Sep
02
2008
Google Chrome Released – Browser Wars Reignited!
Posted by Jon Lee in Web Development, tags: browser, chrome, firefox, google, JavaScript
For a while the browsers war have been pretty stale with Firefox gaining a small fraction of a percent every month or so.
Today, we have a new player in town! In what is probably the most exciting news in the tech industry this month, Google has released a beta version of it’s new browser, Google Chrome!
Chrome (most likely named after the UI area of modern browsers known as ‘chrome’) has a load of interesting new features which is handily explained in this long and informative comic. Here are the key new features that will interest you:
- Omnibox – An improved version of Firefox 3′s “Awesome Bar” or URL bar
- Default Tab Page – Instead of a blank page showing up when you open a new tab, Chrome will show a visual display of sites and search engines you frequent the most to save yout ime
- Multi-Process – Each tab and/or plug-in is now it’s own process! Although this will require a little bit more memory overhead for the browser, memory leaks will now be a thing of the past. A poorly written website or intense Flash application will no longer crash your browser, just a single tab! You can also move tabs between windows while maintaining it’s current state instead of having the page reload.
- Greatly improved Javascript Engine – Javascript will now run much faster than in other browsers with many different optimizations.
- More intuitive tab placement - Tabs are placed above the user buttons which makes much more sense. The address bar and page controls should be part of a tab, not the browser! This also means that you can set certain sites to not display an address bar or controls at all (i.e. Gmail).
Currently, the Beta version is only available for Windows (XP/Vista). If you’re a Windows user, then download it and try it out!
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