Well Google has released a beta of its new browser. At first I was skeptical thinking OMG first of all Google desktop was not very good now they are working on a browser. Then it quickly dawned on me that who would be the best people to develop a browser than the internet leading company Google. With that revelation I clicked the link and downloaded the Beta of the new browser.
Install was a snap and it detected my current default browser Firefox and imported the passwords and book marks from it into the new browser. Being a beta it did not make itself my default browser. 2 thumbs up on that one Google. after install the browser opens and man is it clean and simple.
First Impressions
The look of the browser is very clean, there are no clunky buttons and the address bar has a very smart auto fill in feature similar the the new Firefox 3 address bar. What it lacks in bling it makes up for in web page viewing real estate, and really isn’t that what a browser is supposed to do?
The really interesting thing was when I reopened the browser a second time and there was some thumbnails of my most visited sites for quick reference. There was also the previously missing bookmarks tools. Now that was an impressive find. Also my recently added book marks were listed on the right side of the homepage. There was also a history search tool. All of these are great features and I can see them becoming quite useful overtime.
I have tested some of my JavaScript heavy and Flash heavy sites. All sites display correctly, code handling looks like it is going to be awesome.
Glitches
So far I have only found one glitch with the browser and that is when it is maximized you can no longer get the vista start bar to come out of hidden state. I have to use the windows key to get the start bar to show up again.
The Verdict
The new browser looks like Google is onto something and I can’t wait to see what additions they add to it. I hope they will have the ability to develop and download add-on tools like Mozilla does. Keep up the good work Google I can see IE loosing even more market share.
A link to detailed information about the browser and why Google has decided to develop one is located here>>
I hesitate to use even upgraded versions of Chrome, since my last experience using it (first version) left my computer compromised; have they fixed the security issues beyond all doubt?