Google’s Chrome Internet Browser – Will it Shine

Google will launch the beta version of Google Chrome, its Open Source Internet browser today, September 2, at 11 AM (PDT), which, according to the grapevine, has been developed to integrate seamlessly with its Gears cloud computing suite. Google plans to release Chrome in more than 100 countries during this launch.

According to Google we can look forward to a browser that “is clean and fast” and that “gets out of your way and gets you where you want to go”.

Why Google would think that was some sort of major leap forward is puzzling. Those are my minimum expectations for an application of any kind, including a browser.

According to Google, “On the surface, we designed a browser window that is streamlined and simple. To most people, it isn’t the browser that matters. It’s only a tool to run the important stuff — the pages, sites and applications that make up the web”. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that’s what we set out to build”.

Google goes on to say “This is just the beginning — Google Chrome is far from done. We’re releasing this beta for Windows to start the broader discussion and hear from you as quickly as possible. We’re hard at work building versions for Mac and Linux too, and will continue to make it even faster and more robust”.

The scuttlebutt on the web this morning is blazing with the idea that this may be Google’s first baby step into the land of Operating Systems. There may be something to this when you consider the number of web applications such as Google Docs, Google SketchUp, Google Picasa image editing and many others that already run inside a browser on any computer that logs on.

As one forum user suggested “The OS (Windows/Linux/Apple) will become akin to the firmware, or the DOS that existed underneath earlier versions of Windows. It will be there for those that need the greatest computer power, but fewer and fewer people will bother to use it”.

In an innovative step, Google has published a 38-page, online comic book, that sets out in some detail Chrome’s features.

Read the comic book at: Chrome

Download the browser at: Google Gears

You May have to Google This Link

From Wikipedia

Security Features:

Blacklists

Chrome periodically downloads updates of two blacklists (one for phishing and one for malware) and warns users when they attempt to visit a harmful site.

Sandboxing

Each tab in Chrome is sandboxed to “prevent malware from installing itself” or “using what happens in one tab to affect what happens in another”.

Plugins

To reduce exposure to attack, plugins are run in separate processes that communicate with the renderer, itself operating at “very low privileges” in dedicated per-tab processes

Incognito

Chrome includes an Incognito mode (similar to Safari’s Private Browsing and Internet Explorer 8’s InPrivate) which “lets you browse the web in complete privacy because it doesn’t record any of your activity” and discards cookies.

Speed:

JavaScript

The V8 JavaScript engine was designed for speed and introduces new features with that in mind such as hidden class transitions, dynamic code generation, and precise garbage collection.

Multiprocessing

A separate process is allocated to each task (e.g. tabs, plugins), as is the case with modern operating systems. This prevents tasks from interfering with each other which is good for both security and stability.

Task Manager

Chrome features a process management utility called the Task Manager which will allow the user to “see what sites are using the most memory, downloading the most bytes and abusing (their) CPU”

User interface:

Gears

Chrome includes Gears which adds developer features that may or may not become web standards, typically relating to the building of web applications (including offline support).

New Tab Page

Chrome replaces the browser home page which is displayed when a new tab is created with a New Tab Page. This shows thumbnails of the nine most visited web sites along with the sites most often searched recent bookmarks and recently closed tabs. This concept appeared first with Opera’s Speed Dial.

Omnibox

The Omnibox is the URL box at the top of each tab, based on the one in Opera. It includes auto complete functionality but will only auto complete URLs that were manually entered (rather than all links), search suggestions, top pages (previously visited), popular pages (unvisited) and text search over history. Search engines can also be captured by the browser when used via the native user interface by pressing Tab.

Popups

Popup windows “are scoped to the tab they came from” and will not appear outside the tab unless the user explicitly drags them out. It is not clear whether they also run in their own process.

Rendering engine

Chrome uses the WebKit rendering engine on advice from the Android team. The Webkit engine is simple, memory efficient, useful on embedded devices and easy to learn for new developers.

Tabs

Tabs are the primary component of Chrome’s user interface and as such have been moved to the top of the window rather than below the controls (similar to Opera). This subtle change is in contrast to many existing tabbed browsers which are based on windows containing tabs. Tabs (including their state) can be seamlessly transferred between window containers by dragging. Each tab has its own set of controls, including the Omnibox URL box.

Webapps

Webapps can be launched in their own streamlined window without the Omnibox URL box and browser toolbar. This limits the browser chrome so as not to “interrupt anything the user is trying to do”, allowing web applications to run alongside local software similar to Mozilla Prism, Adobe AIR and Fluid.