When Google’s Chrome was announced, I made some comments based on the information we had to hand at the time. To summarise, I thought the layout of Chrome was badly considered when assessing it based on Fitts’s Law. Now that Chrome is actually out (for Windows, at least), we can take a closer look at it, put it to the test as it were. But unlike some other sources, who seem really caught up on whether Chrome is actually the fastest browser out there (Chrome on Windows XP through a VM doesn’t feel as fast as Safari on OSX, but that’s neither here nor there), I wanted to look at it from a user’s point of view. After all, if Google wants to be a success in the Browser Wars II (this time it’s personal?), they’re going to have to win the hearts and minds of ordinary users, and that isn’t done by rendering a JavaScript heavy page x milliseconds faster than FireFox. It’s done by being easy to use, and friendly. So let’s look at Chrome from a Use Experience and Usability point of view.
Disclaimer
Before I get any further, I want to point two things out. Firstly, Google Chrome is a very early beta product. It’s not ready for your Gran to use yet, it may not be ready for you to use yet, depending on your disposition. So tread carefully. And let’s take this as an IR beta, and not a Google beta. I don’t expect it to be flawless, neither should you.
Secondly, I’m an OSX user (you’ll find that many people in the field of user experience favor Macs). As such I’m testing Chrome on an iMac through Parallels Desktop which is running a Win XP Pro Virtual Machine. Results are indicative of this setup.
Breaking Conventions
Google seem intent on breaking some well established conventions with Chrome. We’ve seen with the iPhone that breaking established conventions can be a liberating thing, something that frees designers from the shackles of the past and allows them to come up with something truly great. There is, of course, a downside. Unless your new interface is truly intuitive, which is very difficult to do in an IT system, there’s going to be a steeper learning curve than usual. There’s also going to be mistakes and failures. And when you knowingly introduce failures and mistakes, you run the risk of user abandonment. Sometimes this will be abandonment of a task, but in cases like Chrome, and the iPhone, it will be abandonment of the tool.
Interface Differences between Chrome and FireFox 3
The image to the right highlights some of the differences you will notice between Chrome and a more conventional browser, in this case I’ve used FireFox version 3 on Windows XP in vanilla form.
I’ll be addressing each of these differences in turn.
Standard OS Interface Elements
Something that’s been a pet peeve of mine over the years has been where applications choose to change some interface elements that are intended to be common throughout the Operating System’s interface.
Unfortunately, this is something Google has chosen to do with Chrome. You’ll notice in the top right hand corner of the Chrome window that it appears to be using Windows Vista interface elements, even though it was running on Windows XP. Is this important? Yes. The problem here is not that it is using Vista’s icons, but more that it is not obeying any customisations made by the user. For example, I know users who have poor eyesight, they tend to increase the size of these controls so they can easily minimise windows without accidentally closing them.
Window Controls in Chrome and FireFox
If you enlarge these controls through Windows XP, the controls on Chrome do not change. It’s also worth noting that the buttons don’t have the characteristic coloration that controls on other windows do, this is also likely to confuse less experienced users.
To some users, the large red button that closes the window has now become the small blue button, but only for Google Chrome. And that last point really is key. Google Chrome performs differently to the rest of the OS. It’s the one car in the showroom with the steering wheel on the roof.
State-Sensitive Objects
You’ll see on the screenshot earlier in this post that I’ve highlighted the status bar and the tab bar in Chrome. The reason I’ve singled these two elements out is that they behave inconsistently. The status bar only becomes visible when there’s something to display, and it works fairly well. Essentially, it only shows up when you mouse over a link (to display the destination URL) or when the page is still loading. It’s working on the principal that at all other times, there really is nothing interesting that needs to be fed back to the user, so there’s no need to eat up valuable screen space and display extra interface elements that may confuse users.
What’s more interesting is the approach to tabs. Unlike FireFox, Google Chrome always displays the tab bar, regardless of how many tabs you have open. FireFox hides the tab bar if only one tab is open. In Chrome, the result is that you have a state-sensitive status bar (i.e. the status bar only displays when the browser is in a certain state) and a tab bar that is not state-sensitive. This is likely down to the push by Google to emphasise the tabbed aspects of Chrome. It’s a selling point, something they want to push, so I suspect the decision to keep the tab bar constantly visible was taken with more a marketing hat on, rather than a UI one.
Personally, I’m ambivalent about this. I feel it warrants being pointed out, but it’s not a huge issue. Just a difference that people need to be made aware of.
Auto Feed Discovery
As highlighted in the image towards the top of this post, Google Chrome does not feature automatic feed discovery. This seems like a strange choice given that Google runs one of the most popular Feed Reading services on the planet, Google Reader, as well as the hugely popular FeedBurner. Whether this is a feature that’s yet to be implemented, or something that’s been intentionally omitted in the name of simplicity remains to be seen. But it would appear that yet another common interface element is gone, at least for now.
Miscellany
There are a few other things that I just briefly wanted to mention that doesn’t fit in with the “breaking conventions” theme of this post. So consider this a miscellaneous section.
Task Manager
Google Chrome Task Manager
I have a real issue with my browser requiring its own Task Manager and it seems strange that Google are pushing this as a feature. Windows Mobile has been mocked repeatedly for it’s use of a Task Manager, in fact Apple referenced it in a keynote about the iPhone, that’s how laughable the feature is. The reason it doesn’t work is that Windows Mobile runs on mobile devices. People don’t want to manage their mobile devices, they just want them to work.
I think Web browsers are similar. My browser is a gateway to services, in the same way a phone is a gateway to a service. The best browser, much like the best phone, is the one that allows me to most easily access and make use of the service I am trying to connect to and utilise. Making me consider things like memory and resource usage is not going to achieve that, I just don’t want to think about it. I want my browser to just handle that back end stuff, and leave me get on with what I want to do.
Options
The Options available in Chrome
Another of my pet peeves is options. Many applications have many different ways of structuring and organising options. Currently there are very few options available in Chrome, which isn’t a bad thing. I’d personally like to see more customisation opportunities, and it is required before it becomes mainstream, but at the moment it’s fine.
What’s not fine is the structure, grouping, wording and logic of the existing options. I won’t go into any details, as I could spend an entire post on it, but it needs a complete overhaul.
Have you been using Chrome? If so, what do you think? If not, why not?
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