Google Chrome – Google’s Free Web Browser

Looks like all the MANY, MANY rumours of Google releasing their own web browser have finally come true.

Welcome, Google Chrome. (the link is live, go download Google Chrome)

Some Cool Features in Google Chrome

The developers of Chrome have really gone all out on the performance of this browser, especially with regards to JavaScript. Which is a GREAT thing, considering Google’s biggest apps use AJAX/JavaScript heavily.

One of the things I’m looking forward to seeing is the “Task Manager“. This window shows which tabs (and therefore, which sites) are causing the most CPU usage and memory usage. FireFox 3 really improved it’s memory handling, but every now and again, when I have about 15 tabs open (which I often do, while I’m writing this I have 9 open) FireFox hangs when opening GMail and Google Reader…

Here’s a screenshot of the Google Chrome Task Manager at work (click the image for a full-sized version):

The world has really been “raving” about IE8’s “porn mode“, which Microsoft have officially named “InPrivate”. While browsing in this mode your session will be undetectable (theoretically), and no trace of that session will be left on your computer. Google Chrome seems to have a similar feature, except you can select a specific tab that will browse without leaving any trace of it’s session on your computer. Great stuff if you’re reading personal ads while on your work’s computer.

Tabs and the way we use them have also completely changed. They’ve been inverted so they appear at the top of the browser, but that’s not just a UI change. You can now drag tabs between browser windows, and all of their history goes along with it. Effectively, each tab is it’s own browser (with it’s own URL bar, named “The OmniBox“), so it doesn’t matter where it sits…

Talking about the OmniBox, personally it looks like Mozilla’s Ubiquity has some similarities, being able to search and translate and complete your bookmarks…

Chrome without Chrome

The “Chrome” of a browser is the actual window with the toolbar, the URL bar, the bookmarks/links area.

Google Chrome looks like it now allows you to “create a GMail application”, in that it removes the browser chrome, so that you only see GMail’s website. This means that you hopefully won’t realise you’re using GMail inside a browser.

And, with the speed of the JavaScript rendering engine (and broadband), hopefully it won’t feel like you’re on the internet as well.

Of course, what about if you CAN’T connect to the internet? Well, there’s always Google Gears, which is built into the browser. Now, we only need GMail to support Google Gears. (If you’re looking for an example of the benefits of Google Gears, read my article “WordPress 2.6 and Google Gears“).

Here’s a pic of an example with Google Reader (so that I didn’t have to go blanking out all my email addresses for a GMail example). Click for a full-size version of the image:

(All these features are obviously available for any website, not just GMail).

The Usual Suspects

And, of course, along with the 2 cool features above, there seem to be some other more expected features, like “Autocomplete in your address bar”, funky favourites, and built in functionality that you needed extensions in FireFox to do.

Interesting Notes about the Development

You could probably just read all this from the comic (linked to below), but here are a few things that stood out.

The testing of the browser took place on millions of websites. But, probably not only the little lame homepages that would obviously look good (or look bad?). Because Google caches so many web pages while crawling the internet, AND, because they rank web pages, they know which ones have more chances of being visited, and they have easy access to them. So they were able to run automatic (and manual) tests against MILLIONS of sites.

The JavaScript Virtual Machine is supposedly SUPER FAST! Of course, that means browsing your mail in GMail and reading my blog in Google Reader just got a whole lot faster.

References

So, to see other people’s opinions on this, go visit Philipp Lenssen’s “Google Blogoscoped” blog.

You can also read Google’s official announcement.

Or, read the comic from Google with more info about Google Chrome: Google Chrome Comic (or download the PDF version – which doesn’t seem to work, oh well).

And, I’m eagerly awaiting Matt Cutts’ post with more info for advanced users (which I would consider myself ). He’s apparently been using the browser for a while now, so he should definitely know his stuff.

Final Thoughts

I guess it’s a good thing that Google and Mozilla signed their ad deal recently, renewing the deal until 2011, because with Google’s brand behind them, this will DEFINITELY give FireFox and hopefully Internet Explorer a run for their money.

It all benefits us, because the more competition, the more we’ll get from the browsers while trying to be won over…

Speaking of competition, I can’t wait for a Mobile Google Chrome. All I can say is, when that comes out, Opera Mobile and Opera Mini (which I love) better watch out…