Google Chrome
Yet another browser and this time by Google, who not only have conquered search, but are now looking at competing against browser giants Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.
So what does Google Chrome have to offer?
Google Chrome uses Webkit as their open source rendering engine, same as what Safari uses and it is very fast and uses less memory ans is simple and clean. It has an efficient user interface, which is it’s biggest advantage, as well as stability, speed and security. We all hate browsers which fall over and crash, use up memory and close all your browser’s tabs when one tab fails. Not Google Chrome! The browser not only loads faster but also display websites at lightning speed. Good news for designers too, the browsers renders the same as Safari and Firefox.
Google Chrome is asynchronous, so you don’t have to wait for the browser to load JavaScript or anything else before it continues to load the rest of the website. It’s a multi process browser where different processes can occur at the same time, therefore if one tab (website) fails for whatever reason the whole browser wont shut down, only the tab will. Although a multi-process design means using more memory, in the longer run there will be less memory bloat. This means, when you close a tab in Google Chrome that whole process is closed. With other browsers although the tab is closed the process is still running, hence not reducing the amount of memory that is being taken up.
Google Chrome also has its own task manager, which enables you to check which sites are using the most memory and abusing your CPU. You can even see which plug-ins are using the most memory in the same tab, which is helpful to recognise who is misbehaving and why.
The tabbing system is great too, because of the separation of the browser and tab processes, you can move a tab from one window into another, great if you have a few too many tabs open and you need to re-arrange your windows. You can even open a new tab in a private ‘igcognito’ mode, which lets you browse without saving the sites you visit in your browser history and without leaving any traces, such as cookies after you close the window. When you open a new tab, you wont see your homepage or a blank tab but a page of 9 mini windows of websites you have frequently visited and may want to go back to, along with a list of websites on the right hand side that you have searched the most.
Google Chrome is constantly being tested on thousands of web pages using the massive infrastructure they have for crawling and spidering websites. On the other hand they have a long way to go before they can really compete against Internet Explorer and Firefox for browser market share. However, being open source, we doubt it will be long before Google Chrome is used as widely as Google’s search engine is.
Advantages: Fast, simple, clean, multi process, open source
Disadvantages: Tool bars not available yet