Google Chrome Logo

Our good friends at Google have been working on a browser elegantly named Chrome.  This open-sourced browser boasts features that are fairly new to the browser scene.  Google’s blog post introducing Chrome emphasizes the importance to starting over new with a web browser because the web has evolved from simple text html pages to rich, interactive applications.  In order to better illustrate how the idea came about, and what has gone into creating this application, Google’s Scott McCloud has created a comic book available for reading here.

One of the first features they illustrate is that Chrome separates each browsing tab into its own process.  Each process has its own memory and its own copy of the global data structures, thereby making it easier to maintain browsing integrity within each separate tabs, making memory management smoother and quicker, and allowing web applications to run independently from others so one bad javascript won’t crash other tabs.  A tab task manager is also available so you can see which sites are using more memory than others.  These are only a few benefits to having multiple processes within the browser.

Another feature that they are emphasizing is the user of a Javascript Virtual Machine for faster execution.  They call this V8 and they had an entire team in Denmark dedicated to working on it.

The address bar in Chrome, dubbed the Omnibox [Editor's note: sounds ominous], works like a normal address bar, but with the added functionality of the search box on the Google Toolbar, integrating Google Search, browsing history and even page suggestions based on the Ranking system.  Also, when you complete a search on sites like Wikipedia, NewEgg, and Amazon, the search boxes from those pages are captured on your local system, so future searches on those sites will take less time, again, much like the Google Toolbar.

A new innovative feature that I am excited about is the New Tab Page.  It features thumbnails of your nine most visited pages, and search boxes for the sites on which you use the search feature the most (i.e. Wikipedia, Imdb, YouTube, etc.).  And, if Google is true to their pattern, this will be 100% customizable.

There are many new and upcoming features on Google Chrome, and I am looking forward to seeing what it will become.  Most everything I do on the internet is tied to my Google account so it only makes sense to have a Google-made browser as well.  However, even if you aren’t a Googler, I am sure there will be many reasons for you to install Chrome whether you start at the Beta, or whether you pick it up at a later release, because this browser was built from scratch with the current web in mind.

I will definitely download Chrome and give it the rundown.  I invite you to do the same.  Come back and leave your comments about what you think about it.  The beta version will be available for download tomorrow here: http://gears.google.com/chrome/?hl=en.

UPDATE: Google Chrome will not be available for download until 18:00 GMT

UPDATE 2: Google will host a press conference at 18:00 UTC (11:00 am PDT).  So does this mean it will not be released at that time?  We’ll wait and see I guess.

UPDATE 3: Google Chrome is now available for download at the link above!

Read original blog post

I have never seen my webpages load so quickly!!!  Webcomics than normally strain under the load of so many fans are just flying!!!  Even Stolen Droids itself (which occasionally boggs down thanks to the hosting provider) is just chugging along like no one's business!

I'm at work and trying to use our Oracle application, but it's no good.  I think it's more because of restrictions placed on my local desktop though; can't install the Jinitiator script to run Oracle.

UPDATE:  OK, I was only part right.  The Jinitiator was being stopped because IE was still open in resident memory and using the Jinitiator it already had installed.  However, once that was fixed, the initiator installed just fine.  Despite that, though, Chrome still won't open Oracle.  I would venture a guess that the Oracle jar files don't play nicely with Chrome, as I can open it in FF, IE, and Opera.

zohner said:

I've been using Google Chrome all day.  There's a lot that I like about it but there are some things that I don't.  For instance, where are my bookmarks?  

It was a little disorienting for me too at first.  I found them all under the “Other bookmarks” button to the right of the bookmark bar.

If you can't see the bookmark bar, press Ctrl+b to unhide it. 

Let me know if this helps.

I actually found the bookmarks about 10 minutes after I posted here.  Thanks for the help though.

Zuke, I agree about the no status bar thing.  It's a big change to get used to.  

How do you make them applications?  Is that something that will be in the review?