Chrome is delivered as a beta product, which means it isn’t quite finished, but like most Google products that are released as beta, it is surprisingly stable and polished. Chrome is also distributed as an open source project, which means that the underlying code for the browser is freely available to download, and you can make any changes you want to the code and totally recreate the browser – as long as you too share the code you add or alter. The underlying rendering engine is the same engine as used by Apple’s Safari, which is called Webkit. It is this rendering engine that contributes to its amazingly fast page loading capabilities. It also handles javascript quickly, which makes web based applications work quickly. So how does it compare to the other browsers out there?
Well, I’m currently typing and posting this article using Google Chrome, and so far I am impressed. It is very clean and simple in design, but has some innovative and powerful features. I personally like the dynamic tabs, which let you drag a tabbed window out of the application to create a new window, and even add it to another existing window. If you have multiple monitors, this is pretty neat. The way Chrome handles download is also pretty cool – it puts them at the bottom of the page and has a button that lets you choose what you want to do with the downloaded file. How does it compare to my favorite browser, Mozilla’s Firefox? It currently is missing the main feature that makes Firefox so great – and that is the thousands of useful add-ons that let you customize it to do exactly what you want it to do. I do like it better than Safari on Windows, but since Chrome is not yet available for the Mac, it is hard to compare. Safari shines on a Mac, but is awkward on a PC because it neglects the Windows design standards set in place and tries to look like an OS X application instead of a Windows one. I have not used Opera in a long time (except on Nintendo’s Wii Console), and honestly have not had a reason to revisit it ever since Firefox came out, so unfortunately I really have no opinion on it. As far as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is concerned, I still think it is the worst browser ever written. Microsoft is hard at work on Internet Explorer 8, and has just released a public beta version to try out. I still have a bad taste in my mouth from version 7, and from the screenshots it looks like more of the same. The reviews for IE 8 have been quite positive though, so it might be worth a try. But lets be honest, it took me less than 1 minute to download and install Chrome. With Internet Explorer, you’d better have a good 20 minutes to get it up and running.
I’m excited to see what the future holds for this sleek and fast browser. More standards driven web browsers out there means that more websites will be forced to work on different kinds of computers and internet devices, and that is a very good thing.