Posted by Samara Lynn at 6:34 PM
http://www.crn.com/software/210300132
Right from the get-go, reviewers noticed how fast is Google's new beta browser, Chrome. Usually, loading my iGoogle page, chock full of gadgets and widgets takes a full minute to load, or will sometimes even crash Internet Explorer. With Chrome, load time took scant seconds. A side-by-side comparison of loading papervision3d.org -- an open source 3D engine for the Flash platform yielded the following results:
-- IE time to load 3D image -- 1 min 22 seconds
-- Opera -- 1 min 33 seconds
-- Firefox -- 1 min 38 sec
-- Chrome -- 1 min 8 seconds
Curious results with Firefox though, since it has been purported that Chrome and Firefox use the same rendering engine.
Cold start o
f Chrome took literally, a second.
Chrome features incognito browsing -- which for whatever a user's purposes, malevolent or otherwise, leaves no traces of a Web site visited. Downloaded files from the site, however, are visible.
The address bar does double-duty as a search bar as well, adding to the minimalist interface. Less clutter equals better. This has been named appropriately, the "omnibox."
Upon opening, Chrome lists thumbnails of most visited sites by default. Extended Validation SSL sites are indicated as well as "dangerous" sites, like known phishing sites.
The great potential of Chrome is with performance. Tabs are within the window and through multi-threading architecture. Each window, actually each task, is allocated its own single process. This is great if you are browsing via multiple tabs and if one tab mucks up and crashes, the entire browser will not seize (hear that Internet Explorer developers?)
Yet, as with any new relationship it is easy to overlook the flaws. Chrome has yet to pass the Acid3 test, allowable because it is still is beta, and there does not seem to be the high customization ability that Firefox has with extensions. Also, Chrome is currently only available for Windows, but Linux and Mac compatible versions are on the roadmap.
This new browser, as with many new browsers and search engines, holds promise of being "the _____ killer."
So far, it looks good, but time will tell.
Download Chrome beta: http://www.google.com/chrome
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