The WISIWYG Blog

It was probably the shortest announcement for a new web browser in recent years.  I heard about it from a Code Project newsletter last September 2, and just two days later, a beta version is already up for download!  And just in case you, my dear reader, are among those few who weren’t able to catch up with the latest internet news, I am talking here about the Google Chrome—the latest browser to hit the world wide web and join the web browser wars.

Due to the less-than-the-usual amount of fanfare that the release of Google Chrome Beta acquired, I almost forgot that the software is ready for download today.  Good thing, I am fond of reading YM status messages while “thinking”, allowing me to chance upon the status message of Roda announcing that Google Chrome is great.  (I don’t know if she was just being sarcastic or what?)  So I downloaded it at around 1 PM (RP Time).  And when the browser started running on my desktop, all I was able to say was that the thing is…


Unmistakably Google

Compare Google with other search sites, or Gmail with other web-based email applications, or even GTalk with other chat applications.  More often than not, the web apps created by Google turns out to have the simplest design, yet performs the best.  That’s also how I would describe Google Chrome’s position in the browser wars—it has the simplest design, yet… it’s just too early to say how it would perform against the others. :p  It looks like a bare-basic web browser, sans the browser tabs, but it does seem to offer more than that.  I can’t really say; after all, I have only been using the Chrome for around four hours, and I was just too busy this afternoon to navigate through all the features that the app has to offer.


Features

In the few hours that I was using the Chrome browser, and in the fewer minutes that I was able to surf through its functionalities, I was able to find these few features worth mentioning:

• Weird tabs – instead of the usual downward position of tabs below the address bar, Google Chrome tabs are set upright on the topmost part of the browser, above the address bar.

• Secret window – or what most of the IE8 testers refer to as “porn” mode browser.  Like the InPrivate feature available in IE8 beta, Chrome’s secret window allows you to browse in private—which means no browsing history, no search history, and no way for the next browser user to tell if you were watching porn or not!

• Speed Dial (?) – or it may be another thing entirely different.  Either way, it looks very much like the speed dial available for Opera browsers, although I haven’t tried using the feature yet.

• “Intelligent” address bar– which Google calls the “omnibox".  The feature is nothing new to Firefox 3.0 users, but it is still good to know that Google Chrome also shares the feature.

These are but a few of the features that the new Google Chrome Beta has to offer.  I wasn’t able tinker much with the app due to time constraints and language difficulties (translate: failure to read instructions in a Japanese OS).  For more of the new features available for the Google web browser, just visit the Google blog; or better yet, download a Google Chrome Beta copy of your own here.