I love Google Chrome. It’s probably the biggest boost to my at home/at work productivity since I added more RAM to my laptop (before I did, my IBM could only handle 1 window of Firefox open at a time: this isn’t a good thing for someone who is currently blogging with no less than 10 tabs, two separate windows for gmail and gdocs and a music player open).
Now you might be wondering how it increased my efficiency. There are a couple of ways, mostly more noticeable to me when I’m not using my regular computer and Chrome. They are: 1 click access to the most important sites to me (which I have listed across the bookmark bar, just as icons…when you create a bookmark in Chrome, just delete the title if the site has a nice favicon and voila: instant mini shortcuts. I bet you could fit 50 or more along the bookmark toolbar) and 2 click access to my most frequently visited sites (whenever you open Chrome or a new tab all of your most recently and frequently visited sites are listed). It’s telling that my top three sites are all work related, followed by blogger (1/2 work, 1/2 play), Flickr, whatever Fantasy sports league I’m in at the time, Apple Movie trailers (I love movie trailers) and a couple other that change like the seasonal aisle at your local pharmacy or grocery store.
Chrome is also great cause I can have 10+ tabs open in multiple windows and they all show as much of the webpage as possible. I am really sold on Google’s design and am a huge Chrome-fanboy.
That being said, never before have I ever not used a website because of browser incompatibility–until now. I often switch back and forth between FF and IE to test sites and visuals when designing a new site, blogging or building courses, but if I think something is going to be a highly frequented site then I want it compatible with Chrome (because that is more and more my desktop). To manage my side-business finances I really want to use Quickbooks Simple Start as opposed to just a spreadsheet. But they don’t support Chrome. They also don’t support FF on linux/Ubuntu. That has been a big enough obstacle to prevent me from using their product so far, even though it’s free and I could easily open FF instead. I might make the leap but only after a lot of searching for an alternative.
It’s not that I’m super picky, it’s that I hate inefficiency (even if it decreases over time) no matter how minuscule. I think it’s telling too that as a consumer of online information and applications that I would be so turned off from adopting a product that doesn’t work at all/as well when paired with another technology (this is a derivation of incompatibility of OS and programs as well, however the barriers are smaller when we’re talking about browsers–but no less significant to the end user).
So, I guess the conclusion is that even if your product is the bee’s knees, it better work on whatever I’m using. And if it doesn’t (cough, Quickbooks, cough) then you might not get me as a customer as easily. And as a provider of such products in work and personal, the sites better work the first time someone comes to them or there’s probably a good chance that you’ll lose that person forever.
Now, if only I can find a better online program than Google Docs to manage our small business finances that would be sweet (suggestions welcome).