Notes from the Consultant’s Jungle

I’ve waited for the dust to settle to log a post about Google’s Chrome, and to do so now almost seems trite since there’s already been so much content in the dialogue about browser wars, IE killers and such.  I do feel compelled to make a few cursory points about Chrome, just for the record.  ‘so here goes:

My first impression of Chrome was how usable this new web interface is.  The staging of recently used pages is a great advantage for navigability from site to site.  The Chrome developers have some innovation here, in my opinion, and it’s easy to see how this would play in a cloud-based desktop application scenario.

Another first impression was how fast this new browser was.  I should underscore ‘was,’ because with increasing use I find it less and less zippy.  It also crashes quite frequently, but remember we were told that this was a Beta release, so if we’re going to use it we need to cut a break here and there.  In fact, I’m really weary about the frequency of crashes, but though after every “kill pages” experience and resolution to drop it until the official release, I still return to use it.  I like it that much.

The real story with Chrome is the baby step taken toward a new desktop interface for cloud-based computing.  This is exciting and we could be watching the early evolutionary stages of a new desktop environment.

I’d like to hear your thoughts about Chrome and the notion of a  possible new desktop computing paradigm.  Please post a comment.