Google Chrome

Google Chrome, The Lightning Fast Browser Is Out. My Somewhat Detailed Review And First Impressions.

This was the first thing I noticed about Google Chrome (Google’s new Web browser). It really is blazing fast, much faster then Firefox. It terms of page loading time and startup time for the browser itself, both are incredible. It also imported all my favorites/saved passwords/browsing history from Firefox upon installation (optional of course) , which was excellent!

Another very nice feature was the auto-complete for addresses entered into the address bar, which differs from Firefox’s auto-complete is that it will only auto complete addresses you’ve already visited. But the most important feature of all is that the tabs have been seperated into independent processes, so that each tab will act as a complete seperate process which means that if a certain tabs hangs or crashes you can just close it without affecting the rest of the browser, a side (and very cool feature) of that also is that you can drag tabs outside the main tabs and they’ll be transformed into a whole new window.

It also has an “incognito” surfing mode, which means that you can surf the web without any of your actions being recorded and saved, your browsing history will not be saved neither will your cookies, and that tab functions in read only mode which means that no scripts can write anything to your system. what you do in that tab stays in that tab, and when you close it, its all gone. like it never happened. neato.

However, Google chrome does need a little getting used to, the interface is very simplistic to the point that it can get a little bit confusing, for example, the “Home” button is by default removed from the U.I, and you’d have to go into settings and add it manually. Another thing that might be confusing to beginners and new users is the absence of the traditional menu bar altogether (file - view - edit - tools, etc…). Another thing is the lack of a drop-down bar for the last visited websites, Chrome compensates that by the use of the auto-completion feature that will automatically try to complete the URL you’re trying to get to once you type in the first few letters, but still this could be somewhat of a nuisance.

Overall, I Think Google Chrome is very very promising, sure it has some minor bugs here and there, and perhaps it needs some more tweaking, but its still brand new and still in Beta, plus its an open source project which means that it will have lots of potential for further development.

So that’s my quick review of Google Chrome, I am not sure If i’m ready to replace Firefox just yet, but i am using Chrome more and more, perhaps i will make the change when Chrome starts supporting plugins that will do everything Firefox does for me, but till then I;m just gonna play around with Chrome, well, mainly just because its so damn fast