ve been using Google Chrome for a while since my earlier post Google Chrome, first impressions are looking good so thought I would post a quick update as there has been an application update - I am currently running 0.2.149.30.

I remain impressed by the minimalism of the interface, it offers much more screen real estate by default, though it took a while figuring out how to edit the bookmarks bar - it sounds obvious now - simply right click on a bookmark in the bookmark bar! For a while I had some imported bookmark folders that I couldn’t figure out how to remove either - simply find them in the Other bookmarks folder, right click and delete.

The thing I am noticing most is that the screen renders slightly differently than IE7 (it is somewhat less forgiving with its CSS rendering than IE7 probably because it is sticking more tightly to the rules which isn’t necessarily a bad thing in itself) and even though it seems to be doing things quicker overall, the screen rendering gives an impression that it is slower than it is as it slowly builds up a page (some elements seem to get a higher draw priority than others - most noticeable when scrolling through a page) - it also seems to wait on other sites longer than IE7.

The history page is useful showing a clear simple list of Day, Time and URL and a particularly useful search history feature. Often I may want to revisit a URL, can’t remember quite when I visited it but could just about remember information it contained - the search results even have a nice little thumbnail of the screen to prompt those gray cells into action.

Overall, Google Chrome is great with some handy simple features and I plan to continue using it - but I do still keep going back to Internet Explorer 7.