Google Chrome
Google is entering the browser wars with their latest offering, Chrome. Unfortunately, I’ll have to wait till later this evening to test out the beta as the OS X and Linux versions have not been released. Google designed Chrome from the ground up to take advantage of new web concepts such as Flash, Java applications and of course all of Google’s applications.
Another nice feature is that every single tab opened in Chrome runs on its own process. This prevents the dreaded RAM hogging that happens to IE8, Firefox, or Safari after a full day of websurfing without closing down the browser in full. When you close a tab, you actually close the tab, memory and all. The folks at Google even created a web-comic to explain Chrome.
Here’s a nice blog post talking about some more features of Chrome with a few snapshots of the comic book.
Here’s a link to the usual Slashdot back and forth. Read at your own risk.
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Update: I had a chance to use it this evening on a Windows XP box. I like the dynamic tab features. I like the ability to pop up an Incognito page on my browser. I didn’t like how Flash kept crashing when trying to have 4 tabs with different YouTube videos. However, Chrome seemed stable with 20+ tabs open when they weren’t playing Flash video. Afterall, Chrome is still in its Beta phase.
Additionally, some of the Slashdotters are concerned about the fine print in the License Agreement. Here’s the post on Slashdot. Mini Update: Google has fixed their TOS.
I’ll use Chrome exclusively when I’m on my XP box, however, the majority of my webbrowsing is spent in Safari and good old fashioned Lynx.