Yesterday another web browser entered the frey. I downloaded the new Google Chrome as soon as it was available. Although I have only used it for a day, I have already  found things to love and a few to hate.

Cnet says that Chrome is faster than Firefox, IE, and Safari, and in my unscientific testing, I agree with that it is faster. Two of its features, sandboxing of tabs and better handling of JavaScript won’t be terrible noticable to the average user, but certainly add to the speed and stability.

The most noticable thing is that the browser takes up less screen space. by moving the tabs to share the space with the title bar and removing the text menus, the browser functions take up less screen space. By putting the lone toolbar on a very pale background, everything looks cleaner and less cluttered. I am impressed with the new  look.

Chrome's Clean Look

Chrome's Clean Look

Chrome has a dual-function address bar called the Omnibar. It doesn’t matter if you type in a URL or a search phrase. The browser will determine what you want and present you will the proper results. Like the Awesome Bar introduced in Firefox 3, the Omnibar gives you a drop-down box with choices that are usually quite accurate.

The best feature that I’ve found so far is the ability to drag a tab anywhere you want it — including to a new window.  I also like that you can start the browser with nine thumbnail representations of your most-visited websites. Just click on any one to open it in a tab. This is a take off from Opera and from a Firefox add-in called Speed Dial. However, in Opera and Speed Dial you can customize your choices which you cannot do in Chrome….something they need to add.

Chrome offers an Incognito mode that hides all traces of your web browsing. Although this feature was popularized by the Safari browser, not everyone will use it. Certainly it will be helpful if you are buying a present for your wife or mistress or visiting porn websites, but may not be very useful to those of us who don’t need to hide our tracks. I would rather see Google not keep records of our search history like the search engine Ixquick has done.

Other things I like:

• The clearly marked tab with the plus sign that opens a new tab
• The fact that when you click on History in the Tools menu, your entire history opens in a new tab
• Holding down the Back button give you a list of the last nine sites you visited and a way to get to the full history

Things I don’t like:

• There is no way to easily manage bookmarks
• I was able to import bookmarks from IE & Firefox, but not from Google Bookmarks.

I will be investigating the ability of Chrome to run applications within the browser, which seems like it may be a way for Google to take over the computer desktop. In the mean time, if you want to try something new, Chrome is free and it is quite usuable. With future improvements, it may become good competition to IE and Firefox.

Download Chrome directly from the Google Chrome Website.