When a new browser enters the market, people generally split up into two categories. The first group thinks, “Great! Anything that moves us towards a more standards oriented environment is a good thing!” The other group, neither better nor worse, thinks to themselves, “Ohh gee. Yet another browser that I’ll have to test my sites in. Enter Chrome. Today, Google officially entered the browser wars. No matter which group you fall into, you’ll inevitably find yourself downloading this new browser.
If you compare the browsers of 1996 to the browsers of today, you’ll find that, truthfully, they haven’t evolved that much. Sure, they’re more standards aware. But generally speaking, they’ve essentially remained unchanged over the last decade. Google is hoping to change that.
The Start Up
If you haven’t already, pay a quick visit to Chrome’s site and download the browser. *Note – at this time, Chrome is only available for Windows. A mac browser will emerge within the next few months.
Google is one of the pioneers of the concept “Less is more”. Their home page is laughably simple – but it works beautifully. Keeping in line with this branding, Chrome is deceptively plain, in reference to its UI. Open Firefox or Explorer and you’ll find enough options to bury your grandmother with: File, Edit, History, etc. Chrome, on the other hand, simply has an “Options” and “Tools” menu, which can be accessed via the icons on the far right side of the browser window.
Opera?
Not only did Google borrow webkit as its rendering engine, but it also adopted the concept of a home page specifically tailored to you. Many users prefer Opera’s “speed dial” home page – which allows the user to quickly access their favorite sites. However, Chrome has taken it one step further. The “speed
dial” links on your home page will dynamically change depending on the most frequently accessed sites. Pretty nifty, eh?
V8
Quite possibly the most exciting feature of Chrome is that the developers built the javascript engine from the ground up. It is only natural that as our web applications continue to advance, the old engines must be rebuilt. Consider Flickr, Twitter, and Gmail, to name a few. Sites like these are leading the pack as browsers desperately try to keep up, like an old man who smokes ten packs of cigarettes a day. The old way is dying, and a new faster engine is being born. Luckily, keeping in line with Google’s “We want the web to be better” philosophy, V8′s core is independent of the browser. This means that future browsers can implement this engine if they desire.
In laymen’s terms, v8 = faster Javascript!
Separate Processes
You know the drill. You have eight tabs open in your browser – all serving a purpose – but suddenly, a plugin goes into destroy mode and you find yourself having to “force quit” the program. This is because when a plugin combines with an html document, they both run in the same process. So if one “shuts down”, they all suffer. To compensate for this shortcoming, the creators of Chrome created a separate process specifically for plugins. Imagine this: In one tab, you’re running an app that is extremely memory heavy. Rather than slowing down the entire browser, the processes in one tab will have zero effect on the others. This is because each web application is run in its own environment. Easily, this is the most appealing feature of Chrome.
Other Important Features
- Gears. This essentially adds an API that will allow the browser to be extended.
- Sandboxing. This will allow for greater protection against malware. Constantly, Chrome will update its list of “dangerous” sites. If you happen to access one of these sites, you’ll receive a warning.
- Omnibox. Each tab will have its own address bar, called the “Omnibox”. Not only will you be able to enter addresses, but it also offers searching, and search suggestions – based upon site ranking.
How Will This Affect My Web Developing?
The answer to that question still remains to be known. As when any new browser is released/updated, I spent twenty minutes this afternoon checking all of my clients’ sites. Everything worked perfectly! Keep in mind that Chrome is still using the webkit engine. At least for the time being, the main differences that this browser will bring are UI related. Even so, I look forward to the developer extensions that will surely be released in the coming months.
Will you have to completely scrap all of your knowledge because of what this browser represents? Absolutely not. If anything, Google is working to allow you to be even more creative when developing.
So What’s the Verdict?
Though it’s hard to decide in just a day, Google’s Chrome is a fast, beautiful, and simple browser. Honesty, would you want anything else?
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I’ve been using it for a while and think its great. It replaced Firefox as my default browser.. and its not even the final version! But then again, what Google app isn’t out of beta?
Another feature I like is Dynamic tabs, which, because each tab is a separate process, means you can tear tabs off into separate windows easily. And you can put then back again. Incognito mode seems like it would be useful if you were… shopping for a gift for your girlfriend and you didn’t want her to see it. (Right…)
It’s also blazing fast.. faster than Firefox for me and any other browser I’ve used.
If Chrome had these three features–A Sidebar, RSS Feed ticker, and CSS3 Text Shadows–I’d switch to 100% Chrome tonight. That is one slick browser.
I think it’s great that shows up one more competitor in this market – greater competition – better result for us :)
Of course I`m not sure Google Chrome could ever be better agains FireFox and it’s great collection of addons, which are irreplaceable! Thanks for article! I`m checking Chrome right now too!
