Google Chrome
Jens O. Meiert, September 4, 2008 / August 2, 2009.
This entry is filed under Web Development, Accessibility, Usability, User Experience.
I love it: 99.9 % of the readers of this site already know about Google Chrome, the browser my employer just released. Still, I am not talking as an employee here, and still, there might be something in this post that you didn’t know. So here goes a list of a few random things worth mentioning (alright, or even repeating) concerning a really good thing for our industry:
-
Chrome introduces a whole bunch of new features that should contribute to the whole browsing experience.
-
From a technical standpoint, Chrome is based on WebKit (which reminds of …?) and introduces the V8 scripting engine.
-
Talking technical issues, John Resig points out two interesting things, on the one hand some – from my side definitely not “commentable” – performance metrics concerning V8 and other engines, and on the other hand an implication of Chrome’s process manager:
The blame of bad performance or memory consumption no longer lies with the browser but with the site.
-
Estelle Weyl, and I happen to have her in my “queue” of sites I currently watch, writes about Chrome’s selector support to then introduce a “valid CSS filter”. Just mentioning, not commenting either, for now.
-
Matt Cutts (who I like to meet while I’m in Mountain View as well) dedicates a post to a different subject, namely answers to common Google Chrome objections, including that “there’s no ads built into Google Chrome at all” and “Google’s search quality group remains just as focused as it ever has been”.
-
WebAIM presents some interesting tidbits on user agent strings, presenting Chrome’s to be
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/525.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/0.2.149.27 Safari/525.13. -
Joshue O Connor, via WebAIM, brings up an issue I do not, cannot comment though again: Using Google Chrome with a screen reader.
-
Chrome’s
aboutpages introduce features likeabout:memory,about:stats,about:histograms,about:internets, andabout:crash. Did you already try? -
Chrome is explained in quite some detail in a comic drawn by Scott McCloud (albeit there are some technical concerns I do not comment either, no matter how these repetitions sound). Which even gets some coverage in Tufte’s “Ask E.T.”.
As if that’s not already been enough I may just finish with:
Google Chrome is another option, and we hope it contributes to making the web even better.
Read More
Enjoy the most popular posts, probably including:
Comments
-
On September 4, 2008, 8:55 CEST, Dave said:
I love it! it’s fast and very simple
well I hope there’s a plugin feature too so devs can make plugins
-
On September 4, 2008, 9:56 CEST, Neovov said:
Thanks for this bunch of interesting links Jens !
I was bored of reading always the same things on Chrome.
PS: Have a nice trip in Mountain View
-
On September 5, 2008, 9:59 CEST, Jens Nedal said:
I like the idea Google put forward with their new addition, Google Chrome. Javascrtip is fast, indeed. Webkit, good choice. Combination and addition of various browser features are great. Putting in some more competition into the browser market might indeed induce more forward development for the benefit of the user.
What i cannot understand though, is why every installation/download of Google Chrome gets a unique ID. Why would such a feature be implemented. Tracking comes to my mind and i don’t like that idea at all.
I pretty much agree with the article posted on WebAIM on the user agent string. The history of user agent strings is a total mess since every wants to shout, “Hey i am Mozilla too!”. The Chrome user agent string just kind of tops it all and produces a heavy mess. At least the word “Chrome” is contained with the version.
-
On September 6, 2008, 2:38 CEST, Jens Meiert said:
Dave, yes, let’s see what the future brings
Nicolas, thank you (twice)!
Jens, I understand, however, there will be a good reason for the ID, and Google Privacy Policies are transparent and rather strict I guess. As for the user agent string, that is really just, let’s say, funny.
-
On September 17, 2008, 1:04 CEST, Mimic said:
Chrome has indeed some good innovations, but I still need to get used to It, as for now I use firefox and I’m fine with it, althought it does eat a lot more RAM.
-
On September 22, 2008, 14:51 CEST, Ann Arbor Web Site Marketing said:
What can I say what has not already been said. It a great new product from google.
-
On October 19, 2008, 11:36 CEST, Tony said:
The Google Chrome Browser is slim and fast no question but i have read about a “feature” that is very scary for everyone which works in the affiliate business. the browser has a “surf anonymouse function” that will erase all cookies (and also the affiliate ids). that is the only thing that might be a little bit dangerous for people in the affiliate sector. i hope there will be a solution in future for that topic…
-
On November 12, 2008, 13:21 CET, Steve said:
Chrome erases cookies after your session is over only (I mean when you exit the browser) and they are available while you surfing the web. So, no reason to worry about, all web apps dependent on cookies will work.
As to me, I like Chrome as user and hate it as a developer (I would to any other new browser, though, just because it is “one more”
-
On November 28, 2008, 13:12 CET, Richard Morton said:
Any thoughts on the accessibility of chrome. I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet but on initial release I heard scare stories that accessibility was pretty bad, including not supporting tabbing through links.
-
On December 3, 2009, 5:14 CET, Jon Etters said:
After using Google Chrome for a few months, there is no way I can switch back to Firefox. I have become so adjusted to the light, speedy feel of Chrome that everything else feels…well… kludgy. Firefox and IE feel way to bloated now. A lot of development peers decry Chrome because of a lack of functionality (I am not exactly sure what that means), but I love it because it does one thing, and one thing well.
As a developer for a website, I haven’t really seen dramatic improvements in the execution time of our javascript in Chrome using V8 as opposed to other browsers, but I suppose every little bit helps. One of the few things that concerned me was the potential effects of Chrome’s Incognito browsing mode on proper website operation (no cookies), but Steve cleared that up. I do agree that having one more browser to add to the testing gauntlet stinks, I think having Google Chrome pick up steam within the populace is also important.
