| Google Chrome review.
Seeing how I haven't installed
any beta software lately (yeah
right), I figured I jump in with everyone else on the net and see what's
up with Google's new entry in the browser market. If you haven't heard
about Chrome yet, then just do a
Google
Search on it and you'll have plenty to read for the foreseeable
future. The install was small 468k so the download was fast and the
install took about 15 seconds so in well under a minute I went from
"click" to "play". Not too shabby. So, if you too are interested in
giving a new browser a shot, here are a few cool features that stick out
One box for everything Web search. Web
history. Address bar. Suggestions as you type. One unified box serves
all your browsing needs. My Take: This is VERY cool. Ever
hated having to enter search terms in a separate edit box in the
browser? Not any more, all the features are integrated into the single
address/search/history/etc bar. New Tab Page
Every time you open a new tab, you'll see a visual sampling of
your most visited sites, most used search engines, and recently
bookmarked pages and closed tabs. Other browsers My Take:
Been there, done that with IE8 and never really found a use for it
although some might. There doesn't seem to be a way to configure this
on or off but hopefully some day there will be an "about:blank" option
for the new tab page. Application Shortcuts
Use web apps without opening your browser. Application
shortcuts can directly load your favorite online apps. My
Take: This feature has been available in FireFox for some time so
nothing earth shattering here. Dynamic Tabs
You can drag tabs out of the browser to create new windows,
gather multiple tabs into one window or arrange your tabs however you
wish -- quickly and easily. My Take: This is pretty cool.
There have been times I've wanted to re-organize my 30-tab browser
session into a couple of windows and this would be a very easy way to do
it. Crash Control Every tab you're
using is run independently in the browser, so if one app crashes it
won't take anything else down. My Take: Not sure how I feel
about this one. Each tab runs it's own process and already I've got 4
processes going each at about 30MB or memory usage. How is this going
to scale for the 30+tab user. I like the crash protection but splitting
windows up across process boundaries might be a better option unless
they can reduce the memory footprint on each tab process. Incognito
Mode Don't want pages you visit to show up in your
web history? Choose incognito mode for private browsing. My
Take: This feature ROCKS! Ever worried about clicking on that link
that your co-worked forwarded to you? Worry no longer, with Incognito
mode, pages viewed will not appear in the browser history and they won't
leave any other traces. Not that I would need that feature though...
Safe Browsing Google Chrome warns you
if you're about to visit a suspected phishing, malware or otherwise
unsafe website. My Take: Again, this is in all the other
mainstream browsers out there so it's par for the course. Instant
Bookmarks Want to bookmark a web page? Just click
the star icon at the left edge of the address bar and you're done.
My Take: This will likely save the speed-bookmarker some time, but
since I rarely create bookmarks I'm not sure how it will impact my day
to day experience. Importing settings When
you switch to Google Chrome, you can pick up where you left off with
all the bookmarks and passwords from your existing browser. My
Take: Again, par for the course. They needed to do this to get folks
to use it. Simpler Downloads No
intrusive download manager; you see your download's status at the bottom
of your current window. My Take: This is another one that
is awesome in my opinion. I HATE the downloads window with a passion so
this will likely be a nice feature to avoid that extra popup hitting me
in the face every time I download a file. Developer
Tools Included in the menus, are the developer
options of "View Source", "Debug Javascript", "Javascript console", and
"Task Manager". My Take: Since they wrote their own
Javascript engine for this release, they better darn well have a
Javascript debugger in there. The Task Manager (Shift+ESC) is a nice
little feature that will show you the memory usage for each component in
the Chrome environment (windows, tabs, plugins, etc). If you are big
into stats, then check out the "about:memory" shortcut where you can get
all the memory details of each of the tasks. With all this, it still
falls way short of the WebDeveloper plugin for FireFox. Until more
debugging tools come into play, it'll be hard to pry me from FireFox.
Configuration The browser was built
with simplicity in mind and there are only a very small set of
configuration options to worry about. My Take: In the
configuration window there are 3 tabs with only a handful of settings
total such as proxy server settings, search engine defaults, password
preferences, and download locations. I say AMEN to this one as I find
it hard to believe anyone needs all gazillion settings that are in IE
and FireFox. Final Thoughts The best
features by far are the Incognito Mode, Single Address/Search/History
bar, and the new download manager. Oh, and it's pretty snappy to boot.
But, to get me to switch full-time, there'll have to be some more
developer tool integration. But, keep in mind that this is a beta
project so I have high hopes that FireFox will finally have met it's
match. Oh, and as an added benefit, DevCentral works GREAT in Chrome!
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