I’ve been using it for an hour or so. I can honestly say that I’m not really impressed with it (and no, I’m not those types who consider Google as their God, even though I use quite a lot of their products). I mean, the concept is beautiful, but it just hasn’t reached its full potential, yet.
I’ve gotten used to the tabs being on top of the URL box (which actually makes sense). I’ve experienced lightning-fast javascript performance, and most (not all) of my websites were rendered correctly.
A bug that I experienced immediately is that clicking the middle-mouse button doesn’t do anything in the browser (while in other browsers, it displays the mouse scrollbar-thing), which is VERY annoying for me. Also, there’s isn’t any RSS notifications that I could find (meaning notifying the user that there’s an RSS feed available on a particular page/site.
Being Google, I doubt this browser will get out of beta anytime soon. Heck, Gmail is still in beta.
The feature that I want most is plugin/theme capability. Other than that, it’s not that bad.
I like it a lot, but until they have add-ons, (*cough* Stumble Upon *cough*) I dont think I could switch over.
It’s about time SOMEONE gave Opera some credit. Opera invented speed dial, tabs, and the “awesome bar”, among other things. Opera never gets mass exposure cuz it has such low market share, but it’s really an innovative browser.
Just found it this morning and will give a go this afternoon.
Google owns YOUR contents if you agree to section 11 of the Chrome EULA:
11. Content license from you
11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.
11.2 You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.
11.3 You understand that Google, in performing the required technical steps to provide the Services to our users, may (a) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media. You agree that this license shall permit Google to take these actions.
It’s a great browser for sure, but it won’t be mainstream for quite a while. The start up speed is amazingly fast.
But there are some bugs still. For one some css markup make fonts out of whack (I’ve heard one of them is text-shadow). You could check my blog for an example of messy font rendering. The whole sidebar text is messed up (on mouse out). Also for some reason I can’t use the auto scroller (you know, when you click your mouse wheel to scroll).
Other than that 2 main point, chrome is a great browser. And it sure is bringing some new things to the market. I hope to see it grow very well.
Good Point Steve
I have been using Opera for a long time and I loved this browser.
Chrome is the browser that I’ve been looking for. It’s so simple and clean and boy does it work fast. All the previous sites that I have built for my clients also work perfectly. I think google actually said that if your site looks good in safari 3.01 that they will look just fine in chrome. Like Jeffrey said, once web dev. plugins start coming out that work nicely with the browser it will hands be my default browser. For the mean time I have so many add-ons in firefox that I rely on to work that it wont be replaced completely any time soon. Nice article.
all i can say is really nice. but firefox is still the best and i agree that Opera is the first to have the feature available in chrome
i have it installed in my PC.
I’ve just downloaded and had a mess around. I’d have to say it’s not as good as I expected. The UI is a bit bland like Internet Explorer and the omnibox just isn’t as good as Opera’s or Firefox’s. On the plus side, Chrome is ultra fast. It can run Javascript which Firefox and Opera just choke on.
In my opinion Opera is still the best browser around in terms of user experience and Firefox is still my default browser due to all the plugins.
So far I love chrome. Can’t wait for some developer plugins. As far as i am concerned…. any new weapon to destroy IE is fine with me, lol.
Great browser, nice and simple!! bit buggy with my gmail, but overall good start
I found it is a good fast browser!
Of course, all my sites look fine in it—it’s webkit essentially.
I don’t like the speed dial, I prefer Operas or fastdial addon for firefox.
I don’t like the omnisearch, it’s confusing as to whether it’s somewhere you’ve already been, or somewhere that google is showing you.
It is blazing fast with javascript pages and combined with google gears, once you’ve been to a page once before, you haven’t seen this speed yet. MSN.com took 7 seconds to load from a cleared cache in it, then once it was cached and “geared”, it took under 1 second to fully display. On a 2MB/768Kb ADSL line.
The best things about Chrome are: it’s completely open source, use webkit as the rendering engine, and V8 seem awesome.
The article here doesn’t mention it’s open source, but Google’s video about Chrome does. I think it very important that it’s open source, this way the whole community can benefit for any innovations Google has made and in the future Google can benefit from innovations made by the open source community.
this is really nive one. but there is a querry is it free or just for trial version? because when i’ve downed it there is a thankyou msg “thak you for trying chrome”!
what does it sense?
“any new weapon to destroy IE is fine with me, lol.” – Ara Abcarians, love it! Totally agree with you there!
I love Firefox, has been my default choice for browser since version 1, and is still the best browser out there by far. But I must say Chrome looks very promising indeed, I was watching my housemate play around with the Javascript debugger and process manager – very nice features indeed. I just wanna see a Mac release now so I can have a play with it!
