Whoa! Google Chrome

This September, Google released an open source web browser, Chrome. A comic posted by Google, “Google Chrome – Behind the Open Source Browser Project” explains the browser in it’s entirely – read it. Based on my messing with the browser, it is faster, more secure, and most importantly, free and open source. Google states instead of rolling out one version with tons of features having to wait a year for a release candidate, they update two version as often as possible. Of the two releases, being stable and developer versions, I've use build 1.0.154.48 without a problem. Chrome didn’t need add-on installation or configuration at first run. Flash and PDF’s easily ran on sites with those files.

With the release of the developer Beta, I decided to make Chrome my sole default browser yesterday, utilizing version 2.0.169.1. The new Beta is 25% faster than the previous, and reports it was 35% faster than the first release. I didn’t see much of a difference between my now version and previous builds. However I did see a faster reaction in Chrome compared to Firefox (my old default browser), and defiantly faster than IE 7. Did someone say Internet Explorer? This week will probably be a busy browser testing week, with IE releasing version 8 today. So far, comparing Chrome to Firefox, both are open source, however, as you install add-ons to Firefox, it slows performance. Chrome renders quicker resulting in faster loading times. JavaScript processes quicker as well in Chrome.

Chrome also release Chrome Experiments, 15 projects showcasing complex JavaScript on Chrome, versus other browsers. When Apple released its public beta for Safari 4 last month, it claimed that Safari was "the world's fastest and most innovative browser." Today Microsoft’s IE 8 was released, and it previously reported to come out on top of Chrome 1.0 and Firefox 3.05 loading 12 out of the top 25 Web sites. Check out Google Experiments, I think Google Gravity was the best, using JavaScript to shatter the Google Homepage, shifting and shaking it around as you resize or move your window. I tested them myself on Chrome and Firefox…. I yet to install IE 8 to try this. Another favorite, was DOMTRS, utilizing the Document Object Model and JavaScript for an old favorite.

I did manage to to stall Chrome, for some reason, while trying to import my bookmarks from another browser it crashed. I realized it only imported my IE bookmarks and not Firefox.