I've been reading a few more comments about Google Chrome last night and this morning and have kept using it for browsing since yesterday. Here's a few more points :

• My comments from yesterday and today take into account that Chrome is a first beta. People have to remember that this is not yet a replacement for anyone's regular browser. Many comments say that it doesn't support extensions like Firefox, IE or Opera (they may call it diffferent things but you get my gist). It also has some annoying rendering bugs that seem to be due to Webkit and misses basic functionality like a way to turn off scripts which is a very good point that a commenter to my previous post brought up. All valid points but remember that this is a FIRST beta. Chrome will evolve.
• I saw a comment today on Jeffrey Zeldman's site that summed up my first impression of it : "At  present this seems like a solution waiting for a problem". The more I think about it, the more I think that's true. Did we "really" need a new browser in the market?
• The above ties in with some of Zeldman's comments as well as Tantek Celik who commented on the same post. Both say the same thing which is that, in order to compete, a new browser must offer something that others do not. They then discuss ways a browser may differentiate itself and Tantek brings up the point that, with a similar feature set, a browser may win market share by bringing better performance. So far, this seems to be the main thing Chrome brings to the table. But is it enough? 
• While Chrome is certainly much faster than Firefox, even Firefox 3 which improved its prdecessor's very sluggish performance, is it really much faster than Opera 9.5? Not in my experience. On some pages, Opera is actually still faster than Chrome. So again, is it enough?

Like I said yesterday, only time will tell what impact Chrome will have when it reaches gold status and reaches a wider audience outside Web professionals and hard core tech geeks. Will people be willing to swicth? Personally, I have my doubts, especially if Chrome's differentiation factors are not more visible than just speed. That may be enough for some people but most IT departments will probably keep using IE and those who moved to Firefox, Opera or Safari may choose to stay with the devil they know...

I just downloaded and installed Google Chrome after reading the comic book that explains the details of the project. I had been hearing rumors about it last week but I didn't pay much attention to them. In the last couple days there had seemed to be much anticipation (and over-hype) about its release and what it means. I must say I was prepared to be underwhelmed... and, as a Web designer, thinking, who needs yet another new browser to test sites into? But after using it for a little bit, I must admit I like what I see.

My initial hesitation came mostly from the fact that, aside from its search engine technology, I haven't been impressed by much of what Google has released in the past. I don't use GMail and I don't use Google Documents for the same basic reason. So far, I still much prefer desktop applications for email and office type tasks and my communications and organizational activities are pretty much centered in Outlook 2007. It works very well for me and my data is on my own machine where I want it. I never liked Web based email to begin with.

But Chrome is different because it is a desktop application and the foundations and ideas on which it was built are very interesting. As many noted and despite a lot of over-hype (what else is new in the tech world...), Chrome has a lot of things that were already in other browsers. My main browser is Opera 9.5 and I really have not seen any other that is as fast or feature-rich. But Chrome is fast too... damn fast actually, especially with JavaScript and I really like the minimal interface. This is a first beta and can only improve with time. Also, so far all my sites I looked at with Chrome display correctly and pretty much the same as Safari, FF 3 or IE7. Its text rendering seems identical to Safari which is normal since both are based on the WebKit rendering engine.

So, in summary, Google Chrome seems like a solid entry in the crowded browser world and will only get better. But, I would take the premature previsions of some pundits that Chrome will cause the demise of MSIE with a huge grain of salt... Haven't we heard that one before?

Won't tech commentators ever learn that "regular" people are creatures of habit and are unlikely to change browsers just because a new player's in town? Don't they get that Microsoft is entrenched in the business world for the foreseeable future? Those who should be worried by this are the other smaller players IMO, like Opera and Firefox and maybe even Safari which seems to be as entrenched on the Mac as MSIE is on PCs... for now.

Anyway, only time will tell how Chrome will affect the browser wars but it is a good piece of software that brings welcome competition and innovation. And did I say it was fast! I'm writing this blog post in it through TinyMCE now which unfortunately doesn't work in Opera yet. Good going with this one Google!

You can now find the Fireworks team's new blog here : http://blogs.adobe.com/fireworks That's a great thing for improving Fireworks' visibility and hopefully it will be updated regularly.

On the other hand, I wonder why Adobe is not using a ColdFusion based solution for blogging. I really think they should be using their own platforms as much as possible. They could be using an existing blogging application like BlogCFC which I'm using here or build their own (which they could sell or give away, integrate into Dreamweaver, etc). The possibilities are mind boggling and I wonder why the primary Web building software supplier is still not helping their customers build blogs using their own platforms and software?

But I digress... ;-)  Do check out the Fireworks teams's blog!

Fireworks is finally getting some long overdue exposure. A beta of the next CS4 version has been posted on Adobe Labs today. I will blog about this in more details later this week. Long story short is that there is a lot to love in this new version and Fireworks is finally gainning some maturity and sophistication.  There are still many areas that need work like, for example, its desperately archaic color management features as well as not having any way to maintain links to external assets (just to name these two) but a LOT of progress has been made in this release...

Check it out !

Wow! I was going through  my new items in FeedDemon when I came upon Jeff Veen's blog. It seems that WebMonkey is back. Now that brings up memories! I cut my teeth on the Web design stuff around the time WebMonkey, HotWired, Talk.com and others were born in 1996. I learned a lot of the my early Web design skills from WebMonkey articles and tutorials. They were pretty much the only quality reference we had back then and it's very good to see them back!

It seems that Adobe is currently quite busy coming up with new useful technology and services. The first one is Share which is currently in Beta on Labs. Share is a service for publishing and sharing documents from anywhere and with whoever you choose. The intersteing thing I see for me is that you could create a repository of documents you would like to share with clients and set permissions so that each client can only get at what concerns them. I've only given Share a quick look but it seems very useful. You sign on with your existing Adobe ID and password.

The second one is even more intriguing for designers and Fireworks enthusiasts. It's a new application that Adobe previewed at Max which will serve as an RIA building tool for designers. Make sure you read this blog entry from Narciso Jaramillo (nj) which answers many questions about Thermo and has links to 3 movies of the MAX presentation of Thermo on YouTube.

Thermo looks like a very promising application that will enable non-developers entry into the world of RIA design and development. Adobe touts it as a great tool for collaboration between designers and developers where both can work on the same project using both Flex Builder and Thermo and not "break" each other's work. Really check out the blog post I linked to above and whatch the movies on YouTube. The Thermo presentation really is impresive.

What I can't wait to see is how the interoperability between Thermo and Fireworks will work becaue, Fireworks still hasbetter design specific tools but Thermo goes a lot further into being a real RIA design tool than the similar embryonic features added to Fireworks CS3 (smart symbols in the Common Library and basic MXML export). What is also unclear to me with the arrival of Thermo is how that side of Fireworks will evolve if at all in future releases. Whatever happens, I would still like to see that side of Fireworks evolve if only to limit wasted effort and and I would also love to see great interoperability between the two apps. Time will tell...

Well, it seems that my timing for the publication of the "Why Choose Fireworks" article was even better than I though... Danielle Beaumont the new Fireworks Product Manager at Adobe just posted a message to the Fireworks forum stating that Fireworks was still an important product for them and, more importantly, that it was still under active development... She even mentions that they'll still need users help for pre-release (beta) testing. That is really awesome news! Go read it now!

That should finally shut up Fireworks' doomsayers...

That news just made my day... well that and something else I'll post about later ;-)