I’ve used Firefox as my web browser for a couple of years now. I’ve occasionally tried Google Chrome but it has always struck me as an ‘unfriendly’ browser, too cut-down for its own good, and just not as warm and cuddly as Firefox.

I tried Chrome again last week and was impressed. It still has the strangely unfriendly feel — its interface is cold and clinical — but I decided to stick with it and I used it exclusively until today.

But there are simply too many quirks:

  • You type search queries in to the address bar, instead of a dedicated search box. Your search query is then replaced with the address of the search page, and subsequently the address of any other page you go to. Suppose you search for "silence of the lambs imdb" to get a quick Google link to the IMDB page about that movie. You then want to see the Wiki page instead. In Firefox, you would just go back to your search box and change "imdb" to "wiki". In Chrome you need to go and type "silence of the lambs wiki".
  • Text cursor moves like in no other program. In every text box I’ve ever used, in any program, when you press ctrl + left arrow the cursor jumps to the beginning of the current word. In Chrome it jumps to the end of the previous word. Similarly, ctrl + right arrow usually jumps to the beginning of the next word. In Chrome it jumps to the end of the current word. Would be excusable if it was an improvement, but it’s unintuitive and only serves to slow you down.
  • There’s a bug when using copy+paste. Suppose you’re writing a forum post and you want to copy+paste some text from someone else’s post to comment on. Sometimes, apparently randomly, when you copy the text, Chrome disables the paste feature. Paste is still active in the edit menu, and in the context menu, but it doesn’t actually work. Once this happens, paste won’t work again until you close the browser and re-open it.

There are other things, but they come down to personal taste.

Irritating little bugs like these should have been fixed long ago. Perhaps they haven’t because Google only seems concerned about security bugs. Shame. You had me for a while there, Google, but I’m back to Firefox now.

Makes me wonder about Chrome OS. That things needs to come out with all guns blazing to compete with Microsoft and Apple. Fingers crossed…