As September rolled in this year, Google rolled out its new web browser. Chrome, the moniker attached to the browser started out strong in turning quite a few heads. On its first day of availability it ranked 12th beating out some 2,500 odd competitors in Hitwise's "Computers and Internet - Software" category. Of course, 83% of its traffic came from Google owned internet real estate, so that makes sense.
According to Google, web browsers of today (the major four being IE, Mozilla, Safari, and Opera) are all products of the evolution of the internet. Because the internet used to be text based, and slowly developed into the multi-dimensional graphics and application based form that it currently takes, browsers are incapable of realizing the true potential of the web. Enter Google development team stage left.
According to Google, web browsers of today (the major four being IE, Mozilla, Safari, and Opera) are all products of the evolution of the internet. Because the internet used to be text based, and slowly developed into the multi-dimensional graphics and application based form that it currently takes, browsers are incapable of realizing the true potential of the web. Enter Google development team stage left.
Chrome is an open-sourced development. It is Google's desire to make their browser in the spirit of Apple's Webkit and Mozilla to "help drive the web forward." The new browser mixes a simplistic design with conceptually progressive thinking in order to improve upon current browser design. Although there are a number of features that are pretty sweet, when we tested the beta in the office we encountered a few bugs. For one, some page layouts didn't load correctly in addition to a slow performance. But that didn't stop us from really checking it out and pushing the beta around a little bit.
"As of now the browser doesn't seem that much different from what's already out there" said Aaron VanSchyndel, which may be more of a compliment to the development team than anything else since they have just rolled out and are self-describing the final product as "far from done."
Certainly Google put quite a bit behind of planning into Chrome's debut. They have a comprehensive comic which is really just an alternative version of the several you-tube videos and blog which explain the new features and mentality behind it. The videos and write up, in my opinion, are more helpful and less daunting of a task to read. When I saw the word comic I was hoping for just a few short panels, not an extended book.
Only time and implemented improvements to the beta will tell us if it really does have superior usability for apps or if it's just another browser. Either way, I think it's a step in the right direction as how to perceive the internet goes.
"As of now the browser doesn't seem that much different from what's already out there" said Aaron VanSchyndel, which may be more of a compliment to the development team than anything else since they have just rolled out and are self-describing the final product as "far from done."
Certainly Google put quite a bit behind of planning into Chrome's debut. They have a comprehensive comic which is really just an alternative version of the several you-tube videos and blog which explain the new features and mentality behind it. The videos and write up, in my opinion, are more helpful and less daunting of a task to read. When I saw the word comic I was hoping for just a few short panels, not an extended book.
Only time and implemented improvements to the beta will tell us if it really does have superior usability for apps or if it's just another browser. Either way, I think it's a step in the right direction as how to perceive the internet goes.
What makes Chrome a big deal is that a) it's Google and not some random company building an open-source browser b) each tab spawns its own process c) Chrome uses a Javascript Virtual Machine d) Webkit vs Gecko.
With that in mind...with Google's backing of Webkit now, will that spawn the eventual demise of Firefox and the Gecko rendering engine? Will Chrome's use of a "JsVM" spell the end to JS rendering engines? Or will Mozilla's new JS rendering engine come out on top?
Either way, all this really spells the end of IE (since IE technologies are basically out-dated and out of the picture) unless Microsoft gets their act together and actually catches up with the rest of the world.
With so many Google users, Chrome could replace IE as the "de-facto" browser people use.
My two cents...
I still think IE will always have a large market share and therefore make the jobs of web developers that much more difficult. With IE still coming pre-installed on windows machines, users simply use that as they are not technically-inclined to update to something else.
With IE currently at a roughly 50% market-share (at least users coming to SFP), it's still a force that developers MUST deal with.