Google Chrome
I will preface this blog by saying that I am a Firefox user. So my opinion might be slightly biased.
As I mentioned in my previous post, there are essentially four major market share holders as far as web browsers are concerned. The largest is Microsoft with Internet Explorer, followed by Mozilla’s Firefox, then Mac’s Safari, and now Google Chrome is making an appearance. The first stable public release was on December 11th, 2008. It’s only been around for 5 months, so there are still some bugs that need to be worked out - more on that later. It comes with the (now) pretty standard feature of tabbed browsing. Another feature is what Google refers to as “crash control” which essentially keeps your other browser windows open even if one stops working - I have yet to actually experience this, thankfully. It also has a fairly neat feature called “incognito mode.”
First, a bit on tabbed browsing. To open a new tab all you need to do is hit Ctrl+t, and a new, blank window will open up. If you like to point and click, there is a small + near the top left of the screen - (left) click it and a new tab will open. You can click and drag to rearrange the order the tabs appear as well. As I said earlier, this feature is pretty standard on all web browsers now, and is incredibly handy. It is really quite handy for comparing prices between different online stores, doing research, and a multitude of other things.
One of the more unique things Chrome brings to the table is the fact that all the tabs are run independently of each other. Where as in Firefox and IE, and I believe Safari, they are all run on one instance of the web browser. What this means is that if one of the tabs stops working, the other ones will end up closing as well. This can be pretty annoying, especially if you have a lot of tabs open at once. Now, in Google Chrome, you don’t need to worry about this, because only that one window will be shut - leaving the rest open and safe. As I said before I haven’t actually had this happen (yet), but in any case it’s a neat feature.
Chrome also sports something called “incognito mode.” This prevents any information from the current browsing session from being saved in Chrome. So if you are browsing http://colt-tech.com the next time you open up Chrome, that site will not be saved in your history. I can see this being helpful on public computers, at work/in the office, or on something like a laptop. But, it also is going to make it kind of hard for parents to monitor what sites their children are going to. If there is a feature to disable “incognito mode” I haven’t found it - if there isn’t, it should be added.
It also has some developer features such as a properties inspector, which is similar to Firefox’s addon Firebug. Having this built into the browser is pretty handy, especially for a web designer and developer such as myself. It also comes with the standard page source viewer as well.
If you are planning on giving Chrome a try, it will also import all your bookmarks for you, so there is no need to worry about that. It will also import usernames/passwords as well.
Now, for the bad. There are some pretty annoying bugs still. The most obvious one is when clicking on an RSS feed to add it, all you are given is a page with a ton of text. I have tried to add an RSS feed from quite a few different sites, and have been unsuccessful on each attempt. The second “issue” is that it doesn’t seem to be very much faster than Firefox when browsing. I have my Firefox loaded down with quite a few addons, and I don’t really see any delta in performance. Note: this is an un-scientific observation. The final thing that is slightly annoying is the lack of addons for Chrome. For most people though, this won’t matter at all though.
Overall, I would give Chrome a B+. The overall experience it gives is pleasant, and relatively error free. I would easily suggest using Chrome over Internet Explorer. I also wouldn’t be surprised if Chrome starts to rival Firefox in a few years.
If you want to try Chrome out, you can get it here.