Why I’m dumping IE for Chrome

News flash: Die-hard Internet Explorer fan abandons Microsoft for Google’s new browser.

It’s true. I’ve jumped ship. Switched camps. Hopped the fence. I’m now officially a Chrome head (not to be confused with chrome dome – I still have all my hair, thank you).

For a hard-core IE fan like me to make such a switch is no easy feat. I’ve tried every version of Firefox, dabbled with Opera, and even kicked around in Konquerer a bit. None of them made me want to abandon IE the way Chrome has.

[ Check out InfoWorld’s Special Report for all the news, reviews, and commentary on Google’s open source Chrome browser. ]

Some of my reasons for moving:

• Architecture – Google’s use of a clean, pure multiprocess design reaps tangible benefits vs. IE 8. For starters, the tabs are truly isolated from one another, not simply backed by a shared pool of processes. And Chrome does a better job of re-using shared code across those processes – over two times better than IE 8. This, in turn, should help it to out-scale IE on really big, multitab application scenarios.
• User Experience – I’m sick and tired of IE’s clunky, cluttered interface. I love Chrome’s integrated search/address bar and I can’t get enough of the tab drag & drop. I use it to quickly combine and organize groups of tabs from separate browser windows, something that required lots of copying and pasting of URLs in IE. Now it’s just drag, drop, repeat – totally intuitive. What a great idea.
• Performance – Chrome kicks IE’s butt at rendering web pages. It’s faster. Period. Enough said.
• Interactivity – The Chrome UI is smooth. It makes virtually every other Windows application I’ve tried (and that would be thousands) feel sluggish and glitchy by comparison. Microsoft needs to hire away whoever designed the threading and process management logic under Chrome’s covers. Just brilliant.
• Compatibility – Chrome is actually more compatible with some of my legacy, IE-specific intranet projects than IE 8 Beta 2. And while I assume these frustrating glitches will be fixed before IE 8 goes RTM, for right now they make Microsoft’s new browser almost unusable for me.

I could go on, but suffice to say that I’m a convert. Chrome is remarkably polished for a first Beta (I’ve yet to have a tab crash on me), and the true process isolation gives me confidence when browsing lots of sites concurrently. Plus it just feels lighter and more responsive than IE 8.

Frankly, I was skeptical when I first read through Google’s comic book. It all sounded a bit too utopian for me. But after 48 hours of continuous use as my default Web browser, I’m a believer.

So long, IE! You were a fun ride for a while, but you just can’t compete with all that Chrome.