First Impressions of Google’s New Browser: Chrome

Just yesterday, news surfaced that Google was going to release a browser which was being used internally. It was a bit of a surprise for sure but when I first read the news, I was pretty excited because of the claim that the browser would run multiple processes instead of the way browsers usually ran which was single-threaded. Also, javascript rendering was going to be done by a new engine built from scratch called V8. In layman’s terms this meant that Google Chrome was going to be fast.

Now that it’s been released as a beta for Windows as of this moment (Mac and Linux versions are currently being developed), how did it fare to this claim?

Installation

Installing the browser was a very easy task. Google made it so simple that it automatically installs it onto your primary drive without even asking you where you’d like to install it. After it’s done installing, it prompts you if you’d like to customize it (import bookmarks, set as default browser, etc.):

You can specify which customizations you’d like, and it’s nice that Google unchecked it from making it the default browser:

Once finished with the installation, you finally get to see Google Chrome in all its glory with a UI that’s getting some mixed reception. Personally, I kind of like it:

If you open a new tab, you get a page similar to Opera’s speed dial of recently visited pages, and your bookmarks. It’s quite handy:

Browsing Experience

With the half-hour I’ve been playing with it, I have to say I’m really liking how Google’s browser is shaping up. Some of the advantages it has over Firefox is that it does feel a lot faster, especially with javascript intensive pages (like a post from digg with comments) and it also feels a lot more lightweight in regards to its footprint. According to the comic that Google released which is sort of like its instruction manual, memory usage will start of higher than most browsers but then in the long run use less memory because of its multi-process design.

On a sidenote, I was worried an introduction of a new browser would make my job as a web developer tougher as I first thought it would be another rendering engine I had to make compatible with, but its rendering engine is based on webkit (the same as Safari’s) so I’m happy about that.

Overall, it’s shaping up to be a really nice browser and I think if it proves to be stable to me, I will use it over Firefox every chance I get just because it’s much more speedy.