Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Google's very own browser: Chrome

Google is launching its very own browser Chrome in 100 countries today. From what we have gathered through the articles spread across the Internet world it looks pretty promising and a leap ahead of other browsers with its JavaScript Virtual Machine called V8. Coming from Google we all expect them to be a league ahead of others. So far from the news that is going around it is definitely going in that direction.

Let us look at some of the features we came across; features which are only specific to Chrome apart from other usual features such as open source etc.-

  • Special Tabs:
Each tab will run in its own process. These processes will be completely isolated from each other, will be killable from the operating system's process manager, and will be sand boxed to prevent them from accessing information on the user's computer. This means a tab crashing won't crash all the other tabs and also improves the security of the browser.

It is also mentioned that the Chrome puts the tab buttons on the upper side of the window, not below the address bar. I don't know what benefits this brings to the user.

  • JavaScript Virtual Machine called V8 and speed:

According to the Internet sources "It is built from scratch by a team in Denmark, and open-sourced as well so other browsers could include it. One aim of V8 was to speed up JavaScript performance in the browser, as it’s such an important component on the web today." This means that this can also work with future generation web applications. The possibilities are simply mind boggling.

A multi-process design is used which could eat up a bit more memory up front but over time this could also mean less memory bloat and when web pages or plug-ins use a lot of memory the user will be able to spot it and pin point it to the respective item in the Chrome's task manager.

  • Privacy:

A feature called the “incognito” window is available in this windows and according to Google “nothing that occurs in that window is ever logged on your computer.” The latest version of Internet Explorer features a similar feature which is called "InPrivate."

  • Internet Security:
Google is already known for keeping a list of harmful sites and it is no wonder that for this browser to fight malware and phishing attempts, Chrome will constantly download lists of harmful sites.

Also the sandbox feature for whatever runs in the browser tabs makes sure that whatever runs on the tab won’t affect your machine and can be safely closed and is blocked from accessing other processes on the computer. But Plug-ins the user installed may escape this security model.

Apart from these there will be loads of other features. You can keep yourself posted on this by reading Google's Chrome related blog here.

Google's Chrome based comic


Google