All about Chrome

For a decade now, Google has helped us a great deal. And is still adding more innovation so that we can live life king sized! This company has created an identity (read index) for everyone. So the past decade witnessed a billion people loving Google more than their spouses (literally). 

You can feel this love of Google (again literally) at http://www.google.com/tenthbirthday 

Google seldom produces desktop products. But when it does, they are hyped. The first sensation was Google earth and now Chrome.

Chrome is meant to be simple. Its this logic that derives the engine behind chrome. The guys at Google did an intensive case study before cooking chrome to ensure lasting flavor and aroma. They realized a potent fact that a web browser needs to be designed from scratch, since the world has moved too far ahead of the first web page created fifteen years back.

Google went ahead with this and created the open source Chrome which is as light as feather and as powerful as Rock (feel the pun). They realized that now a web page is not just simple text page rather its a collection of rich interactive features and embedded applications. This requires a browser platform that understands the contingencies of the application and provide an impeccable ambiance for its execution. So instead of revising an existing browser, they redesigned the foundation and reframed the components under one hood.

The result was Chrome that gets out of your way and gets you where you want to go.

The best thing is that Chrome keeps all the tabs in isolated “sandbox” (see picture) thus preventing the entire browser to crash even if a site goes haywire. Remember your fury when your FireFox crashed just because you tried to open a 5mb pdf file on the browser itself? Its very simple in Chrome to shut the ungrateful rogue site and continue life. 

Here’s a simple demo how to do so:

If a site stops responding, open up the Task Manager. Figure out which Chrome sandbox is consuming the maximum memory due to instability. With all probability this sandbox is the culprit. Just press End Task and switch to the same site.

The poor webpage is devoured… and you’ll see this message being flashed on the screen.

This is one best reason of me using Chrome… there are several others too though.

Chrome allows you to work in “incognito window” which does not store any personally identifiable data locally like web history, cookies or searches. (It however cannot protect you from the data captured by a website or the people standing behind you!) So use this feature if your cyber cafewala has chrome installed.

Chrome uses V8, a more powerful JavaScript engine, to power the next generation of web applications that aren't even possible in today's browsers.

It has a nice charming interface that allows you to swap the location of tabs in fancy animation, the download button '↓' zooms in and out nicely, and the tabs when undocked are converted to new windows!

Other features include- inbuilt Task Manager, JavaScript Console and debugger, adding to a developer’s delight! Chrome is open source and allows you to view/edit its code. Available at http://code.google.com/chromium/

Chrome also has an inbuilt spell check engine which nudges you every time you fill a wrong word in a web form (just like firefox!). It also suggests you for the most appropriate website when typing in the address bar and auto completes Google searches made in it.

Enough simplicity. What if you want to use some add-ons?

A juicer point of discussion here is that why Chrome does not support toolbars? Including its own, vintage Google toolbar. And the interesting part is that it must had hurt Google more that you by lowering its ads revenue via toolbar searches, then why did they disable the use of ad-ons in Chrome? The probable answer is that this is a beta release and they just want to test the market before applying more layers.

So friends in this detailed enlightenment process you are left with one dilemmatic question “To be or not to be”… The wise answer is: if you like simplicity and cleanliness around you, Chrome is for you. If you like hip hop, colors and extravaganza use firefox… and if you cant move a step without a walking stick, use Internet Explorer!

Retrospect your decision at www.google.com/chrome