Chrome
09/03/2008
I’m sure most of you have heard of Google’s new web browser Chrome by now. When I first hear the news, I thought “Does the world really need another web browser?” Then I checked out their introductory comic (which actually gets fairly technical, but is still readable to non-geeks), and I was intrigued by much of the ideas and technology behind it. So, I went and downloaded it.
So far, so good. I’ve been using it all day and haven’t needed to switch to Firefox yet. I think this may quickly become my default browser. It’s fast. It renders pages better looking than either IE or Firefox (like Safari it’s based on Webkit - but sadly no support for CSS text shadows).
One of my favorite things is that it has built-in site specific browser functionality. (Only they call it “application shortcut”.) I’ve been looking for a decent Windows SSB for a while to use for the web based help desk system we have at work. Nothing that I found really lived up to the challenge. Until now. A decent Windows SSB, who would have thought? (It makes perfect sense though, given Google’s focus on web apps.)
If you’re on a Windows machine, it’s definitely worth checking out. I can’t wait to see how it matures in the coming months (it’s only beta right now, but aren’t most of Google’s offerings still “beta”?). I also can’t wait to try the Mac version.