Visuals | Websites | Development

If you don’t know what Google Chrome is, where have you been?  The unexpected release of Google Chrome, Google’s own open source browser, is, with the release of Firefox 3 a few months ago, probably the highlights of 2008 in the browser war arena.  Since 2004, there have been distant rumours that Google was developing its own browser, but I don’t think many people expected it to be as soon, that it would be open source and that they would market it with a comic book.

Although the browser is out only a day, reviews have been popping up all over the web.  In general, reviews are very positive, although I have read a few comments from (presumably) hacker type guys who aren’t happy with the look ‘n feel or that it is not available on Linux.

Google Chrome contains a number of innovative design features, too much and quite technical to discuss here, but they were well covered in the press event.

However, the most important features are

• the multi process architecture: every tab and plug-in runs as a separate process (program) so that if one of them crashes, the whole browser is not affected. you can simply reload the tab and everything is fine again.
• the Omnibox: a combined address bar and search box that gives very intelligent suggestions.
• a lean, mean dialog box free user interface: no more pop-ups asking you to confirm or deny actions, a la Windows Vista!
• V8, a brand new super fast Javascript engine: It compiles to native code as opposed to being just an interpreter. It runs Javascript about 40 times faster than in IE7!
• open source: The code is free!

I haven’t had much chance to play around with it, but so far it looks fantastic.  I’ll give a full list of my personal favourite features in a future blog.

Many people are calling Google Chrome the real IE killer.  Firefox has also been dubbed that, but usage of Internet Explorer (especially IE6) is still frustratingly common. However, I think people are missing the point. Google Chrome should rather be dubbed the IE awakener.  I believe the innovative ideas from Google Chrome will affect all browsers positively and help push up the web to the next level. With the pressure that Google Chrome has brought, I think the guys at Microsoft are going to pull up their socks and soon IE will also be a quality product. Admittedly, IE8 already looks promising.

We’re only just begun entering Web 2.0 with applications (not websites) like Gmail, Facebook, Google Maps, etc.  When all browsers join the party, IE included, Web 3.0 might be only a few years away.