Chrome
The fastest browser ever.
Google Chrome is so fast, that if you are on a broadband connection, 90% of the time you won't see web pages render.
They will just be.
I would venture to guess that Chrome is about 3-5 times faster than every other browser out there.
How did they pull off such a ridiculous feat? As you can see in the screenshot above, Chrome takes the best parts from Safari (WebKit) and Firefox (bits of the UI) and did everything else from scratch.
I am not going to sit here and lay out all the innards of Chrome and why it is so great (that's what this comic is for), but I will give you my favorite bits:
- Every tab in Chrome has it's own process.
No more crashes when one site takes up too much memory or gets stuck in an infinite loop. That tab can be killed and Chrome lives on.
- Pop-ups are finally put to bed. Forever.
Chrome does not allow any pop-ups to manifest without your permission. This is not done on a site by site basis, but a pop-up by pop-up basis. No more sites getting you to allow all pop-ups from them just so you can get the one good one that you want.
- An inspired, simple, minimalistic design.
Auto-Complete, Search, Suggestion, History, and URL all in one bar. Brilliant.
This browser is not without it's shortcomings, however.
The browser is quick to render, but has issues with animated gifs. Especially when many are loaded at the same time. It doesn't have the best feature of Firefox 3: complete page scaling. Plus, there are a host of bugs to work out.
But let's get real here. This is a Beta is designated as Version 0.2. For such an early build, it is amazingly fast (easily the fastest browser ever), surprisingly stable (you simply cannot crash this thing), and feature complete.
But I don't see it taking over the Internet quite yet. Firefox is sure to be around simply because it has an army of extensions available to customize it. IE is will be around for a long time simply because many users just don't know any better. Safari is on Apple platforms. Apple users like Apple software.
However, a year from now... I wouldn't be surprised if people are talking about Chrome as the best browser out there.
September 3, 2008 at 7:19 AM
I'm not sure why they settled for an older version of Webkit though. This causes two things: only passes the Acid 2 test ( the current Webkit pass 2 & 3 ) and that Java launching security issue that what brought up recently ( fixed in the newer webkit ).
Aside from that, I'm psyched about it! Its beautiful, fast, and not bloated. top
September 6, 2008 at 4:27 AM
Don't forget about the 'gears" API.
Let's see - pre-emptive process multi-tasking, well defined security boundaries between user and kernel spaces, and an API to allow other executables to interface with and use its functions.
Sounds more like an OS to me. :) Microsoft should be very, very scared. top