Déjà Vu

Finally Google has come up with a browser and what a browser it is! Chrome is a very very good browser. Yes it has its own shortcomings, chinks, but nothing that cannot be fixed in the future versions.

The technical details of Chrome have been talked about all over the web. In this post, I’ll not talk about those technical details instead, I’ll talk about it in terms of a normal user.

• The installer is a very small file! its only 474 KB. I was wondering how the browser could be packaged in such a small installable. I thought it might be actually small because GTalk, when it was first launched was less than 100KB in size. Only after I started installing was it apparent that the installer was actually downloading. This may be good if you have an always on connection, but it makes the installable unusable on a machine that is not connected to internet over a broadband connection or on a machine that is not at all connected to the internet.
• The first thing that came to my mind once I actually opened a chrome window was CLEAN! The interface is amazingly clean. There is no Menu Bar, no separate search bar, no status bar that is desplayed all the time. The focus is always on the Webpage and not on the browser!
• The browser is amazingly fast! This is apparently because of JS being copiled and run on a virtual Machine. I’ll not delve into the statistics, but believe me, its faster that FireFox
• Each tab runs as a separate process, hence unlike in FF, you don’t have to close the entire browser incase one tab goes kaput
• The browser itself is based on Webkit which is opensource so enhancements are probably already on their way.
• I personally use a lot of FF plugins, which are missing in chrome. I am not very bothered about this because with FF, the focus mostly would be on the Plugins, the antics of the browser, its memory leaks and things, But with chrome, the focus is clearly on the webpage.
• Chrome displays screenshots of 9 most visited sites. This is like the speed dial in Opera. The only difference is that unlike Opera, this is not customizable. I won’t fret too much about it because the purpose of speed dial is also to make your most used site easily accessible. That is what Chrome is doing too! It is saving me the effort of manually adding it!
• The address bar serves the purpose of search bar too. Default search engine is Google, but it allows you to set other search engines too.
• The Site name is dark black in the addressbar, which although is not a very great feature is really good. You can know what site it is and the additional information is grayed out.
• Chrome lets you create shortcuts for sites/web applications, completely with icons too. Although this may not be a new feature, it sure is a value add.
• Tabs can be dragged out. They become a new window.
• When you do a Ctrl+Click on a page, the new tabs open immedietly after the current. This is helpful because you don’t have to go to the end of the tabs to see the new tabs.

• Feeds are not natively supported. I find this strange because Google themselves have a FeedReader!
• The installer has to be completely downloadable.
• The browser itself does not let you customize a lot of things. This feels a little closed.
• You cannot see the list of all open tabs. When many tabs are open, this becomes difficult.

Update: Forgot to mention about the incognito window! its basically like the pr0n mode No history saved!