Google Chrome is Shiny
Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008Is Google Chrome the long lost Google OS? That is what some are saying. Others are saying that this is just Google’s attempt to fully take over the Internet market share.
So I decided to give Chrome a walk through. First, my preferred browser Firefox. Recently, I encountered some issues with viewing PDFs in Firefox 3.0. Chrome’s arrival on the scene is accidentally well timed.
Chrome’s main page provides an indication that it will help you browse a bit faster. It presents several gray blocks with an annotation saying something to the extent of "As you browse sites, your most frequently visited sites will be shown here."
As you can see I have recently visited a few sites tonight. When I visited my website, I was almost immediately prompted to install Adobe Flash. Plugin installation was flawless. My only concern was the installation progress was a bit hidden behind the scenes. It may be that I am a progress freak, but that’s ok.
The browsing experience is, so far, the same as with Firefox. My coworker noticed that some sites take up more of the screen in Chrome than in Internet Explorer. In my experience I have noticed that sites open a bit faster, and pages are rendered a bit more quickly.
Configurablity is minimal at this point. Some more techy/geeky options are available under the "Minor Tweaks" and "Under the Hood" tabs.
Overall, I am please so far with Chrome and its performance. Most likely I will continue to use Firefox as my primary browser at work. At home, well, since I have a fresh install on this laptop I think I will continue to use Google Chrome as my primary browser. No better way to figure out how a new product works than to use it daily.