A little over five months ago I mentioned Internet Browser Wars in “Browser Squabbles“.
Yesterday Google released their own web browser, called “Google Chrome”. Google used components from Apple’s WebKit and Mozilla’s Firefox to develop Chrome.

Yet another browser? Was my first thought. Just recently Apple’s Safari for Windows was released, and I’ve almost completed the move to Firefox 3. Microsoft is working on Internet Explorer 8. That did not stop me from downloading Google Chrome and having a look at it. It is only the Beta version, but then Gmail has been in “Beta” for  number of years now.

The interface in Google Chrome is notably different from other browsers. Instead of the standard toolbar across the top, Chrome puts tabs across the top. The tabs contain controls like the forward and backward buttons. Each tab can be detached to become a separate window. Each tab runs as a separate process, so if one tab gets hung up for some reason it will not affect the browser. Each tab has its own address bar, which Google calls the Omnibox. The Omnibox handles searches as well as urls.

For an introduction to Google Chrome see the informative comic-book here.

Other pre-Chrome reading is “Planet Google“.

Posted on September 3rd, 2008 by mervyn