Thursday, May 24, 2012

First Impressions of Yahoo! Axis

Didn't even know it was coming until I discovered this morning that it's here.

Interesting new search "browser" -- actually, for a desktop user with no Apple mobile devices, just a browser extension. Since I don't use iPad or iPhone (apparently the killer feature is sync between those devices and desktop), the desktop app is the only thing that matters to me.

It's quite nice. Sits in the lower left-hand corner of my screen as a search form. Not only auto-completes searches as I type them in, but pulls up preview screen shots of the results. I could get used to this, even dependent on it, pretty quickly.

I'm impressed by its quickness and fluidity. I mean, I'm using a 2006 Mac Mini -- Core Duo, not 2 Core Duo CPU, and maxed out at 2Gb of RAM, but the results show nearly instantly, and scrolling back and forth across those thumbnails happens without visible pause or delay. Which makes me think that, despite opening day exposure of a serious security flaw, this thing was in general very competently designed.

One down side: So far as I can tell, it can't be turned off without actually disabling the extension (we're talking Chrome for Mac here; your OS/browser mileage may vary).  There really should be a convenient on/off switch.

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