One Year Of Chrome

Google Chrome has been around for over a year. In this space of time it's achieved quite a lot and as a result has bagged me as a user. Beforehand I was a Firefox fan but after trying Google's browser I just couldn't stay loyal to Mozilla's competitor. Both are open source and both are superior to Microsoft's pre-installed Internet Explorer. They both outdo Apple Safari and Opera but how does Chrome beat Firefox? People complain that Chrome isn't as good as Firefox because of a lack of features. In this case, less is definitely more, as I'm about to point out...

1 – Less is More

Take a look at a Chrome window adjacent to Firefox in another window. You should notice that Chrome's browsing window is a heck of a lot larger than Firefox's, and this is because of Chrome's obvious lack of toolbars and whatnot. Also, Chrome's tab bar has been torn out from beneath the navigation bear and stuck in the window's title bar, saving yet more space and making Chrome less cluttered. All of the regular menus have been compacted into two individual buttons, one for page controls, the other for settings. So much space is saved.

Firefox users will mock Google's lack of features when in fact there is an equal amount of stuff crushed into a smaller space. A more efficient layout. Google's minimalist approach to design may not always be the best but in the browser it definitely is.

Some people have expressed their personal craving for a Ribbon interface in a browser environment. I'm strongly against this idea. The Ribbon interface was designed for applications containing a complex amount of commands and options which were all locked in deep rigid menu structures. Office, for example. A browser only needs a few bits and bobs, such as back, forward, reload, stop, and home. Why use Ribbon?

If you want to implement the Ribbon interface into something then I'd recommend something far more complicated than a browser. Maybe a video editing application or something along the lines of Photoshop.

At the moment browsers don't really need an overhaul in the style department. They're already capable of serving all necessary commands and buttons up on a single dish right underneath the cursor's nose. So why fix something that's not broken? In a way, Chrome's interface sort of stole some of the thunder generated by Microsoft's Ribbon interface through it's amazingly simplistic compactness. Google has it's own Ribbon. If more browsers used the style of interface Google chose within Chrome the browser world would be so much cleaner. I probably speak for a lot of Firefox-to-Chrome converts.

Themes and Extensions

Firefox has Personas for themes and add-ons to extend the overall power of the browser itself. Originally, Personas was an add-on in itself. Now it's built in. Chrome always had built-in support for themes. Admittedly, the themes aren't great, and you can't submit your own. But if you try submitting your own design to the Personas gallery it's unlikely you'll be able to use it. Imagine the high level of control Apple has over submissions to the App Store. That's how Mozilla is with Personas themes. Currently, Firefox succeeds in the thematic interface department.

But as of late Chrome has fought back against Firefox's extensive add-on collection with Google's own database of extensions. There aren't as many but you can indeed submit your own and because of the way Chrome is built from the ground up each extension runs in its own process. This prevents browser crashes. If an add-on in Firefox crashes the chances are the entire browser will just collapse before you, whereas Chrome will carry on as if nothing happened. Google's browser design is also cleaner than Firefox's, so extensions won't end up cluttering the interface, unlike in Mozilla's browser.

Compatibility

Even if Windows is the most popular operating system on an international basis that's not an excuse to leave the rest of us hanging. I myself recently switched over to Linux Mint 8 Helena after having used XP for about a month, before which I used 7. Even further back I used Vista. Along my whole journey I've used Chrome and losing out on Google's browser was one of my main concerns when contemplating a shift to Linux. Looks like I started considering at the right time then. Google only recently rolled out branches of Chrome especially design for use under Mac OS X and various Linux distributions.

Of course, Chrome has always been open source so there's probably a forum filled to the brim somewhere in the darkest corners of the Internet with programmers who knew how to run Chrome on incompatible platforms months ago.

There was always the possibility of running the browser as a virtual machine while in Seamless mode but that would take up obscene amounts of system resources and defeat the purpose of Chrome. Chrome is, to a certain degree, designed for low-power machines. Running an application such as Virtual Box could easily crash hardware consisting of severely limited components. When I first installed Chrome on Linux Mint 8 Helena I had a problem starting it up at first but on the second attempt it worked fine and it's been in perfect operational order ever since.

Speed

Chrome has this clever bit of technology called the V8 JavaScript engine which totally blitzes all standards and expectations set forth by JavaScript developers. As a result pages containing heavy JS will render at awe-inspiring speeds and won't crash. Chrome also runs each tab as an individual process. As well as making the entire browser a whole lot faster, this stops everything crashing if a single tab decides to collapse.

Chrome also renders other pages consisting of alternating content types just as fast as other browsers, or even faster if you're using a PC/Mac with at least 1GB RAM. All it took was a bit of spring cleaning under the hood and Google hit the nail on the head. When you take a look back over your shoulder at Internet Explorer, you start to wonder if Microsoft made it so slow on purpose.

Summary

Chrome has achieved a lot in a year. More than what Microsoft's browser has achieved in over ten years in the business. Internet Explorer is older than the company which made Chrome itself, yet it's still so inferior. Even Firefox is now playing catch up.

I personally cock my hat to all the engineers over at Google who revolutionized the way I interact with the Internet. And I must recommend to you readers who have yet to jump ship to Google's browser, give it a go, and revel in the pleasant surprise.

By Steve.