cssvault - inspiring creativity

Despite all the buzz that the Google Chrome browser has made since its initial launch, its popularity has been on a downhill trend. Here are 3 reasons why I think this is so:

1. Lack of features - Different users have different needs. Some of them are developers that need to debug their websites or some simply like to customize the look of their browser. Unlike Firefox and IE, there is a serious lack of available applets to extend or customize the browser.
2. Bugs - From installation issues, to frequent crashing, to hanging all the way down to display problems. Chrome’s list of issues make it pale in comparison to a vet like Firefox.
3. Been there, done that - Almost all Google Chrome’s features can be found in other browsers, in one way or another. There are articles about this for Firefox and IE.

Probably Chrome’s only asset at this moment is speed, and while puts to shame all other browsers in this area, apparently that is still not enough to pull people in. Still, there is no denying that Chrome has a lot of potential to become a great browser. It is still at its infancy, so I say give it more time. It took IE and Mozilla (Firefox) over 10 years to get to where they are currently at.

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When Chrome came out one of the first things kurafire did was to test his own website, which uses a bunch of CSS transitions and CSS3 properties. Since it uses the Webkit rendering engine it should be at par with Safari, right?

Wrong. Apparently Chrome uses a lower end graphics engine called Skia, which produces less than satisfactory results, as can be seen in this demo page. Among the missing features are shadows and anti-aliasing, which makes Safari the better browser for CSS handling.

Note that this may be intentional though. Google released Chrome with speed in mind, and this may be one of those trade offs that they had to make.

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Looks like the Google Chrome team really did their homework!

I’m not technical enough to know whether this is the WebKit engine or the Gecko engine doing its job, but both Firefox and Safari do pass the Acid2 test so it’s awesome to have a really slim and fast browser around as an option.

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