Anyone who is a bit Internet savvy knew that it was only a matter of time before Google expanded into the browser business. Well, that day was yesterday, as the searchmasters announced the release of Google Chrome. This is an Open Source browser that looks to bring the streamlined and optimized performance of the search engine, into the browser space.
From first glance it is obvious that Chrome has one thing that its browser counterpart does not, beauty. Everything about the interface is sleek and stylish. All of my shortcuts were imported from Firefox with ease, and I was up and running in under three minutes. This is quite an achievement for an application that running under Windows Vista. It is also of note that the installer clocks in at just over 500 kb, making it lightweight as well as functional.
Unfortunately it didn't take long for me to encounter one of my first snags. None of my RSS feeds from Firefox 3.0.1 seemed to have been imported. After a little research, I have found that apparently there is currently no RSS support in the browser at all. This is a deal breaker for me because I am a feed junkie. While this is a major turn off, I decided to venture on with my testing.
Every site that I tested seemed to yield a similar result of quick loading times, but nothing that seemed to be notably different from what I was getting from my Firefox browser. While yes there may be a small difference, I can't help but think that this will be evened out as there are more features added to the browser. Also, when ran through the Acid test for web browsers, it fails miserably, but nothing worse than most major browsers currently available.
One notable feature in the favor of chrome is the fact that that it is multithreaded. This means that for each new tab that is opened, creates a new task in the task manager. This will prevent a single website from locking and crashing the browser. I have frequently encountered this issue in the past with Firefox, and I hope this is a feature that can be integrated into my browser of choice in the very near future.
I will continue to use the browser throughout this week and will render a final decision soon. Stay tuned and give it a try for yourself, you might just be glad you did! The download can be found HERE.
Below is the comic that Google used to announce Chrome's Launch:
To see the continuation of this strip, click HERE.
3 comments:
ive been using it for a couple of hours and have noticed some bugs in the javascript engine or how it processes css.
other than that it seems fairly functional but in its beta stage, youre right, it offers little more than other browsers.
I'm not sure why people are saying Chrome does not support RSS? I just checked my iGoogle page, and all my RSS feeds are populated. Are you saying they won't update, or that I can't add new ones?
Also, I'm surprised no one has mentioned the "Create application shortcut" feature. You can now treat Gmail as if it were Outlook. Just add a shortcut to your desktop and Gmail opens as an application and not in a browser. Well, yeah, it's in a browser, it just doesn't look like a traditional browser window.
sorry about that. i should clarify, css (cascading style sheets). though it might be more of a conflict with javascript dom styles than the actual css.
i just installed it this morning and am still learning the ropes, thanks for the feature heads up!