Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Google Chrome

Well Google Chrome beta is OUT!!!

Check out some the screen shots of the different features.

Javascript Console


View Source


Options Dialog box's






Find
The cool thing you don't get from this screen shot, is that while you are typing the highlight jumps through the page looking for the key word.


Element Inspector
You can right-click any element and see the html behind it.
In the Element Inspector box it has a handy tree path of elements at the bottom where the right-clicked element lives. This function is in a lot of HTML editors, like Microsoft Expression.


Search Highlighted text
If you highlight a piece of text and right click it the pop-up menu will give you an option to search for the text. Right now my search provider is Google but it will use what ever you set your search provider too.


Incognito Window


Task Manager
If you don't think Google is using this browser as its interface into the Google OS.
Just look under the developer menu for "Task Manager". It breaks out how much resources each page is taking up and if its causing the tab to lock up. Its even got a "Stats for nerds" link that shows you even more info about each web page. Like what process ID its running on and breaks down the the memory into how much private,shared and virtual memory your using. It even shows the memory foot print of Chrome and every other major browser.....NICE!!



The weird thing I noticed is that it installs its self not under the "C:\Program Files" folder but under "C:\Documents and Settings\[USER NAME]\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe"

Not surprisingly GMail and iGoogle load really fast!!

When you go to Google's Toolbar page. It recognizes the browser as a pre-Firefox 2.0 browser. I guess its not supported yet or maybe they are planning on baking in the toolbar functions.

Final thoughts
I'd say for a first beta, this browser is very stable and FAST!!
The one thing I have a complaint about, and this complaint I actually have with every browser. Is that the fonts, links & other html elements don't render as nicely as in IE. IE always seems a little softer on the viewers eyes.
I'm looking forward to see what kind of Google services they start hooking into it.

Update


Happy Easter
For you non-programmers, there's an Easter egg, too: type "about:internets" into the Omnibox.

Other "about:" features
• about:memory shows how much memory the browser--and any other Web browser--is using. Conveniently for Web developers, it also shows how much each Web site in a browser tab is using.

• about:stats shows a wide range of internal measurements such as the time taken to initialize Chrome, load Gears, or perform various operations while running JavaScript programs with Chrome's V8 engine. The page also carries the amusing note, "Shhh! This page is secret!"

• about:histogram into Chrome's address bar shows many performance details.

• about:network tracks the detailed network activity of using a Web site.

• about:version shows details of what version of Chrome is running, along with the user-agent text that the browser reports when identifying itself to Web sites. Why "Mozilla" is in this string is a mystery to me, though perhaps it has to do with the way Chrome can use Firefox plug-ins; why "Mozilla" is apparently in the iPhone's user-agent text is even more a mystery.

• about:histograms graphs various performance measurements such as the time taken to autocomplete text users type into the browser.

• about:crash crashes the active browser tab.