Sometimes you have to wonder at Google. Yesterday they launched Chrome, a new WebKit-based web browser as a BETA for Windows. That’s not surprising considering that Android chose WebKit, S60 chose WebKit and, to be honest, unless you’re really into the politics of the Mozilla guys, you’d choose WebKit too. It’s lean, it’s fast, it’s … Continue reading “Chrome”
Sometimes you have to wonder at Google.
Yesterday they launched Chrome, a new WebKit-based web browser as a BETA for Windows. That’s not surprising considering that Android chose WebKit, S60 chose WebKit and, to be honest, unless you’re really into the politics of the Mozilla guys, you’d choose WebKit too. It’s lean, it’s fast, it’s where all the cool kids are.
Anyway. The real ‘new’ feature of Chrome as opposed to other web browsers is the idea of process proliferation. The Chrome application itself is really a process manager for Chrome sub-processes which spawn to handle a single page or tab each. This is a bit like the way Apache deals with increasing traffic by spawning new processes so the idea is not new (and I proposed that Apple should do something similar for the FTFF problem). The added benefit is that a single tab can crash out and not affect the rest of the tabs – it’s a shame that that alone is the ‘killer feature’.
Obviously it’s going to be attractive to some due to the ‘new and shiny’ but the minimalist interface might not be enough for some and my Twitter stream has been filled with people complaining about it not working as planned. And of course, it’s Windows only…
I’m currently playing with it as my default browser on Vista and will likely develop an opinion as time goes on. It feels no different to Safari to be honest which, in a way, is a big complement. Still leaves me wanting to try it on Mac OS X – Vista just isn’t to my taste.
So, there you have it. Download it (for Windows) or spend a few minutes reading about it in the Google Chrome online comic.