Google Chrome: Redefining browsing experience

Google inched a step closer towards its tacit goal of reigning supreme in a new era of computing dominated by the web, when it hurled its brand new web browser (Chrome) at an expectant world this Tuesday. The new browser had been under wraps for quite sometime now until a weblog spilled the beans by releasing a comic book that brings to fore Google’s idea behind creating a new browser from scratch. Legions of elegant and hitherto unheard of features are on offer – at least the comic book claims so. Not everybody is amused though, and the first name to feature in that list is – you guessed it – Microsoft, who else?

Google asserts that the internet has been through a never-seen-before evolutionary change and it only befits that the browsers follow suit. With Chrome it attempts to redefine user experience by leveraging the new capabilities of the web. Slowly and steadily, the web has become an overarching influence in people’s lives, embracing the flora and fauna of the computing ecosystem. At a time such as this, we need better alternatives for exploiting the gargantuan benefits the web offers, and Chrome is Google’s attempt to providing an answer.

So what does Chrome have that others, notably Internet Explorer and Firefox don’t. It’s too early to come up with a viable answer to that question given that Chrome is still in its nascent stage. However, it does promise some very exciting features, some of which might lead Microsoft’s top bracket to loose some sleep.

First Impressions
Chrome is available for download from www.google.com/chrome. Well, the installation is a breeze and before you know it, Chrome has imported all your bookmarks, passwords and browsing history from the browser you have been using. Presto! You are ready to experience the web in a way like never before.

The first thing you notice (or rather not notice) is the minimalist design of the browser, with no status bar and hardly-there buttons. Google has deliberately kept things simple on the surface to enhance user experience, but you can rest assured of some marvelous tech wizardry that silently drives the Chrome. Like Firefox 3.0 or Internet Explorer 7.0(version 8.0 is available for download, but who cares), Chrome has tabs but there is a noticeable difference – the address bar (Omnibar if you prefer Google’s terminology) is below the tabs. And the Omnibar is not just an address bar – it doubles up as a search box as well and you have the normal autosuggest feature thrown in that makes browsing a walk in the park.

Chrome presents you with a rather unusual home page – one that contains your recent bookmarks and most visited pages. Another great feature, I would think.

Rev it up
It feels much faster than its peers. For one thing Google uses V8 JavaScript Engine which, if rumors are to be believed, is nippier than others in the category. Also, Chrome uses multiprocessing to push the gas pedal – each new tab that you fire results in a new Chrome.exe being created in your machine unlike IE7 where you have only one process to take care of all the open tabs.

What crash?
Open a tab and you are starting from scratch. So while you are browsing, Chrome is creating and destroying processes all the time. Thus, even if a tab gets screwed up because of a memory leak and crashes, the others remain intact oblivious of the leak because each has its own block of memory. Cool stuff.

Open source
Google has developed it on top of Webkit which is an open source rendering engine and incidentally the same that powers Apple’s Safari. At the moment, add-ons aren’t supported, but that is only for now. Eventually, like in Firefox you should be able to wire up add-ons to Chrome.
Developer’s playground
Chrome has very elegant features that will have developer swooning over it. For one, there is a JavaScript console that facilitates debugging scripts like no other browser can. For another, you can see the HTML source of a page. Big deal, you say. The deal is Chrome shows you the line numbers too. I can see bloggers like me going hallelujah already.

Touch-me-not
Chrome offers you an ‘Incognito’ window that allows private browsing. Anything done from here is never logged on your computer and you have full access to your bookmarks and browsing history like you would have in any other window.

Annoyances

Not everything was smooth sailing though. I intended to write this blog on Chrome, but, unfortunately, it would not let me sign in to my blogger account. That apart, everything was a brezze.

Parting Thoughts

Of course, Chrome is not perfect, but then, what is? In an age where technology seems to change faster than you can blink, it is too early to predict what the future holds for Chrome. But going by the recent stats, and with none other than Google pushing the envelope, Chrome surely seems to be heading in the right direction.