Google Chrome – New kid on the block

Google has recently released its new browser, called Chrome which is aimed to rival Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.  I have been using it for a couple of days now, and here is my thoughts.

Chrome looks slick, Google have dared to make their browser look that bit smarter than the competition, which is simple to use, and yet very familiar.  However it does feel a little light on features compared to the other browsers in the market, e.g. you cannot organise your bookmarks.  But then this is just a beta version of the browser and I’m sure those standard browser features will be in the finished release.  I can see google chrome acting as a continer for multiple types of applications.

The first thing you notice about chrome is just how fast it is, is is due in part to its new open source javascript engine called V8.  V8 is a new JavaScript engine specifically designed for fast execution of large JavaScript applications. In several benchmark tests, according to Google, V8 is many times faster than JScript (in Internet Explorer), SpiderMonkey (in Firefox), and JavaScriptCore (in Safari). If your web application is bound by JavaScript execution speed, using V8 instead of your current JavaScript engine is likely to improve your application’s performance. How big the improvement is depends on how much JavaScript is executed and the nature of that JavaScript. For example, if the functions in your application tend to be run again and again, the performance improvement will be greater than if many different functions tend to run only once.

Google believes as we create more complex javascript applications in our browsers, there is a need for a faster javascript runtime which none of the competition can provide.  Google believe that in the future Chrome may become more than a browser, they describe it as a platform for running web applications.  Could this be the seed of the first online operating system?

There are a number of features which make this browser stand out (although IE* will rival some of them),

• the “Omnibar” allows you to use one bar for everything including the address bar, search box, history etc.
• Every time you create a new tab you get a number of thumnails dispalyed which show your most visited sites, bookmarks and recently closed tabs
• Dynamic tabs – this is way cool. You can simply drag a tab out of the browser and create a new instance of the Chrome browser, then can drag tabs between the browsers.  This is great, normally I have a few browsers open, and its a great idea to be able to organise your tabs in this way.
• Incognito mode – private browsing, np trace that you have been on a site – not sure why you would need this
• Simple downloads, now you don’t have another window popping up every time you download a file, it is now part of the main browser.

I really like this browser, however it has a way to go before it becomes my main browser.  I am a fan of FireFox because of its extensibility, I would miss my Delicious bookmarks, my developer tools, my colour picker & CSS helpers (to name but a few plugins). However I believe my wife will love this browser simply due to its speed.

Google is on to a winner here, I believe, with a bit of work,  it will eat into the Internet Explorer market share, and the Firefox market share to a slightly lesser extent.  I know that it is far from perfect, bookmark management, plugins and addons being the big things missing for me, but then again this is just a piece of beta software…

~ by ajaxramble on September 21, 2008.