@Jatin: I gues the message apears, because you test the BETA version and I bet Google can gather a lot more information about user behaviors.
love the new Chrome browser its got a simple look and is FAST! but i still use Opera as my defult.
what i love about Opera is the speed dail similar to what Chrome has and the magic wand witch stores all your passwords and the trash can if you close a window it is easy to open up again as it is allways in the trash and finaly as in Chrome if you click on something on a site that sould open in another window it just opens in a new tab.
i hope Chrome will bring us some good plugins :D
please type in the browser URL: “:%” (without the quotes -> :%) and the complete browser crashes! Lol, bug!
Waiting for a Mac release lol, but while I’m waiting, ill stick to FireFox.
Great article :)
I wasn’t so impressed with the browser – It has some great features… is it good enough to replace my FF or Opera…Not yet! let’s wait and see
Here is the (funny) User Agent given by Chrome:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US)
AppleWebKit/525.13 (KHTML, like Gecko)
Chrome/0.2.149.27
Safari/525.13
It could be useful.
The interface is ‘DA BOMB! I’m downloading!
waiting for plug-in stuffs…
till then firefox !
For everyone saying that they want to wait for developer addons, right click on a page and click on “Inspect Element”. It is essentially Firebug with YSlow already plugged in. I think I actually prefer Chrome’s developer tool as well, it found a js file I was still including (with symfony through the overall site config) that I forgot I already deleted and stopped using it. Firebug never told me that I was still including that file.
So far the things that Chrome brings to the table that no one else does:
1. Compiled JavaScript
2. Multi-threaded browsing capability
3. Sandbox mentality to tabs
4. Fully open source, unlike any of the other major browsers.
5. Compiled JavaScript (I know I already said this but it sounds sooo nice to say it)
As web developers we need to be hoping and pushing for Google Chrome to make a HUGE splash. Chrome is the way the web should be viewed; Large scale JavaScript apps that work as well as a C++ app on your desktop, and standards compliant browsers that we don’t have to hack. We are in 2008, coming up on 2009, it is absolutely amazing that we are still basing our browsing capabilities off of 10-15 year old ideas. Why haven’t we compiled JavaScript before? It makes sense to do so. Why haven’t we built process independent tabs that are sandboxed to increase security? Everyone said that Firefox 3, IE8, Opera 9.2 are all the “next-gen” of browsers but that is wrong, they are 3 old men with fancy new suits and a little viagra, Chrome is next gen and once some developers fork the code and start providing alternative versions of Chrome, it will start taking over.
I just found out that the opacity for font doesn’t really work in Chrome. check out http://www.smarthouse.ch and check out the topnavigation. if the links aren’t active they should have an opacity of 50%. the links in the leftnavigation work ’cause they’re images, i guess.
Haven’t tried it yet being a Linux user, but already I am conflicted. What I read and my past experiences tell me that this will be a great browser and I want it, but seriously, when/where will they stop? I notice somebody above thinks Googles entry into the browser market will be good for competition, but for how long? These guys can easily destroy all the hard work Mozilla have done getting market share, and the iminent failure of the Microsoft model will leave Google with yet another monopoly. They are mirroring the internet, have practically total control over how we search it, and are now bidding to control the software we use to view it. Next will be the hardware (gphone) and the OS that it runs. Total domination by a single party of the most powerful resource on the planet. IM SCARED :S
I really love it , im using right now , woop woop , but i do prefer speed dial to most visted sites , because when you clear your history it goes :S …. wish there was a speed dial option
I’d use it if I could tag my bookmarks and be able to search by tags through my omnibar. I’ve been doing a lot of bookmark-tagging lately.
Would also be nice to have a way to subscribe to RSS feeds through it.
Verdict: They stole the logo design from Simon, a 1980′s electronic memory game.
Some benchmarks show its rocking!
http:/chrome-tips.blogspot.com
Some are missing the point and just want to hate on Google.
Being based on WebKit, this browser is on par with Safari and any standards based browser right out of the box, as WebKit passes Acid2 and Acid3 tests.
It will have bugs. Firefox wasn’t perfect either. It’s only been out a day, give them credit.
I don’t care about plugins, plugins are part of the reason Firefox likes to chomp up 150-200MB of my memory. The only one I need is WebDev toolbar, the rest aren’t all that great, admit it. I left Chrome on for about 4 or 5 hours with many tabs open. It was only using 7MB of system memory. How about that? That is enough to get me to switch over right there.
Their goal is to create a BROWSER to browse, I think they nailed it. It’s quick, its clean, the interface is not cluttered. I think it rules.
Also, I have nothing to hide, Google can look at whatever they want of mine.
I talked about it three years back, suggested my ops manager at Google, and the reply was Google would never get into a browser war, hehe, :D I knew it would eventually happen, I dropped in a whole lot of other ideas too, including a free to use Google O.S; any ways I am kinda happy, kinda confused, Chrome sure has some nice features, Its built on apple’s safari and mozilla’s Firefox and a lot of home work by Googlers so it hell has to be pretty functional, I am just waiting to see what else do they roll out, I am no Google hater, but the sure are pushing me to the edge, why? check out KNOL, and may be you could read a lil more of my rantings on http://mutantofevolution.blogspot.com
I found it is a fast browser and really simple. However, it seems to start a new process each time I open a site on a new tab within the same window. Weird stuff.
