I’ve been using Google Chrome since the day the beta was release (Sept 2nd) and I feel obligated to give a brief review about it.

Summary:

Pros - Very fast (almost twice as fast as IE and Firefox), great tab system, very elegant, operates like an Operating System, runs smoothly, lots of space, great javascript controls, great URL bar options.

Cons - Limited on options to adjust style codes and features, sometimes slows while multitasking, does not have a full screen display (but doesnt need one), not all sites support it yet.

Comment - This is a great operating system, with no doubt its better than IE and Safari but is still competing for the spot from Opera and Firefox. It has the speed on both of them, but the features that Opera and Firefox offer still put of battling marks for Google to take on. I feel its a bit scary that Google is not putting out a competing browser because that puts them one step closer to taking over the metaphorical cyber-white house. Google is already a POWERHOUSE in the world and its almost scary for them to be branching out to browsers and rumors says they will have an Operating System in the upcoming years. AHH! But I must say that they really did go all out with this thing. It’s still needs some work but for a beta, this is the best browser to come in the game with such a mighty stomp.

First of all the interface -

The interface of this browser is pretty spectacular in many aspects. The ability to operate much like an Operating System in terms of its tabs, as you can easily drag a tab from one open browser into another and it moves it like if you were to drag a file from one folder to another. Its the first browser to really go all out on the tabs.

Also while operating in a maximized window, it consumes most of your view with the web page, not the browser options at the top. They managed to reduce the size of the options bar to Tabs and URL alone. No title bar, no bookmarks, no ads, no RSS feeds, just simple and to the point….

Creating new tabs are also pretty spectacular. As you click on the new tab button it gives you a screen shot and link to the 9 most used websites in your history. Also to the side of that is a search bar of your history so you can search your history to past sites you have been too… This is far better than an instructional guide page as you open up a new tab like Mozilla and IE put on.

Beta testing-

As for the Acid1 and Acid 2 tests it scores very well against competing browsers. While it has not yet passed the Acid3 test, Google Chrome scores 78/100—higher than both Internet Explorer 7 (14/100) and Firefox 3 (71/100), but lower than Opera’s 84/100.

Note that is has not been tested much against Internet Explorer 8.

Speed -

As it takes a new approach in its Javascript virtual machine it has been tested that is running about twice as fast as Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3. There is no doubt that this is one of the fastest browsers out there for the operations.

Compatibility -

While its only available for Windows as of right now, the Mac OS and Linux versions will be coming out soon. Some sites such as CNN.com’s Video page still do not support the browser and Google Chrome did not make it self suitable to run Active X.

Web Developers Capability -

The ability to have a task manager for each individual browser allows a great display of what websites are sucking out of your computer. It also allows a security issue to be cured… Since each tab is on its own process, they cannot get information off your other tabs and heighten security in many other aspects.

Also there is a great display of options for web developers to mess around with