Google's new web browser: Chrome

[emperor_black]

First impressions:
Installs quickly, Looks pretty, loads webpages very quickly (almost twice the speed of IE and probably 1.5 times speed of firefox). Utilizes most of screen to display webpage info. No cluttered icons, menu bars, etc.
The address bar is a google search bar. How cool is that? For a moment, I was wondering, where's that google search window that I'm used to using in IE and firefox. On startup, it also shows all your most visited webpages.

Downside:
Uses up a LOT of memory. Today I had two chorome windows open with probably 4 tabs on the first and three tabs on the other. My laptop was runing at 1.5 GB mem utilization. And then I see, that for each tab, there seems to be a seperate chrome.exe running taking up quite a bit of memory. Firefox is the least mem utilization IMO.

anyone else give it a shot? of course its still in beta and its gonna improve, but right off the bat, its very useable. A thread with lots of pics still loads up very quickly. dial up users might be benefitted if its using up anything other than bandwidth to get the info.

[Ben...]

I'll have to give it a try. I'm a little ticked at Firefox right now because Foxy Tunes won't work.

Edit: I'm using chrome right now. Good God it's ridiculously fast!

[UFORocks]

... And then I see, that for each tab, there seems to be a seperate chrome.exe running taking up quite a bit of memory. Firefox is the least mem utilization IMO.

That's one of the features of Chrome versus the current browsers, it runs each tab as a separate process instead of a separate thread, thus making it more stable and preventing it from killing the whole browser and all your other tabs if one page has a problem.

If you right click on the title bar at the top you'll notice that Chrome has its own "Task Manager" too. Pretty neat.

-Steve

[Ben...]

Things I've immediately noticed:
-The scrolling is approximately double speed of Firefox(not good)
-You can't click the wheely thing on your mouse and scroll up and down with that (huge negative for me)
-Redonculously fast* (HUUUGE positive)
-*Some pages are slower (Facebook, a couple others)
-Ads (No Adblock Plus) (Monstrosity of a negative)
-I can't find a real options menu that I can adjust stuff with yet.
-Tabs at top are disorienting (I'll get used to it)

I'll have to use it a bit more before I can make final judgment in whether or not I use it as my main browser (so far it's a no.)

[dg]

The buzz around Chrome is that it is designed to be more of a platform for web-based apps rather than just a browser, and is supposed to evolve into a hub for open source cloud computing and somehow compete with Microsoft. How much of that is just hype remains to be seen. Pretty good (and funny) article here that argues it's mostly hype:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/08/dziuba_chrome/

[emperor_black]

If you right click on the title bar at the top you'll notice that Chrome has its own "Task Manager" too. Pretty neat.

-Steve

That's exactly what I was looking for in a browser! I opened up the task manager and it told me that one of the tabs (one with a satellite google map) was eating up more mem than the others and I closed it. Very useful. The 'stats for nerds' link at the bottom of the task manager is funny.

-Ads (No Adblock Plus) (Monstrosity of a negative)

hmm, I get notifications from time to time saying pop-ups are getting blocked. I think its more of an default and not something you can turn on/off. Actually, on pandora when it tried to open a new tab, it said 'pop-up blocked' and I was able to click on it and open that blocked popup. That's good enough IMO.

-I can't find a real options menu that I can adjust stuff with yet.

At the top right hand corner there is a wrench-looking tab. there you can set everything like font size, etc. is that what you're talking about?

[scotty]

Is this available for Linux?

[emperor_black]

hmm...lot more info here...seems interesting. more than your average browser.

http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/features.html?hl=en&brand=CHMI&utm_source=en-et&utm_medium=et&utm_campaign=en

[zeegler]

I have been using it on and off, but I hate the stupid download bar at the bottom of the window.

[VinceV]

I haven't used IE in almost 8 years and not really a Firefox user, but that seems a lot like Safari.

[UFORocks]

Is this available for Linux?

Not yet, unless something's changed in the last week.

http://www.google.com/chrome

There's a link there with more info too.


-Steve

[shobet]

Have they redone the EULA yet? I believe there was some backtracking done or about to be done by the great big giant G.

[Ben...]

hmm, I get notifications from time to time saying pop-ups are getting blocked. I think its more of an default and not something you can turn on/off. Actually, on pandora when it tried to open a new tab, it said 'pop-up blocked' and I was able to click on it and open that blocked popup. That's good enough IMO.


At the top right hand corner there is a wrench-looking tab. there you can set everything like font size, etc. is that what you're talking about?

AdBlock Plus doesn't just block pop-ups. It blocks ALL ads. Banners and stuff like that along with those annoying Google ads for "suggested links". the only ad I've noticed it doesn't block is the Matt's Music Center ad at the top of the page on here. But that's not a bad thing because I like to look on there from time to time.

Oh, and thanks for telling me about the wrench thing. I'll have to explore that a little more thoroughly.

[thetroy]

I've been using it on my laptop since it has a small 1280x800 screen. I like it.