Chrome Beta Released

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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