Emergent Future

Google Chrome Beta Review

Tuesday, 02 September 2008

Emergent Future rendered in Google Chrome

Well, Google has recently released it's new browser into a Windows-only Beta state. While I primarily use linux for my OS, I was happy enough to boot into Windows to give this a go. I can state right now, that Chrome, while only in a Beta state (of course, what isn't from Google?) is already in contention for being my browser of choice. I'll be up front though. While I use Firefox 3 (well, Iceweasel 3) for my primary browser, I've never been entirely happy with it. Sure, it is a great example of successful open source software, it is stable, it is feature filled with a ton of great plugins, and it works fairly well. However, it is far from perfect. Firefox is a bit on the bloated side and has been suffering from memory leaks for years. While Firefox 3 has certainly helped this, it hasn't entirely fixed the problem either. Firefox is also a little on the slow side as well, with the Gecko rendering engine which is, to say, not the best. So, this is where the new Google Chrome comes in. First off, it uses Webkit instead of Gecko and the difference is immediately noticeable. I actually thought that Firefox 3 was fairly speedy. Clearly, I had no idea what speed in a browser could be. There is a very noticeable difference in speed between the two browsers and very much in favor of Chrome.

Next up Google has taken a step in an interesting direction with how they're handling tabs and various elements of webpages. Each tab is separated into its own process. If your browser is acting slowly in one tab, because the webpage isn't coded well, or for some other reason, instead of the entire browser becoming sluggish, only that one tab is. The rest are totally separate. This also helps to eliminate the memory leak issue that Firefox has run into. When a tab is closed, the process is killed off and the memory is then totally freed.

Next up, the UI is amazing. It pretty much is the type of a UI that I would design - which I find rather amusing. Its very minimal but it packs in everything you need. I would certainly like a little more customization than what is currently present, but I imagine that will come with more time and development. What is here is quite beautiful though. It removes a lot of the UI for one. There's no menu bar at all, for example. Instead, on the navigation bar, there's two buttons that hold everything for page settings and another for browser settings. The URL bar is basically exactly the Awesome Bar from Firefox, but with a less grating name (The Omni Bar, I believe), which nicely combines URL input and searching via various different engines - Google being the default, of course.

Surprisingly, the positioning of the tabs makes a bigger difference than I would have ever expected. When Google stated that they were just putting them above the URL bar I thought to myself "Well, that makes sense, but so what?" The reason that this is nice, is because it places the tabs on the window bar, on the opposite side of the minimize/maximize/close window buttons. This normally totally wasted space is now very useful. It also keeps more viewing space open as well.

You know the status bar in Firefox, IE, and other browsers, right? That little bar at the bottom that displays useful things, like what link you are loading, what the URL of the link your mouse is hovering over is? I hate that bar. I love the information on it (hey, it prevents random rickrolling!) but, it always just took up space and seemed ugly to me. Chrome doesn't have a bar like this, instead a little, barely noticeable, box appears to give you the same information, then vanishes as quick as it appears. It saves the space without losing the helpful information.

Downloading is quite nice as well. No, there's no window that appears at all. Instead you click on a link, and a new tab is created with bars showing your downloads. Nice, simple, effectively, and it doesn't get in the way.

The default page for a new tab is nice as well. It reminds me very much of Opera's Speed Dial, but both more and less useful at the same time. Unlike Opera, you don't set what these pages are (unless that's changed in recent Opera builds). Instead, Google picks the pages you most commonly visit. In a way, that seems almost less useful than letting you pick the bookmarks... but that's the thing. You already have bookmarks. Instead, this page is just handy for launching common websites that you visit, as well has having a list of recent bookmarks, and quick access to a search of your web history.

It also has various other interesting features as well, that I'm discovering as I go. The task manager (shift + esc) is interesting and potentially useful for web development - I also appreciated the 'stats for nerds' link at the bottom of it. I also enjoyed being able to resize input box - which came in handy with this post, enabling me to view the entire thing without having to scroll. I also didn't have to worry about losing Firefox's built in spell checker either.

Oh, and because I am a Linux user and I do lean towards Free/Open Source Software ideals... Yes, Google Chrome is fully open source and I respect that greatly. I hope that other major browsers on the market make use of that and adopt some of the ideas Google has implemented.

So far, I am rather impressed. It still has a little ways to go yet, but Google Chrome is shaping up rather well. The browser needs more customization options and the interface is fairly different from what most people are use to, which is going to cause some confusion at first. It also does seem to have a few rendering issues yet - I had some trouble with the back end of my website, for example. However, it does seem to be well designed, and as it is still in a Beta phase, development should continue to, hopefully, fix some of the issues with it.
Tags: google chrome review browser

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