Google Chrome; not another browser?!
If you haven’t already heard of Google Chrome then you must have had your head buried in the sand. Available to download on the 2nd September 2008, it was a bungled release caused by mis-communication within the Google camp. It didn’t matter much though as there was a rapid uptake of the new web browser and the immediate response from the early adopters was amazement at the speed of the thing.
Built upon WebKit, the open source web browser project on which Apple’s Safari is built, it incorporates a JavaScript engine named V8 that compiles JavaScript code to machine code. This is what makes the browser so fast when dealing with websites and web applications that do a lot of AJAX calls or rely upon JavaScript for functionality. The purpose of this article isn’t to list the entire feature-set of the new web browser however. I wanted to describe just how I have found using the web browser since I first downloaded on it’s day of release.
My initial reaction to the release of Chrome was that of despair. As a web designer and developer I questioned. “do we really need another web browser with another set of compatibility issues?” However I was aware that Chrome is built upon WebKit, and that there are few compatibility issues faced by web designers and developers when designing and coding for Safari (unlike Internet Explorer). As a means of damage assessment I tested out most of the websites that I have helped build whilst working at MyKnowledgeMap, the majority of them passed with flying colours.
“Ok, so is it just another Safari clone?” I hear you ask. Well no, as I already mentioned, it incorporates the V8 JavaScript engine which powers through JavaScript code like a hot knife through butter. Web applications such as Google Docs, Google Reader, GMail and Umbraco can be a bit sluggish at times in Firefox and Internet Explorer due to their use of JavaScript, whereas in Chrome they load almost instantly.
Google Chrome incognito tab
Chrome isn’t just a one trick pony either. When starting up the web browser or opening a new tab, you are presented with a grid of thumbnails of your most visited websites and you can also search your history. For the security conscious among you, Chrome also has something called the ‘incognito window’ which allows you to browse the internet in some anonymity if you share your computer with others.
You’ve gone incognito. Pages that you view in this window won’t appear in your browser history or search history, and they won’t leave other traces, like cookies, on your computer after you close the incognito window. Any files that you download or bookmarks that you create will be preserved, however.
Whilst these features; the JavaScript V8 engine and the incognito window are nice to have, they are hardly revolutionary. There is one feature however that is and that I use more than any of the other features within Google Chrome; application shortcuts.
Within Google Chrome you can create an application shortcut which places a link on your desktop, start
Google Chrome application shortcut window
menu or quick launch bar and clicking on the shortcut opens the webpage or web application in a Google Chrome window without any of the web browser controls. This is a great feature and allows for distraction free task completion, for example, I have Google Docs, Google Reader, GMail, my Wordpress control panel and MyKnowledgeMap’s Umbraco control panel all as application shortcuts on my desktop. This allows me to get on with the job at hand without the likes of Twitterfox popping up with Twitter updates, or the temptation to go aimlessly surfing the internet when I should be doing work.
A further plus of Chrome is the expected tie-in with Google Gears to make offline synchronisation even easier. It has already been implemented within Wordpress to speed up the blogging platform, and it is slowly beginning to make its way through the Google suite of products. I doubt it will be long before it is integrated with nearly every web application, for it has the potential to take the web with you, regardless of whether you’re connected.