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Google Chrome: Everything You Want To Know About The Google Browser
(6 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)
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Here it comes, the much awaited Google Browser. They call it Chrome. Google announced it in its official blog.
Interestingly, they have described the entire technology behind Chrome in a comic. Here it is.
Google Chrome, from what I have seen till now, is not just another regular browser, built on top of an existing base. The features they have introduced are well thought out. All of them are intended to make life easier for the users and also for the developers.
So what’s new in Google Chrome?
The Chrome is built from scratch, ground up, based on Apple’s Webkit rendering engine. Webkit is the same engine that fires the Apple Mac OS X’s Safari browser. And Its also used in the android system for mobile phones. Though originally developed by the Konqueror team, the engine is now jointly developed by Apple, Google and Nokia. To give you a sense of the ubiquity of the platform, let me tell you that Webkit is now used by Adobe AIR, Nokia’s Series 60 phones, iPhone, and even Google Android. So, under the hood, there’s a pretty robust engine.
What does it look like?
Well looks like common browsers. Tabs, address bar. Search box etc.. One important difference here is that the Tabs contain the Address bar. Or, the address bar is placed, below the tab. And that has a lot to do with how they have designed the system. Tabs are far more important, from a design point of view, in Google Chrome.
Tabs Are Important, yes. But How Are They Far More Important In Google Chrome?
Well, a common problem with today’s browser was crashing. We now have multiple tabs. And we like to open up as many tabs as possible. This loads up the memory with all the stuff that we are using. Now, the modern browsers are all designed so that the browser program takes up one thread for all the browser activities. So, one thread for all the tabs. Think of this as a thread which passes through, and therefore links, all the different tabs. The problem with this process is that when one of them goes kaput, it affects all the tabs. Thus, the complete browser crashes.
So, what Google Chrome does is, make a different process for every tab. SO, each tab has its own process, which means it has its own memory and its own global data structures. If something goes wrong in that tab, nothing happens to the other tabs. You close that one tab, and you are done. The entire browser doesn’t crashes.
Ohh, that’s a wonderful approach. But also a new one. Have they tested it?
Google claims that they have tested the Chrome browser on millions of webpages. More correctly, millions of most trafficked websites. Google already has an index of almost the entire web. Not only this, it also has information about the usages and traffic of each website. It can thus know very well about the traffic of different websites. Google says it’s system can test Chrome on millions of websites, within 20-30 mins of a new release.
V8 - The new Javascript Virtual Machine
Because Javascript is such a prominent part of the web today Google went ahead and developed a completely new Javascript Virtual Machine (VM) for Chrome. The V8 will be made freely available to others. Anyone can incorporate the V8 engine and build a browser on top of it.
The Address Bar - The Omnibox
Omnibox - that’s what they are calling their address bar. We have already tasted what can be done with this space in Firefox’s Awesome bar and Internet Explorer’s enhanced address bar. It can be used for search. And when you type a letter, it gives you only the result that you have typed. So, when you type “w” it gives you watblog.com as an option and not http://www.watblog.com/2008/08/14/microsoft-live-search-will-it-steal-the-show/ . This is what we really want, isn’t it?
Also, when you reach a website with a search box, like Google.com, Wikipedia.com or Amazon.com, the search boxes on those pages get captured on your local system. SO, next time you want to search Amazon.com for “The Alchemist” all you do is type this in Address Bar -
Search Amazon: The Alchemist,
and press enter ! You are done! Pretty neat, I must say.
The default page is a home page like opera. With nine screenshots/links to the most visited websites. Besides this, there are also links to the websites that are recently bookmarked, plus the links that were recently closed tabs.
Security
Apart from the tabs being put in different processes, Google Chrome uses something called Sandbox. So, a sandbox is virtual container in which a computer program may run. So a plugin , always runs in combination with Javascript and HTML. Google Chrome takes this plugin, and keeps runs it in a sandbox. What this means, is, if the plugin crashes, it doesn’t results in the crash of the entire browser.
Apart from this, the Google Chrome program constantly downloads two lists - one of phishing websites and the other for malware websites, and constantly checks the pages that we request against this list. Anytime it encounters a malicious page, it notifies the user about it. Also, the owner of the malware website is also informed of their website being blacklisted. This prevents False positives.
Compatibility and Scalability
It’s a common knowledge that as a developer, there are different things that you can do with different browsers. Google Chrome is based on something called Gears, which provides a platform for creating APIs for the browser. Released under the BSD license, Grears can be used to add functionality to a web browser. Google will make the code of Chrome public, so that public participation can take the project further. Moreover, Gears can ensure that other browsers are not far behind and can deploy many capabilities in them, too. Compatibility won’t that much of a problem, then.
Conclusion
I was pretty much impressed by what I saw. The different standards that Google has brought to the browser are all open standards, and keeping it in the open domain means further apps/plugins can be built on top of it. How the Chrome actually fares, will be known only once its out in the open. Which will be later, today. Till then, let’s just wonder on how will the other two giants react to this.
