Feature – We have had three days to digest Google’s take on the future web browser. We took it through its paces, found bugs, hidden folders and lots of irregularities that you would expect to see in any beta software. We have read lots of opinions – how great and how bad Chrome is, some even suggested it shouldn’t get the name of a polished product, but should be called “Rust” instead. But if we take a step back, it is clear that Chrome isn’t entirely black and white. That of course means that the company sparked some ideas, but will have to adjust the browser as well. We published an article on what is great about Chrome earlier and finish the week with what we believe needs to be changed.

Let’s get right to it. Chrome lacks basic functionality we have come to expect and most of us probably miss in this new browser (or mini OS, depending on your view.) We do understand Google’s approach and intent to come up with something new, but not everything old is bad either. Expecting users who are familiar with IE and Firefox to readily accept a Spartan Chrome interface may not be the best strategy. Disruptive products need to be convincing and we just don’t feel that Chrome is convincing enough, yet. In that case, we would hope that Google would offer a transitional approach with options and choice.  

Here is what we would fix first.

Problem 1: The disruptive UI doesn't appeal to everyone

Design is a matter of taste, we got it. And Chrome’s UI appears to be dividing. There are some who find it plain ugly and others who claim it has the striking elegance of an Apple interface. No matter where you stand, it is a disruptive change from the overloaded interface we've had so far in browsers. It is about as minimalistic in design as it can get. And it seems that those who don't really care about the Google layout anyway, don't care for Chrome’s design either.

We also noticed that especially novice users may have difficulties with the rough UI. Conservative geeks in particular seem to find the new UI controversial. If you want your menus accessible at the window's top and enjoy load of buttons in UI, you'll have a hard time navigating in Chrome.

A great example is the apparent lack of the home button. Now, most people told us they don't miss it since their home was set to google.com anyway. Since the new address bar enables them to search directly, the home button is redundant for them. Wolfgang, our managing editor and a die-hard PC guy (guess you wouldn’t believe this after this article), for example, wants the home button since he is used to the possibility to have a consistent start page. Being a Mac guy, I want my UI clean and crisp, I am happy it isn't there. But guess what - home button does exist in Chrome and it can be turned on in application's settings. From what we have heard, most people are unaware of the setting, and we are still a bit puzzled that we did not see this option in our first review.

The intelligent address bar is another great example of a rather controversial UI design. How would a novice user find out that the address bar doubles as a search bar? By accident? Seriously, in some way, switching to Chrome feels more extreme than switching from a PC to Mac. Most users will switch to Mac for the simplicity, inviting environment and great UI but many geeks will steer away because OS X has windows with no menus attached to them. Chrome can win over such users if it includes legacy settings to ease the transition - like optional menus, a default home button and a more traditional window design.

Problem 2: Scarce bookmarking options, lack of online syncing

Chrome's bookmarking features are scarce by any measure. It feels like someone just stuffed this feature in there in the last minute. At this time it is hardly appealing even to novice users. You can't assign keywords and labels to bookmarks and you can't sync them with the cloud either. If Chrome wasn't developed by Google we would be ready to close one eye on the latter omission. All you can do is file a bookmark by clicking on the star icon in the address bar, revealing a Firefox-style mini-menu with options to name, remove, or save a bookmark into a folder. Novice users can make a terrible mistake by deleting the folder because that deletes all bookmarks contained in it.

If you file a bookmark outside of folder, it appears in the bookmark bar below the toolbar. The number of bookmarks in the bookmark bar is limited to the window's width. The "Other bookmarks" folder found on the rightmost of the bookmark bar serves as the place to keep the remaining bookmarks. Our conclusion: Underwhelming, even for a beta.

Read on the next page: A sad download manager, security and privacy

Problem 3: A sad download manager

Chrome's download manager is a sleek toy that, however, lacks depth. Start downloading a file and a big green animated arrow appears, indicating that a download is in process. It's nice but it can show only a few files at once due to limited space. The download bar is tied to a tab where the file originated, which means you can easily lose track of any particular download if you open lots of tabs. You can hit CTRL + J to open a special download tab that shows all downloads that are in progress. But overall, the interface leaves a lot to be desired.

