Googles Chrome Browser – Features and alternative Firefox Plugins

image Google launched their first public version of open source browser named Chrome. As of now available only for Windows, this browser will most probably eat into Microsoft’s Internet Explorer’s market share. Well this is good news for web developer guys as IE always made it hard to develop standard compliant websites.

Anyway here is our take on chrome…

  • Speed: As expected, Gmail, Google Reader and many Google services performed better in Chrome browser. If you use Google services heavily, you may consider switching to Chrome. Apart from that I haven’t felt much difference compared to Firefox. Anyway if you like to go by stats, here is speed test comparison for Chrome, Firefox & IE 8 beta by Kevin Purdy at Life Hacker.
  • Crash Control: Every tab you use is run independently in Google Chrome, so if one tab crashes, it won’t take the tab with your inbox down with it. This is something I really loved it. In Firefox, it happens many time that some a badly coded website crashed entire browser.
  • Incognito browsing: This is a browsing mode in Chrome which when enabled, stop recording your surfing history. You can use this mode for visiting porn sites from your dads laptop without ever getting caught! Firefox people can enjoy this feature via Stealther extension.
  • Task Manager for Tabs: Pressing Shift+Esc keys instantly open the task manager for tabs. You can find out which tab (aka site) is slowing your browser and kill it. This is possible in Chrome because of crash control feature mentioned above.
  • Domain-Highlighting: This feature highlight root domain of a website in address bar. This way one can have quick look at which site they are actually visiting. This is nice approach to prevent phishing. Again firefox users can have this feature using Locationbar2 extension.

There are plenty of features in Chrome which makes it quite attractive. Amit Agarwal posted Chrome features that are missing in other browsers , while Adam Pash posted how to enable Chrome’s best features in Firefox.

One question still remain unanswered. Why did Google need to create a web browser when something great like Firefox already exist. Below is quote from a page on Chrome site.

Since we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if you started from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that’s what we set out to build.

Here is video story behind Google Chrome…

Overall, Chrome seems great in features although user interface is not quite appealing. And most of “new” features chrome is marketing on are already available for Firefox via its thousands of plugins. It would be great if Google Chrome somehow manage to support Firefox plugins. They will surely provide support for plugins soon. Atleast support for Google Toolbar is expected soon. Also Chrome versions for Mac and Linux are underdevelopment.

Link: Download Google Chrome Browser

18 Comments

Pratik September 4, 2008

good review !!!
I was checking your site since chrome was released to see the review…
anyways….chrome is really fast, sites load up pretty fast. i guess they might be using their web accelator technology. the inspect element is also too good

but,
– its too crude…fonts of certain sites are really not smooth and is really crude.
– gmail “rich formatting” bar is missing
– the theme (title bar and all) is not mixing with windows theme.
– status bar is not entirely revealed

still m testing…

feelme September 5, 2008

Can’t they just make it compatible with Firefox extensions?? I thot chrome is partly firefox under the hood… that would help people who want to migrate from ff quite a great deal in so many ways..

Rahul Bansal September 8, 2008

@Pratik
Thanks Buddy… 🙂
I hope Google will fix these small bugs in next version.

@Feelme
Yeah even I was expecting Google to fork Firefox only. Its really bad someone like Google created a threat to best open source software of our time! 🙁

chathz September 11, 2008

well actually chrome copied a lot of features from the opera 9.5 browser

it also lacks many features like web page zoom, home button etc

Rahul Bansal September 11, 2008

@Chathz
Well Chrome is in beta yet… 😉
Lets hope to see improvements in next version. 🙂

WebTrafficROI September 18, 2008

Yes i think it will release new version soon as we cant install the add ons …

if google add many unique features then it is going to create a revolution

Rahul Bansal September 25, 2008

@WebTrafficROI
I am happy to see its eating up mostly IE’s share… 🙂

ayedirectory September 18, 2008

I have been playing with Chrome all day. All I can say is that it kicks FireFox3 to the curb hands down! I love it!

Rahul Bansal September 25, 2008

@ayedirectory
Well chrome is fast as of now but real test will be when chrome will have plugin/addons system in it.

Use firefox without any plugin/addon and you will be surprised to see its performance. 🙂

shyjal September 27, 2008

Any one want crome’s offline installer?

visit :
http://tricks4u.co.cc/2008/09/23/google-chrome-offline-installer/

Rahul Bansal October 1, 2008

@Shyjal
Thanks for link man… 🙂

Andres October 2, 2008

Qould be nice a plugin for Chrome like “imagezoom” that exist for Firefox

Rahul Bansal October 8, 2008

@Andres
I hope to see all best firefox plugin on chrome once they(Google) add support for third-party plugins and addons. 🙂

Andy B. February 1, 2010

Namaste Rahul!
Lovin’ your blog!
Just a quick note to let you know about a cool new extension for Google Chrome (there’s also a Firefox + IE version 🙂
Anyway it’s called Babe of the Day and it shows you a HOT new babe each time you open a new tab (CTRL+T). Obviously this thing is wicked!
Be glad if you could take a cool here:
http://www.webvolcano.com/babe/

Thanks!

Andy

P.S. It’s really slick :~)