Today a new player enters the browser wars and it represents the biggest change to the field since the day that Microsoft decided to take on Netscape. With the surprise launch of the beta of Google Chrome, the Web and search giant has already changed the current browser landscape and is poised to potentially change the future of the Web.
Yesterday I downloaded Chrome Beta and spend some time to check different features.
When launching Google Chrome, which currently is only available for Windows systems, the browser walks users through some of the interface features, such as the integrated search and address bar (the default search engine is Google but users can change it to competing search sites) and the new tab features, which are pretty much lifted completely from Opera's speed dial feature.
As one surfs using Google Chrome, more of the features start to take shape. Clicking a new tab shows thumbnails of frequently visited sites and links to bookmarks. I liked this feature although I would have preferred if it let users customize the thumbnailed sites rather than only using the most visited sites.
Like Internet Explorer 8, Chrome has a private browsing mode, which is called incognito mode. A new window can be launched in this mode or you can choose to launch a window from a link directly into incognito mode. In this mode no traces of a Web surfing session (such as cookies) are saved, and users know when they are in incognito mode by the spy figure shown in the upper left-hand corner of the browser.
The address bar in Chrome combines both search and standard URL entry. This took a little getting used to but once I got the hang of it I liked this single-box method of using a browser address bar.
Another interesting feature of Google Chrome is its integrated use of Google Gears. Called application shortcuts in the browser, this feature lets users take any Web application and save it as a desktop-based Web application, with its own launch icons in the Start menu, Quick Launch and desktop.
Those wanting to try out the Google Chrome beta can find it at www.google.com/chrome.
A nice eBook also can be found at http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/
Namastee!
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