Google Chrome, Google’s Browser Project
An open source browser called Google Chrome will be making an appearance soon. Google Chrome is said to:
- be an open source browser project. As rumored before under the name of “Google Browser”, this will be based on the existing rendering engine Webkit. Furthermore, it will include Google’s Gears project.
- come with an included a JavaScript Virtual Machine called V8, built from scratch by a team in Denmark, and open-sourced as well so other browsers could include it. One aim of V8 was to speed up JavaScript performance in the browser. Google also say they’re using a “multi-process design” which they say means “a bit more memory up front” but over time also “less memory bloat.” When web pages or plug-ins do use a lot of memory, you can spot them in Chrome’s task manager.
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feature special tabs. Instead of
traditional tabs like those seen in Firefox, Chrome puts the tab
buttons on the upper side of the window, not below the address bar.
- The browser has an address bar with auto-completion features. Called ’omnibox’, Google says it offers search suggestions, top pages you’ve visited, pages you didn’t visit but which are popular amd more. The omnibox also lets you enter e.g. “digital camera” if the title of the page you visited was “Canon Digital Camera”. Additionally, the omnibox lets you search a website of which it captured the search box; you need to type the site’s name into the address bar, like “amazon”, and then hit the tab key and enter your search keywords.
- As a default homepage Chrome presents you with a kind of “speed dial” feature, similar to the one of Opera.
On that page you will see your most visited webpages as 9 screenshot
thumbnails. To the side, you will also see a couple of your recent
searches and your recently bookmarked pages, as well as recently closed
tabs.
- include a privacy mode; Google says you can create an
“incognito” window “and nothing that occurs in that window is ever
logged on your computer.” The latest version of Internet
Explorer calls this InPrivate. Google’s use-case for when you might
want to use the “incognito” feature is e.g. to keep a surprise gift a
secret.
- be able to launch Web apps in their own browser window without address bar and toolbar. Mozilla has a project called Prism
that aims to do similar
- fight malware and phishing attempts, Chrome is constantly downloading lists of harmful sites. Google also promises that whatever runs in a tab is sandboxed so that it won’t affect your machine and can be safely closed.
Given that Microsoft still controls about 72 percent of the browser market, Google can’t afford to leave that business to chance. Web is its business, and the browser is a necessary weapon for the company.
John Lilly, CEO of Mozilla Corp., a close personal partner of Google, pointed out that most of the other browser vendors — Microsoft,
Apple and now Google — have other businesses and thus another agenda.
For Mozilla, Firefox was the only agenda. “Our only agenda is to make
web better — it is our single mission,” Lilly says. With over 200
million users worldwide and a development team made up mostly of
volunteers, Lilly says he isn’t worried about Chrome just yet. “I
really don’t know how it will impact us,” he says.
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