How many browsers have you got installed on your computer? One? Two? Er … five?

I’m writing this post in Google’s new Chrome browser which I’ve just downloaded and installed for a test drive.

So, what do I think? Well … the interface is nice. I like the way it turns over most of the screen to the page itself, popping up a small status bar at the bottom of the window whenever it’s needed and putting the tabs into the title bar. The toolbar is chunky and the buttons are very simplistic with a nice big font for the address bar. It also greys out the parts of the URL that aren’t the domain; not so that they can’t be read but so that the domain is immediately obvious – handy if you’re the kind of person likely to be fooled by a phishing scam. The address bar also doubles up as a search bar like Firefox and (in my humble opinion) handles it better than Firefox.

Textareas are resizeable, even if that wasn’t intended by the author of the web page. That’s something that web designers should bear in mind although this isn’t a new innovation so it should already be something you think about. The Webkit engine renders a very nice, clean page and support for CSS3 is superb, passing all 578 tests at CSS3.info compared to Firefox 3’s 373 out of 578 although it doesn’t support shadowed text and transparency can be a bit iffy. Apple’s Safari browser also uses Webkit and handles shadowed text but has some other rendering glitches, particularly when redrawing the screen.

Is all of the above enough to tear me away from Flock 2? No. I like the Flock interface even though it takes up, relatively speaking, a lot of available screen space. The sidebar and integration with the web services that I use means it’s perfect for me. Chrome also suffers from the same TinyMCE bug that Safari does – the toolbar doesn’t display so you have to write all the html yourself – hardly ideal for someone who spends so much time blogging. This only happens in older versions of WordPress with TinyMCE but some of us are too far behind in the versions to be able to do a simple upgrade.

So, how do the myriad browsers installed on my laptop compare? I like Flock 2’s togetherness – the way it integrates lots of web services into a common interface. I also like the speed of Flock 2 and the stability of the browser. The same goes for Firefox 3 although it’s not as fast as Flock 2, even though it’s essentially the same browser. I like Safari’s CSS support, it’s the dogs dangly bits. But it has some rendering issues and it looks a bit … blobby. I like Internet Explorer 7’s familiarity – it looks and feels like part of Windows instead of trying too hard to break the mould. I like Chrome’s uncluttered interface and it’s rather nippy. If only the best bits of all the different browsers could be rolled into one …

Technorati Tags: Browsers, Chrome, Google, Safari, Firefox, Flock 2, Internet Explorer