Google Chrome – Typical Google, It Just Works!

I have installed Google Chrome, as has every other geek in the world. There are so many news articles about the release it’s getting crazy.

It has been a while since we’ve seen such a high profile browser release. Google’s position alone means that anything they release will get a lot of press but I don’t think that this is bad. It seems that everything I used of theirs just works. I like things that are simple in design and interface and do what you expect them to do, and so far Chrome isn’t letting me down.

I am sure that the only fault that I can come up with is one of the reasons why the rest of the browser works so well. I love the fact that in Firefox you have the option to install a myriad of extensions. I have more than one machine, so I would definitely miss Foxmarks which syncs your bookmarks between copies of Firefox on different machines. I also love the BetterGmail extension which makes Gmail look that much “better” ;). When you add some of these extensions to Firefox it makes the browser slower and affects the user experience.

Google has put in some features that I have seen as Firefox extensions which I like. One of them is the new tab page which is similar to Fast Dial in FF. This is cool because it makes your interaction with the browser faster. Press Crtl-T and you are presented with a bunch of large icons, each a screen shot of the website it is representing. They are a list of your most visited and most recent visits, click on one and your there!

Another thing that Google is using is the same rendering engine as Safari from what I have read. This has to be the reason that it is so fast, and I mean FAST! Speed has been a pet peeve of mine with FF and also IE. I am not an IE fan what so ever as it does’t offer any plus over FF. With the FF plugin called IE tab you can use the IE engine within a FF tab.

Chrome is also missing some things that we are used to but without them you get a much larger viewable space. There are no window dressings at all, no side borders, no top boarder, no File/Edit/etc. menu. The first thing at the top are the tabs, then the address bar, then the favorites and after that it’s all web content. It’s a nice clean interface.

Google's new browser - Chrome

They have also added their own task manager to the browser. Now if a tab or a plugin becomes unstable or crashes, you can right click on the tab bar, go into the task manager and kill it. That’s a huge feature if you have any trouble with a java script or something similar.

Their features page has a lot of information and shows you how the browser is different from it’s cousins. I urge you to check it out!