The Chrome Conundrum

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I Love/Hate Chrome!

Having used the Chrome browser regularly for a couple of years now, I really love quite a number of things about it.

  • It's fast

  • The developer tools are superb

  • It has a vibrant user community, including a number of very smart people whose opinions I respect who are also huge fans

However, its implementation under Mac OS X, my operating system of choice, is rather flawed in a number of respects that drive me crazy:

  • Its external monitor support is awful.  If I have Chrome open on my Macbook Pro, then disconnect my external monitor and go to a meeting, all my windows have vanished into la-la land, and no amount of killing and restarting Chrome will bring them back.  Also, creating new windows fails silently as well, I presume Chrome thinks the windows are going to the external monitor which is no longer connected.

  • No easy, native Java support! I know, I know, I can just about hear the hipster geeks rolling their eyes at this, but face it kiddos, Java was running mission critical systems while you were in diapers.  It's not dead, it's not going away, and it's an incredibly useful tool - for Chrome on OS X to not natively support Java in the browser is unforgivable.

  • Unresponsive developers - Check out the Chromium bug list and you'll see droves of OS X users screaming for Java support - and dead silence from the developers.

I haven't yet made the decision to switch back to Firefox full-time, but they're certainly driving me in that direction.  I loved Firefox for years until I fell in love with Chrome's speed, sleek design and awesome devtools.

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