Chrome Beta Released

@13:30 Leave a comment

Google's new browser, Chrome, is now available for download on Windows XP/Vista only.

First impressions are that it's a very fast install, and imported all of my Firefox bookmarks with no issues. Loads much quicker than any of my other browsers, and looks quite nice. The address bar is a bit thick for my liking, but that's just me being picky. None of the usual "File", "Edit" menus, etc as the entire interface is pretty simplistic. Exactly what we've come to expect from Google products. It's got the usual Google feel about it, a nice clean interface, no status bar showing useless information, etc. When the status bar does show, you can move your mouse towards it, and it'll drop below the window so it's not in the way of the page. A nice touch.

Some things are noticeably missing though, such as a "home" button, which is a feature common to most browsers. It is available, but not enabled by default. It's an option on the "Basics" part of the options page. I guess it depends on how much you use it whether that will be an annoyance or a blessing.

Sites are loading pretty fast, as I would expect from something based on WebKit. One feature I have noticed, is that when you're on a page with a download link, it gives you a list of the available downloads at the bottom of the page. I've already found this useful.

They've taken a page from IE8, and fade out the rest of the URL that's not the main domain. I'm not really sure why this is becoming common, and I don't really see the point. Regarding the address bar though, it's also a search bar. You can either enter a URL, or a search term and it will search Google. This combines the two bars you get in Firefox quite nicely. Of course, in FF you can choose the dropdown for various sites (for example I have a Wikipedia one), and I haven't found a way to do that easily in Chrome yet.

Next up are the screenshots.



The home page is pretty nice, shows you some recently visited pages along with your bookmarks. You can edit the things which are shown on it from the options screen.



This is the download bar that appears when there are things to download on the page. Quite useful.



Not really many options to go at, but it's simple enough for the average user.



"Incognito" mode, is the privacy option. Does exactly what it says on the tin.



Passes ACID2 test with flying colours.



Only gets 61/100 on ACID3, but that's better than a lot of other browsers. It takes a very long time to run though on my machine.



The task manager is quite nifty, and gives you a breakdown of the memory usage of each tab. It'll even tell you how much Flash is taking up if the page has Flash on it.



A new feature is the "about:memory" page, which gives you a breakdown of the memory usage of the browser, along with any other browsers you happen to have open too. I can imagine this being useful for testing purposes.


Overall, I'm impressed. It's clean, quick and will be great for most users. I won't be using it as my main browser though, as I really can't do without some of the FF extensions I have, they're just too useful. If they include an Add-on, or extensions feature, they're onto a winner! I think the hardest part for Google is going to be getting people to actually download Chrome, and then switch to it as their main browser. People don't like change. As long as they're moving away from IE though, I've got no complaints.

A great start, and much better than the IE8 Beta. I see amazing potential in this if it gets released on the various platforms, and has the ability to customize it to your needs.

For reference. Here's what happened the first time I loaded IE8b2 after a fresh install. I'm not making this up just because I hate IE.. this is actually what happened. Look how cluttered it is compared to FF, Chrome or any other browser!! Plus the fact that it crashed. (I should point out, it only crashed the first time. It seems to work fine on second load).

Tags : browsers, chrome

Google Chrome

@13:32 Leave a comment

Came across this today.

Google Chrome is Google’s open source browser project. As rumored before under the name of “Google Browser”, this will be based on the existing rendering engine Webkit. Furthermore, it will include Google’s Gears project.

Apparently, it also includes its own JavaScript VM to help speed up scripts. Sounds interesting. I wonder how it'll render CSS ;) Seen as it's based on Webkit, I'm guessing it'll be very very good.

In other news, I also came across a FF extension called Pixel Perfect (well, actually it's a Firebug extension). It allows you to overlay an image onto a website, so you can see how close the coded site is to the original designs. Quite handy if you do that sort of thing.

UPDATE 1 :There's a load screenshots now available.

You can read the comic if you want. It describes some of the features.

Due to be released tomorrow, so I'll be giving it a go then.

Tags : browsers, google, css

Firefox 3 Beta 5 Released

@2:14 Leave a comment

"Firefox 3 Beta 5 includes more than 750 changes from the previous beta, improving stability and web compatibility, providing platform and user interface enhancements, and resulting in the fastest Firefox ever. Many of these improvements were based on community feedback from the previous beta."

Full Release Notes.

Tags : internet, browsers

WebKit the first to get 100/100 on Acid3

@16:32 Leave a comment

WebKit has become the first publically available rendering engine to achieve 100/100 on the Acid3 test.

This is a big step forward, with other browsers not far behind. Opera employee David Storey announced yesterday that the Opera browser now achieves a 98% score. With Firefox Beta 4 not too far behind with 71%.

It's not all about the 100/100 score though, the animation also needs to render "smoothly", but I think the meaning of "smoothly" is open for interpretation. I imagine we'll start to see a lot more browsers getting 100% over the next few days. Unfortunately I doubt IE will be in that group, but I can always hope.

EDIT : Seems I spoke too soon, Opera is now at 100%.

Tags : internet, css, browsers

Acid3 Test Released

@7:33 Leave a comment

The Acid3 Test has been released by the Web Standards Project.

There's an article on DrunkenFist with screenshots of how the most common browsers render the test. From what I can see not a single one passes with 100/100, but Safari 3 gets pretty close with 87. Of course, Internet Explorer fails miserably, but I'd expect nothing less. Firefox 3 doesn't mess up the layout as much as the others, but still only scores 59/100.

It'll be interesting to see how, and if, popular browsers like Firefox and Opera adjust to be better at handling the standards and whether any of them will be able to get 100/100 anytime soon.

Tags : internet, css, browsers

Hurrah! IE8 to be Standards Compliant by Default

@7:58 Leave a comment

According to a recent post in the IE8 blog, IE8 will be in standards compliant mode by default.

"We’ve decided that IE8 will, by default, interpret web content in the most standards compliant way it can."

This is a change from the previous thinking whereby web developers would have to explicitly opt-in to make IE8 render in standards mode. Thank God they've changed it to be default. IE8 is shaping up to be a good browser for web developers, let's hope the improvements keep coming and maybe, just maybe, websites won't need to be hacked to render correctly in IE8.

Tags : internet, browsers

IE8 Passes the Acid2 Test

@21:08 Leave a comment

A few of you may be wondering what the Acid2 test actually is. There's a Wikipedia article about it, but basically it's a test designed to highlight flaws in the way a browser renders CSS and HTML. Any standards compliant browser will render the image of the Acid2 Face correctly. As you can imagine, IE doesn't render the face correctly at the moment.

However, all that is about to change. Today, Internet Explorer General Manager Dean Hachamovitch posted an entry on the IEBlog declaring that the latest build of IE8 now passes the Acid2 test.

All I can say is, "About time!". I'm very much looking forward to not have to put up with all the quirks IE causes with compliant code. Of course, who knows when it'll be released, but it's a step in the right direction at least.

Obviously Acid2 doesn't test everything about the standards compliance, so it will be interesting to see if it copes with everything else.

Oh, and for those who are wondering, Firefox 2 fails the test and Opera 9 passes. Hopefully Firefox 3 will pass once it's out of beta. You can take the test here.

Tags : internet, css, browsers