GamerChip First Impressions Of Google Chrome
September 3rd 2008 02:31
Google has taken the plunge into one of the only area of the internet not assimilated by the company with Chrome, a new web browser recently released in Beta form. And even in these early days, it looks like Google know exacly what they are doing.
It is no small thing for a new browser to hit the market. As our interface to the internet, it is probably the single most important application users will ever have. And with more applications and personal information such as our photos, banking and blogs being stored and accessed through the net, more and more of our home PC's are moving into the online space. According to the press release, Chrome is Google's attempt to reinvent the web browser to suit these changing ways in which we use the internet.
In an attempt to communicate the pretty complicated theory behind the new design, Google have released a comic showing the details in an accessible way. And although all of that is very interesting, the important thing is how it actually changes the speed and ease in which the average person can navigate around the web.
On first booting Chrome (after importing your IE favourites and links) a sleek, clean interface appears. The users most frequently visited sites are graphically displayed in a user 'home page'. This new feature actually will eventually pre-display these pages for you, the theory being that you can quickly check for updates. This features learns as you go, only taking a few web page visits to get things started. Navigating pages is slick and seamless. Multiple tabs are opened in a familiar Firefox manner, but genuinely seem to live up to the press release hype. There is no slowing down as multiple tabs are opened. Searching for web sites is also simple, with a quick and accurate search dropping down from the address bar. And this, apart from everything else, is where you will fall in love. Chrome is impossibly fast. Even for sites that were visited for the first time, content loaded as if it were locally stored. Although there seemed to be little benefit when flicking through Youtube, there was a distinct improvement on buffering times for HD videos played through Gametrailers.com.
All of this is great, but how about the most important thing - gaming?
Actually loading and playing flash games felt no different, but as the Google blurb said, there was zero slowdown as multiple pages and tabs were opened and closed, a very different experience to IE. There was no lag as I switched tabs or back and forward between applications... Nice. There is even an Incognito Window that can be opened which will not record any history of the sites, so everyone at work can keep a seperate place for their personal browsing.
All in all, Google Chrome does just about everything promised, an impressive feat for a beta browser and a virgin effort. Google cannot seem to put a foot wrong, even allowing for the small issues I encountered that wouldn't affect 95% of users.
If you are currently happy with Internet Explorer and Firefox, it's only because you haven't used Chrome.
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Comment by Cibbuano
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I was a big supporter of Firefox from the early days, as it was a viable alternative to IE. Since then, however, Firefox has been making me angry. It often sucks up all my memory, bringing my computer to a crawl.
Chrome has been light and easy to use... it also allows me to use Yubnub!
Comment by Chris Champion
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Chris
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