Hot on the heels of the surprisingly improved Internet Explorer 8 BETA 2 release, Google has released its own browser, Google Chrome. Google Chrome is a very lightweight, open-source browser based on the Web-kit engine.
Acid3 results
For the heavy users of browser features and customization such as myself, Chrome is not going to be taking over top spot, but for the layman, the instant load-up and extremely fast loading that may actually surpass Safari is pretty attractive.
Chrome features the usual standard features, though, including tabs, saved passwords, private "Incognito" browsing and phishing protection. It even has a developer console, though with much to be desired. Absolutely baffling is the lack of a Google search bar (though technically the address bar functions as such).
The innovation seen in Google Chrome is in the crash protection design. Each tab is a separate threaded process, meaning if there becomes an issue with a site that causes the browser to crash, it won't be the entire browser, but rather that individual tab that goes down. In addition to protecting against taking out your entire browser session, it also limits bloated memory hogging as the memory usage is a per-tab basis and leaks become less significant. The downside seems to be a base increase in memory usage per tab.
As if installation wasn't simplified enough for people, now downloading the 400KB executable downloads the full installation files and automatically installs it to your Application Data folder in Documents and Settings without the option of a specific location or any files in the traditional Program Files folder.
Double-click to open/close tabs, address bar opening in a new tab, adblock, flashblock etc. are all absent. Basically, what was listed above, is the browser.
Google Chrome is light and fast. A new standard for minimalist browsers and a welcome addition to the market.
Same here - it looks nice, and the fact that it loads up stupidly quick is awesome. Shame that it's missing a few things, but hey, I guess that's where later iterations come in, no?
GG, my browser testing goes way way back to when I was first looking for an Internet Explorer replacement. I really didn't like the early Mozilla browsers and really hated Netscape, so I had to look through the obscure space. I had done this multiple times, so just having tried so many to begin with, it's not much effort to keep up with the latest.
It's more interesting to me now as with the improvements even just in speed caused me to make K-Meleon, which I had used for at least 5 years, a secondary browser.
Oh, oh! I just found an update for a browser I've been waiting a REALLY long time for. You can expect another browser blog soon
Well, benig the MS fanboy I am, I gave IE10 a 2 week trial, and it's back to the Google trojan-horse, Firefox.
I wanted something independent of Google, which I guess could also be Opera? But IE10, while improved, is still not great. Most of this has to do with how it interacts with LastPass, and this site, but also it forces too much loss of screen sapce with toolbars. And, well, sites just don't work as well.
So it's back to Firefox.
Depending on what you consider independent of Google, Chromium may fit. Google Chrome is based on Chromium, the open-source web browser project. There is no built-in tracking, nor Google Updater service.
Thanks yodereko, I will give that a try.