Already using, and it is great. it has a few bugs to work out, and some minor tweaks to make it better, but, it will more than likely be my default browser very soon.
My word… this is super fast. I am a huge fox fan, but this is really something. Heck, I’ve even got a huge amount of memory available which firefox would of eaten twice over. Okay, it is very buggy… but so was the fox in the beginning. Seems google is out to take a big chunk of the market. Capitalism at it’s best/worst depending how you view it.
@Greg: Dynamic tabs are also part of Firefox. Also dynamic links, you can click and drag hyperlinks on webpages from one tab, to another tab, or a completely seperate window, or a completely seperate program. Same with images and chunks of txt.
It’s nothing new I’m afraid ;)
However, it will be interesting to see how Google take this on, will they do the “we’re working for developers!” while also undermining all the hard work Firefox have done in trying to bring web standards, while crushing the poorly made IE6/7 – or will they really work hard with all the browsers out there to make sure everyone is using standardised practises so web developers, like most of us reading this, don’t have to constantly change the way we’re coding in order to make it look right in every single different broswer out there.
Like the article says, we won’t know this for some time.
chrome is faster than the others, i like it but i cant change with mozilla now. Also i want to google toolbar with google chrome :)
I’ve been a hardcore Firefox user since I can remember… But that commitment has largely been due to the fantastic developer tools and the fact that Firefox always seems to get it right.
I’m sure Chrome will turn out to be a fantastic browser, but I won’t even touch it until there’s some sort of Firebug equivalent released, and even then… because of the particular type of clients I work for, the underdog browsers aren’t even considered for compatibility/rendering testing of sites. As far as they’re concerned, Safari and Opera don’t exist, and any Mac specific issue isn’t worth addressing.
Once Chrome can tote an impressive number of users they’ll be taken a bit more serious. You have to keep in mind most individuals wouldn’t be the least bit inclined to install another browser on a box that comes standard with Internet Explorer, because its not a matter that concerns the average user.
@Jake Holman: Firefox does not have dynamic tabs like Google. It is not the same feature at all. In Chrome each tab is a seperate process, essentially a seperate browser. If one tab errors out, the rest of them are fine. That is almost like saying that Windows Vista and Windows XP are exactly the same with just a new skin. In Vista, if a window craps out, just the window is affected and your other windows work just fine due to each having their own dedicated video memory.
I think you are also missing the overall point here, as it seems a lot of developers are. Chrome is open source, so it can be extended and forked to fit any need. They are using WebKit and V8, neither of which are tied into Chrome, obviously. This means that Google is already trying to push for standards. I fail to see how any of this can be tied back to “OMG All of Firefox’s hard work is lost because Google is using Webkit (a more standards compliant renderer than Firefox’s) and V8!”
Firefox, IE, and Opera all fail in the simple fact that each has their quirks that don’t follow standards completely. Why are there specific CSS rules that you can use in Firefox but are not part of the standards? What does that help when it comes to making the web standards compliant? So far Webkit is the purest of the renderers. It offers the most compliant renderer available.
In all I wish people would actually look at the feature set that Chrome has, and realize that this is stuff that is NOT in any other browser right now. None of the other browsers do multi-threaded browsing, no other browser has compiled JavaScript, no other browser works on a sandboxing mentality. Yes, they have some proven features that the other browsers have, but they included because they are proven. They have a version of Firebug, YSlow, Speed Dial, and AwesomeBar (horrible name). Was it copying for copying sake? No, those are features that people want in a browser, so if you make a new browser you have to add them. It is like saying that GM is copying Ford because they included a steering wheel and air conditioning.
The JS is fast, but can we get some html/css rendering benchmarks?
@Brandon: Haha, point very well taken! I guess I shouldn’t jump the gun so quickly :(
Google is on a quest to dominate the internet even further isn’t it? I hope they step up the developer extensions very soon. I’d to see what they’d come up with. I bet no matter what they can’t beat Firefox anytime soon.
… In Chrome each tab is a separate process, essentially a separate browse. That just means more MEMORY.
Indeed interesting to see if they can get into the browser war, they got a pretty solid advertising scene to stand upon. :)
I have been looking at it now and I must say it’s sleek and fast, very fast. Although wasn’t able to install it on my Vista x64 (yeah I know) but on my other machine I got it up and running. I have a few problems with the scrolling, it stops working from time to time and a few of my DHTML/Javascript doesn’t work.
Anyway, nice to see something new and fresh, I’m not sure I’m going to us it though.