Google Chrome Screenshot

Google Chrome is the latest web browser to the market, directly competing with Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer although at the moment it targets Windows systems and isn’t available on Mac.

Interestingly enough, they’ve chosen to use the Webkit engine, this theoretically means that it displays web pages more like Safari than Firefox. (Internet Explorer has it’s own rules and therefore the rendering engine is unavailable for non IE uses.

As the rumours spread, I didn’t have much hope for Google’s own browser despite it being a logical step for the company. Google’s online applications have tended to be fairly bland and uncustomisable. The flipside of this meant that they were reliable and did their job incredibly well.

Since trying out the first addition of Google Chrome however, I’ve found a few interesting things:

• Despite using the Safari engine, Webkit, it doesn’t suffer from the same incompatibilities.
• The name ‘chrome’ always makes me think of Firefox… this word crops up in the background every so often so I was suprised that they chose the Safari route over the more popular Firefox.
• Far from being too simple, it’s very powerful and unsurprisingly, does the job very well.
• Google Chrome launches much faster in windows than Internet Explorer, Safari and Firefox due to it’s multi threading.
• Google Chrome also loads pages much fast than it’s rivals, again due to a deeper multi-thread system unavailable in it’s key rivals. (meaning elements on a page aren’t reliant on other parts to finish before they start.
• Google Chrome does not feature themes, colourschemes or plugins as yet although does work with the Windows Vista’s Aero and Glass quite nicely.
• Tab Grouping – Google Chrome now groups tabs. If you have Ecademy opened in Tab position 1, Facebook in 2 and Gmail in 3, then choose to open an Ecademy (1) page in a new tab, Google Chrome will open the new tab next to tab 1 instead of the far end. This means that all Ecademy tabs will be grouped, as will facebook and gmail. IMHO, a great feature!
• The browser is open source… this means developers can access the code and create their own variations (providing they’re non-commercial) this is one of the only main Google applications that has taken this route.
• Because Google Chrome has based itself on the Webkit engine, my job as a web developer isn’t interrupted (for the first time on any browser launch!)
• Google Chrome’s tabs are separate processes. This means that if it can’t handle some code or the code would normally crash the browser, Google Chrome is able to separate that tab and only lose that one rather than the entire browser!
• The built in spell checker is as good as IE or Firefox, however doesn’t kick in in certain situations (for example a wordpress blog.
• Posting data seems a little slow. Uploading an image to a blog took aroun 120 seconds, to then use wordpress to move the image from uploaded into the text area seemed to take an age too. I assume at this stage that it’s a minor bug to be fixed in due course… watch this space!
• Then new ‘Incognito’ mode allows for sessions to be ignored from the browser history. This offers no protection against hacking or web session storage, but if you’re browsing for gifts for a loved one, or anything else you don’t want your family to find… this option is for you. Enable Incognito mode by clicking the page icon on the top right and ‘new incognito window’ for a new window. Any saved bookmarks, downloaded files and sessions will work as normal but the browser history will be ignore when searched from the browser.
• Text zoom has gone back to the old font size change as before. IE revelutionised accessibility by zooming in on the entire page, images, text and all. Firefox soon followed but Google Chrome has ignored. Prior to this, only the actual text size increased often destroying expensive designs and carefully positioned layouts. Normally not a problem but if you’re target audience could be hard of sight, something to bare in mind when looking into a new or assessing your old web design.
• All the major keyboard shortcuts are followed, control-f finds within the page, F6 jumps to the address bar, F5 refreshes, control-t opens a new tab, I just wish they had my developer plugin with control-shift-y for CSS options etc I soreles miss from firefox!

Tags: Browser, Firefox, Google, Internet Explorer, Web Design, Web Development

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 at 2:24 am and is filed under Business, IT Security Tips, Search Engines, The Internet, Web Design, Web Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.