Google Shines On With Chrome

Google just released their new "One box for everything" browser called Chrome. The name is a direct reference to the term used to describe a desktop software application's interface elements. The name also implies "shiny and new" which it definitely is. The current beta is only available for Windows users, and unfortunately the Mac and Linux versions are not out yet and it's not clear when they'll hit the street.

Do We Need Another Browser, But Why?
Google's goal and concept for Chrome was that, "spend much of our time working inside a browser" and the "web gets better with more options and innovation." They also wanted to "completely rethink the browser" and create "a modern platform for web pages and applications." Let's see what develops in the near future, but so far things are impressive.

It's Got That Creamy Goodness
All the code is open source, and they've "used components from Apple's WebKit and Mozilla's Firefox" and under the hood they built V8, a more powerful JavaScript engine which should keep even extremely complex web apps in control. That said, Chrome is blazing FAST! It's also CSS3 capable, so users will have a better overall experience. The interface is kinda Microsoft Vista looking and very simple which makes it easy to use since there are only a limited number of features so far. Some of the features are: DNS pre-fetching, gears, phishing & malware protection, dynamic tabs, and "incognito mode" (ala Safari?). There's also a cool little feature called "Task Manager" where you type about:memory in the location bar to see the current memory usage for your browsers... Looks like Firefox is a RAM hog with all my Add-ons, extensions and plugins installed. You can see the full list of features and video explanations on their features page.

Give Google Chrome a try...
Download Google Chrome »

Geeky Stuff &mdash Get Your Geek On
Here are some fun things you can do already, remember this is just an initial beta release! I'm sure the folks at Google have lots of cool stuff on the way.

• Highlight some text or page elements and right-mouse-click and choose "Inspect element" to see a developer inspector (Firebug-like) which allows you to see the DOM and mess with it, and you can dock/un-dock to the window or view it in a tab, and do some other nifty things... [This is an awesome feature]


• Type about:memory in the location bar to see your memory use.


• Find more helpful info on GChrome here or get more GChrome developer info here.


• Type about:version in the location to get your current installed version of GChrome.


• Or, check the version "About Google Chrome" from the wrench menu, and it'll even tell you if your installed version is up to date.

Or make your Firefox new and shiny with this:
Chromifox 1.0rc2 Theme

...another blatant rip-off of another default theme from another great open source web browser! This time, the target is Google Chrome, or more specifically Chromium, the open source project behind it. The clean lines, slick layout, and compact style of Chromium were the points of inspiration for this theme. Chromifox offers a coat of Chrome for Firefox.