Google Chrome - Google's New Web Browser Goes Public with First Beta - Updated
Note: don't be thrown off by this image, the browser rocks.
Today Google jumped into the Internet browser war (it's not really a war) by releasing their first public Beta of their first ever browser. They went back to the start and rebuilt many things from scratch including an all new Javascript engine that processes Javascript faster than anything ever. Their concept is simple and effective: the point of the Internet is the pages - the content - not the browser and that today's content is application rich vs. the pages of the past that only displayed static HTML. Today people interact with pages more than ever so Google set out to make a browser that's designed with today's content in mind and today's security issues in mind.
They've designed the most minimal looking browser I have ever seen that opens lightning quick and renders pages faster than any browser I have used. Safari is pretty quick too, but this is at least as fast if not faster. They did away with many things including having a menu across the top and even having a full-time status bar across the bottom. When there's something that would normally appear in the status bar at the bottom a little blue status appears down there where the bar would be, then goes away when it's got nothing to say.
Stability of the browser is way ahead of other browsers by having every tab in a separate Windows process. With my Windows Task Manager open, I can see that as I open new tabs to load new pages, new chrome.exe processes are started. If I kill one of those processes it kills the corresponding tab in the browser and I get a cool "aw snap" page in its place (see header image). What does this mean? It means that if a page loaded into one tab in your browser freezes up the other tabs remain functional as well as the browser itself. Chrome appears to have two core processes in the Task Manager that are there at startup so those are what maintain the application while all additional chrome.exe processes are the individual pages you have open in tabs. Pretty slick. The browser actually has its own task manager where you can kill open pages and even scripts or Flash objects embedded within pages.
They've added in some handy features to help you get to your favorite sites. When you create a new tab (a blank tab) the default view of the tab shows you an index of page screenshots called "Most Visited". The browser actually keeps track based on your history and keeps screenshots handy. This makes it so you don't have to bookmark those sites that you visit all the time saving your bookmark menus for those little things you never visit but don't want to lose. It also provides you with a search box to search your browsing history as well as heads up info like recent bookmarks or a quick history list. Across the top of the page is a bookmarks toolbar much like what you'd have as a docked toolbar in other browsers. Of course there is also a link for "Other Bookmarks" which opens like a menu providing access to all of your bookmarks. They did away with the latest trend of fixing a search box into the design of the browser by making the address bar a little smarter than the average address bar. You can type searches straight into the address bar and hit enter - the default action is to return a Google search with that as your query. If you type in an actual URL then it takes you to that (not a search). So it's smart enough to tell the difference. I like that because I do a lot of searching and sometimes I search for a site instead of remembering the actual URL. This also simplifies things so that I'm always just clicking on that one box instead of choosing between two.
Something that Safari has had at least since I installed it on my Windows computers is an "offline" or "private" mode where nothing is added to the browser history, no cookies are saved and no content is cached past the life of that browsing session. Google has developed their own flavor of this called "incognito" mode. Google's is slightly more flexible in that you don't switch the entire browser over to this mode - only one window. It even has a different look to the application border so that you know it's the incognito window. You can even open links in this mode on the fly from the right-click menu. This enables you to not leave any tracks of what you were doing on the internet - perfect for when you're researching an anniversary gift for your wife on the house's main computer. You won't have to wipe the browser's history out just to cover your tracks!
Not that developing using this browser is a good idea yet (since probably nobody is using it yet), the developers out there will appreciate the element inspection tools and the Javascript console where you can type Javascript directly in and see output. I've tested it out by typing in things like 'window.innerHeight' and it gives me the value. It also helped me type that by suggesting as I typed which is SUPER handy when you can't fully remember a Javascript object's properties or methods. The inspector window gives you way more information than you need to know about the page your looking at in the browser including full HTML tree view and all CSS styles in the document. There's a ton of additional information - you'll just have to check it out for yourself.
Also under the Developer menu item is the Task Manager where you can see open tabs, flash content and other things listed with the amount of memory they are consuming and the CPU attention they are getting. This can be really handy for those who are developing web applications. There's even a little link in the window called "stats for nerds" which opens up a new tab with 'about:memory' loaded in the address bar. This page gives you ALL KINDS of memory use info about the browser app and all open tabs breaking it down into private, shared, total and virtual memory used by each element. Pretty much for nerds (as in I'm totally into it).
I'm going to be using this browser full time this week and I'll post up shortcomings, errors, issues and anything cool that I come across. I'm kinda excited. In the meantime, you can read up on Google's through process in creating the browser in the form of a nifty Google comic.
Update
The browser looks even tighter in Vista than it does in XP. The styling of the user interface at the top of the application ties in nicely with Vista's window frames. Very cool. I also discovered in Facebook that the profile info editor doesn't work. To be sure I tried it in Firefox and it worked splendidly. Get on that one Google! Facebookers can't edit their profiles with this browser! Additionally the spell checker underlines misspelled words but fails to provide suggestions. I'm sure that's on the way. Oh yeah, on my computer at work Chrome didn't want to import anything from my Firefox install but on my home computer it did it no problem.
