Here it is - Google Chrome

It's here to flame up the fire and I am exploring it right after waking up.

The first thing that can be noticed is the location of tabs, the tabs are located above the url box - It's like different independent browser windows joined together rather than a single window containing different web pages.

The URL is colour coded - The server name appears dark and the rest of the path appears in grey. https is highlighted in green. A tiny thing but it's much easier to identify the server name.


By default there are two processes while opening Chrome. The process count increases on creating the first new tab but subsequent new tabs doesn't increase the process count - The count increases only on loading a page.


Killing a process displays a message in the tab corresponding to that process and doesn't kill the entire browser - Good.

Very spacious - Tabs are merged with the title bar, no status bar, no menu bar.


Acid test results:



Only a boot strap is available for download which in turn downloads and installs the actual browser - This possibly may be for region specific customization but I had prefer the real installer.


Missing:
- Profiles
- Addons
- Couldn't find offline mode

@Me, should find more time to explore

Yet another new from Google's stable, Google Chrome, an opensource browser

The war starts again, now with an extra battalion by the name of Google Chrome. With Firefox eating in to the shares of IE, Opera and Flock gaining popularity and with Safari's presence felt, the war is only going to heat up. Microsoft is already pushing IE8 as a safe and standards compliant browser. Firefox3 has set a new bench mark as a secure browser. Success for the new generation browsers will firstly depend on the security they provide against malware and phising sites, then secondly on the customization capabilities. Promises look good but wait till tomorrow.

Android in the wild

With the release of "Android", Google has triggered another round of internet activity - Which ever site I happen to land on seems to be talking about Android. Here's one for my part, which, I also see, as an opportunity to revive my blog.

Android is a software development kit from Google using which one can develop applications for mobile phones. Mobile phones have gone a long way from being a simple handy used to talk with each other to a fully blown device with capabilities on par with a desktop computer, hence this seems to be a logical move by Google.

Google is not actually manufacturing the hardware but rather gives the software and the tools required to write softwares for the phone. This has opened up a lot of interest and enthusiasm and I can't just wait to see all the different kinds of applications that will be running on the phone and with the announcement of a prize money for the best application Google has intensified the race to write the best application for this platform.

Android comes with an phone emulator where one can test the applications. The emulator seems to be based on qemu which emulates an ARM v5T chip - ARM926J, 96 MB RAM and a lot of other peripherals and runs Linux 2.6.23.

Rather than this, I am actually looking forward for the release of the kernel and other sources that drives the phone.

The future of mobile phone has changed this October 12.