A few bloggers report that they’ve received comic books from Google announcing its new open source browser, called Google Chrome. The browser will be based on WebKit, the same open source engine that Apple’s Safari is based on.
Taking a queue from modern operating systems, Google’s comic says that it constructed Chrome so that each tab’s processes sit in their own protected silos. So if a page crashes one tab, it doesn’t take the rest down with it. That means more memory usage up front, Google says, but less bloat overall.
Also, the comic says the browser will beat the competition (Mozilla Firefox and its variants, Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera) with faster JavaScript performance and better security features such as an “incognito” mode.
Google says there will be a www.google.com/chrome, but it’s not live yet.
You can read the 38-page comic here, thanks to Google Blogoscoped. [Except that their servers have been crashed most of the afternoon.]
UPDATE: Downloads of the Chrome Browser for Windows PCs only are available starting at 3PM EDT, today, Tuesday the 2nd.
It doesn’t do full page zoom.. Wasted my bandwidth on it today.
Downloaded it just to have a look at it but not expecting anything too great… It’s good; and the few extra features I’ve looked at are very useful features – another nail in IEs coffin.
What a ginormous turd. I hate it when they make you DL a tiny installer and then the feckin’ thing downloads a big file.
Honestly I prefer to DL the whole thing than to deal with this kind of crap.
>> Jägermeister said,
>> Microsoft’s incentive is to make sure that the browser doesn’t become an application platform (and thereby threaten Microsoft’s core products), so they drag their feet on improving stuff… well, that was true until IE’s share of the market shrunk below 90%.
Well put, Jagermeister. I hadn’t thought of it that way, but I think you’re right.
How long has Sun and others been crowing that Windows will soon be nothing more than a set of buggy drivers?
I’ve been trying out Chrome, too.
It’s is a little buggy and no great flash — but certainly a better start than Firefox, Netscape, IE and the others in pre 1.0 beta.