What are your thoughts on Google Chrome? Can it tip Firefox and more importantly, Microsoft Internet Explorer? Do we actually need a newer browser? Let us know.
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its a nice article…waiting to use it…but i hope we don’t face any crashing problems….the way we face in Firefox 3.0
competition is always welcomed as far the users get something new n better … google always came up with something interesting ….i m eagerly to see what new innovation Microsoft n Firefox comes up with after google chromo …
@Ankit
great post.. surely looking forward to read more on this on Watblog
Neoplanet is the best browser out there.I dont understand why you people still uses firefox and IE and this ‘chrome’ or whatever. Even neoplanet has a chrome theme.
Seriously… to accidentally release the news of the launch a day before the launch… that is just RUDE! I want to get my hands on this thing! Email me the Link Google! Thanks.
Is anyone else having a problem with Chrome? Mine says “Aw, Snap!” for every website I try, even though they load in IE7. My co-worker is having the exact same issue.
Google seem to have tried something new with chrome and it does not seem to be a rehashed version or a cooler version of the existing browsers!
I’ve downloaded it a dozen times (486,128 bytes) but when I click on the Googlechrome.exe file nothing happens. Nada. Tried on 2 different computers (XP) and get the same. Shows up in Task Manager for about 1 second and then goes away. Not impressed with the installer - which I have read goes out to fetch more for the complete install but in watching the network it does not even try to get out. They are doing something unusual with this for it to behave this way as I have NO problem installing other programs. Sounds like a cool browser if only it would install.
Google Chrome has it all that can make you dump mozilla for it.But the very recent announcement of mozilla 3.1 pros is really aggressive approach from Mozilla.I think,this is just the beginning of a “browser war”
should be interesting to see if Chrome works more efficiently than FireFox and IE… if it’s faster than Firefox, since isn’t IE, then i’ll use it
One thing that the command line kind feature of Chrome reminds me of is none but Ubiquity from Mozilla. The timing of Ubiquity’s launch (a week before Chrome) only goes a little more way to prove that the folks at Mozilla were all too aware of Crome’s launch and had left no stone unturned to keep themselves ready for a fierce fight out.
They call Chrome as a Mozilla Firefox killer. As of now, I doubt it. The most important feature that lets FF stand out is their extensions feature and if Google fails to come up with one such repository in near future, it’s a good bye from me too.
One feature that can make Chrome every browser killer is the fact they have changed the very architecture and converted every single tab into a thread. This is an uber-cool idea and is so simple that it makes me wonder why didn’t it strike others, before this!
On the whole, the browser does look good. (Right now, commenting from Chrome :-P) Shall wait for a few more days before I come form a concrete opinion on this brand new offering from Google.
By the way, just one thought, the fact that Google Chrome had been advertised on the very homepage of Google, do you think there might be more downloads of the browser than that got downloaded on Mozilla’s Download Day?
@ joeschrmoe
I think that happens because of the firewall settings or it could also be because you access the internet using a proxy server. If such is the case, then it might be possible that the installer fails to get connected to the internet.
@ Priyanka
Yes, one thing that I got to give it to Google is that the browser looks very neat and snapped up! I had always thought that my FF3 windows had the largest viewing area, before I installed Chrome
Let’s all hope they get the things right with this browser!
@ Ranvir
We aren’t talking about a theme here, dude! It’s the functionalities that most of us care about and you got to try Chrome out to believe it!
@ Robb Luther
You can download the browser from http://www.google.com/chrome
Would be interested in seeing how they have implemented the CSS spec, since every browser seems to interpret it in their own way. I hope they stick closer to Firefox and make things easier for developers.
Also, i imagine there will be a host of development and debug tools around the browser. I am sure google would want the developers to target their browser by doling out free tools
Will google break the record of highest number of downloads in a Day ?
Please do read my review
http://moneymanagement.wordpress.com/2008/09/04/chrome-is-here-%E2%80%93-a-review/
Useful article.Wanna check some screenshot the go to my Blog
http://seosem.blogspot.com
Enjoy the new Google Chrome
Chrome’s coming is a great anxiety to microsoft’s IE8
Guys, I just found a bug in Google Chrome… it does not let you access the Facebook controls like edit or delete buttons… hope google rectifies this soon..
Ive posted this on my blog at http://atuljain7.blogspot.com
CHeers
Good insight into the what and what not’s of google chrome.Google chrome looks neat to start with but time will only tell whether it will be able to live up wt expectations.
One thing i don’t like about GOOGLE CHROME:
High on size.It takes around 48 odd MB.Thats huge if you compare the 26 odd mb taken up by good ol mozzila with some plugins.
there is a big problem here… at least for me.
i want my browser to clear the temp files that was in it after i close this browser. the problem is this browser does not offer that thing.