Chrome Plating

Earlier this week, Google introduced a beta version of its latest piece of desktop software: Google Chrome, another web browser in an already crowded market.

I’ve used it only for a little while, but I do have some first impressions (I’ll do a review later if I feel it is warranted).  First off, as I mentioned in the blurb, there are plenty of web browsers out there now.  In addition to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, there is the popular Firefox, Apple’s Safari, Opera, and even Netscape is still kicking around.  As a freelance web developer, the thought of another browser had me a bit miffed; it means I have yet another platform to test for.  Luckily, Chrome (named after the scrollbars, toolbars, menus and such that make up a browser’s appearance) is built on the WebKit API—the same API used in Safari.  In preliminary testing, it looks like Chrome renders like Safari (which is quite good).

Onto my real observances.  Chrome is fast, especially with client-side scripting like JavaScript (Google’s own apps are a good example).  It is also clean and simple; it reserves little screen real estate for itself, leaving most of it for the web pages you are viewing (which is presumably why you are using it).  The address bar is like a search bar, so whatever you type in there will look through your history, bookmarks, and the web for content.  This is handy for me, as I am not too good at bookmarking; I leave my history setting at over a month, and this allows me to better find things from it.  Chrome was also very good at importing my bookmarks and history from Firefox.

Is Chrome good enough to make me switch?  Not at this point.  Chrome uses less memory and CPU power, but I’m pretty well entrenched in Firefox and I don’t run into CPU or memory problems with it.  I’ll keep Chrome in my browser stash (along with the other five) for now.