For instance, you can pause and cancel downloads, but you can't tell from which site the file originated. The interface desperately needs viewing options to allow for sorting download files according to date, file size and type. You can't remove canceled or partially downloaded files from your computer from within the interface. A serious flaw: The download manager doesn't send the file through your local antivirus program. How many novice users are even aware of potential hazards? Nope, this one does not work for us at this time.

Problem 4: Security needs to be transparent

Malware has little, if any, chance to bypass the security of Chrome's sand-boxed tabs. Whatever happens in tab is confined to the browser environment and no web malware can gain enough privileges to escape Chrome's tight security walls. But all that inner working means little, because Chrome does a lousy job on the surface and leaves you in the dark about what happens in the background.

You can't set browsing security levels at all and there are now security warnings that ensure many users that there is actually technology watching over them. Don’t get us wrong, we are all for a 100% secure system, but we doubt that will ever exist. Microsoft won’t be able to provide and Google won’t be able either. It is a very subjective impression at this time, but the sense of security Chrome provides at this time may be a disaster only waiting to happen to anyone with an average knowledge about online security – which would be the vast majority of Internet users.

When you're accessing secure pages, the address bar background changes to gold and a lock icon appears at the end of the address bar, indicating an SSL connection. But many users won't even notice the gold color or the tiny lock icon. If the page lacks SSL connection, an alert icon will be shown instead of the lock but that's even less noticeable. Such visual indicators are ambiguous and fail to prominently convey important information.

When it comes to phishing protection, the situation is even worse. Sure, the browser checks the ID of a site you're visiting against Google's vast database of known malware and phishing sites. If you encounter such a site, Chrome simply forwards you to the confusing online page at google.com that basically asks if you really want to continue. How many novice users do you think will back away at this point?

The biggest problem with Chrome's security features is that it requires a change in the user's overall behavior. Chrome's under-the-hood security is state of the art but it's not met with equal ambition when it comes to some plain end-user UI design choices. Guys, take a page out of Firefox's or IE's book, show a user who want to visit a phishing or malware site an internal warning page with lots of red color and big warning signs. Make the whole Chrome UI change its interface skin into red and scream, if necessary. The current approach is unacceptable to us.

Problem 5: Privacy? What privacy?

Google trumpeted Chrome's privacy feature called Incognito browsing. When you open an Incognito window (it has a distinct "spy" look), Chrome makes sure everything that occurs in this window is not logged to your computer. You can continue to use other Chrome windows normally and surf anonymously in Incognito windows. IE and Safari also have privacy browsing modes. Firefox and Opera lack private browsing but offer options to selectively delete privacy- and security-related content (browsing and download history, saved forms, searches and passwords, cache, cookies, offline website data and authenticated sessions) at any time or when you exit the browser, although this isn't an effective substitute for private browsing mode.

Chrome lets you delete the browsing and download history, cookies, cache and saved passwords and set the scope of the deletion (today, one week, four weeks and all data) by choosing the "Delete browsing data..." option in the Tools menu. However, you can't set Chrome to delete any of these items whenever it exits.

You can't set how many days to keep visited pages in your history and it doesn't remember what you enter in forms. The handling of saved searches is awkward. Whenever you search, Chrome passes queries to your chosen search provider and saves a query link to your browsing history. But you can't delete just saved searches from your local browsing history. Password saving is also partially implemented - Chrome will offer to save a password or never save a password for a site, but there is no "don't save this time" option like in Firefox.

You also can't set exceptions to the pop-up blocker and this feature doesn't really block windows. Instead, pop-up windows are reduced to the window status area that appears at the bottom of the Chrome window. This way, you know a pop-up occurred and you can click it to open it. The lack of a complete pop-up removal poses a security risk because inexperienced curious user could easily click on a pop-up that leads to malware.

In terms of cookies, you can only choose to accept or block all cookies or restrict third-party cookies to be sent to you when you return to a site. You can't set the expiration of cookies, create a list of sites that will not accept cookies in any case or manage cookies on a per site basis. Chrome's privacy preferences are accessible in the settings window. Instead of grouping all privacy- and security-related preferences under their own tabs, they are scattered across every settings tab.

In combination, there are too many drawbacks for us to accept Chrome as the only browser at this time. But we wouldn’t call it Rust either.