Google has announced Chrome as its new open source web browser. Is the much rumoured Google OS? Or just giving back to the open source community as they state it. In any event I think it is good news.
They have a nice comic e-book highligthing the features of chrome. Here is a list of the features I find most interesting (and promising):
- It is a multiprocess application (instead of the multithreaded approach modern web browsers use). Interesting thing is not only tabs (or HTML renderers) but JavaScript VM’s and plugins are seperate processes too. This is the most important feature IMHO, read more about this in the comic.
- The interface is almost non-existent. Of course we need to try it out before we decide if it is unobtrusive or literally non-existent. But web browsers are all going towards the direction of minimal interfaces, and I think this is good.
- It is said to be faster. Faster page rendering, faster JavaScript, faster everything… I don’t know if it will be really considerably faster; but if they implement those enhancements over JavaScript VM it would at least be smoother. The comic has info about the new garbage collection strategy and compilation and running of bytecode.
I am pretty content with the Firefox 3, its new full-screen mode and somewhat intelligent addressbar. It runs quite fast, crashes only once in a while (and almost all the time because of the stupid flash plugin). But Google’s web browser is still exciting news, I will be looking forward to its launch. Don’t forget to check out the presentation.
