I downloaded Chrome last week and I’ve been using it to see what I think of it compared to Firefox.

I don’t like MSIE 7 very much; it just doesn’t have features I like. It’s better by far than MSIE6, but as a developer, the lack of standards support makes me cry, so I hate it on principle. I’m willing to check out MSIE 8 when it comes out of beta, but Firefox has been my favorite browser since it came out. I won’t go into how much I hated Safari.

Chrome is competing seriously for my love, let me tell you. After about a week of using it, here is my list of pros and cons, compared to what I’m used to from Firefox. Note that there are a lot of factors that influence performance, so issues I see may not be issues for other people. This is from my own personal perspective only.

Chrome vs Firefox — Pros

• Pages appear to load more quickly. The difference is notable enough that I often choose to use Chrome because it’s so much faster.
• Pages with javascript perform noticably better. Similarly to my point above, I find myself choosing to use Chrome over Firefox when I know pages use a ton of javascript, such as Netflix or Google Reader.
• Cleaner and sleeker appearance. While I could theme up Firefox, the default appearance of Chrome is so appealing to me, I feel no need to skin it. Themes and skins can sometimes break Firefox extensions, so I don’t use them.
• The smart URL bar thingy is neat. It highlights/bolds the domain when you’re at the URL, it operates as a search bar, and does other nifty things like offer search suggestions.
• Everything just worked after install. It displays Flash and everything else just fine. I had to install plugins for Firefox to do those things, and I still can’t get Adobe PDFs to work right with it for some reason. No problems with Chrome.
• A not-so-well-known Firefox issue with leading spaces (due to textarea element) and WordPress postings is not a problem with Chrome. It maintains my leading whitespace. Since I use WordPress frequently and post code that needs leading spaces for readability, this is actually very important to me.
• Did I mention it’s FAST? For pure user experience alone, this is a serious win. While I miss my extensions, Chrome is so much faster that I find myself uising it 90% of the time. In fact, it may be fast partly BECAUSE it doesn’t have extensions.

Chrome vs Firefox — Cons

• No extension support. I really adore my extensions, and miss them greatly. I don’t know how long I can go without my Delicious add on. I did add a bookmarklet to bookmark pages, but I don’t get a sidebar, synchronized bookmarks, or the numerous other benefits of the Firefox extension. I also highly miss my WebDeveloper, BBCode, StumbleUpon, and IEView extensions.
• Can’t control tab behavior. I can’t control new link behavior in tabs, where tabs show (end of the list or next to the tab that opened them), or anything else.
• Can’t control script behavior. I can’t fine-tune what script is allowed to do, such as open windows with no toolbars, screw with my status bar, move or resize windows, and so on.
• Can’t control page elements such as Java applets or Flash. I can turn those off with one click in Firefox.
• I miss my right-click menu option of “view background image”.
• I have yet to figure out where the file open dialog box is in Chrome.

If any of those CAN be done and I just haven’t found them, please let me know.  =)

Since Chrome is pretty new, and the grapevine says it will support extensions soon, I think my list of cons is going to decrease quite a bit. All they need to do other than that is give me more options for controlling the browser and I’d happily use it all the time.

Can they add extension support without sacrificing the amazing (at least in my experience — YMMV) speed? That’s a question I am VERY interested in the answer to.

What do you think? Have you tried Chrome? What do you think of it compared to your usual browser of choice?