Chrome shine for Google

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: execution in Chrome, they made it 2-3 times faster than other browsers (based on benchmarks mentioned later in this article).

I initially downloaded with a little bit of scepticism, since browsers are now almost like electricity. How good a new browser can be? I was wrong. Google Chrome downloads and installs swiftly. On the click of a button it smoothly imports my bookmarks and passwords from FireFox, thereby making every Web application that I use on FireFox, immediately usable on Chrome. I tested Chrome with the most popular sites that I visit, everything was working fine. I noticed how much I have got ‘used to’ with Chrome with just about an hour of browsing, and the webpage occupies so much space on the screen, the controls take so little space. Awesome!

Next, I went to some of the JavaScript heavy pages that I use. I was delighted to see that a webpage that used to hang on FireFox, actually rendered in less than 33% the time it would take normally to render that page (FireFox would usually give ‘stop-script, continue, cancel’ kind of dialog-box). This Chrome experience was out of the world for me!

I tested Chrome with some of the popular JavaScript frameworks such as DOJO, jQuery, mootools and Prototype, and everything seems to be working just fine. Note that in the browser world, that is pretty uncommon. If something works on one browser, it may not work on some other browser. Chrome seems to have beaten that trend, something that would come with very precise product design and tens of thousands of hours of testing.

Chrome comes with some really great usability improvements—the tabs at top makes browsing very easy, the smaller size of the control-buttons at the top make the entire space available for the webpage, and the ‘Omnibox’ makes life much simpler, while again saving space on the control panel. The omnibox lets you input a Web address or search the Web in the address bar; it also has your Web history and provides suggestions as you type.

Chrome’s Incognito mode also seems useful. Pages you view in this window don’t appear in your browser history or search history, and they won’t leave other traces, like cookies, on your computer after you close the incognito window. Useful, if you are ordering a surprise gift for your spouse or your son, and you don’t want them to find out.