Google Chrome Punches Well Above its Weight

This week search giant Google launched the much anticipated browser Chrome and if first impressions count, this will rock your world. A small sub 500k download that was installed on our system in less than 20 seconds, it looks good, feels great and is so fast it’s like using a command line tool. It may lack the extensibility of Firefox but the basic features are enough to keep you going until it is developed further.

Chrome is all about speed and packing in loads of features but maximising window space. It has turned some common browser traits upside down literally, like placing the tab bar at the very top of the screen.

Some cool features include:

One box for everything. Web search. Web history. Address bar. Suggestions as you type. One unified box serves all your browsing needs.

New Tab Page. Every time you open a new tab, you’ll see a visual sampling of your most visited sites, most used search engines, and recently bookmarked pages and closed tabs.

Application Shortcuts. Use web apps without opening your browser. Application shortcuts can directly load your favorite online apps.

Crash Control. Every tab you’re using is run independently in the browser, so if one app crashes it won’t take anything else down.

Incognito Mode. Don’t want pages you visit to show up in your web history? Choose incognito mode for private browsing.

Simpler Downloads. No intrusive download manager; you see your downloads status at the bottom of your current window.

The only drawback I can see at the moment is that the screen text looks a little rough around the edges, but hey, this is still only a beta version. From using it for just an hour you can tell the level of thought that has been put into the development. Could it overtake Internet Explorer in the future? It certainly should, maybe the masses are just in need of a little education.