Ryan Leland

Google Chrome - Just Another Browser?

I hadn’t really heard of Googles entry into the browser market until today, and frankly, when I heard about it I was probably more annoyed than anything else. Firefox has been great. I’ve really become addicted to a lot of the plugins (especially Firebug). But over the last few years, Firefox has become a little bulkier, and perhaps my plugin addiction has taken away from my browsing experience.

I still am not sold on the world needing another browser. At least, not unless it’s awesome. Well, the good news is I think that Chrome has a fairly solid chance at being something pretty close to awesome. The UI is very minimalist, and the rendering is lightning fast. Start up is fast. I like the bookmark system, and search. And some great developer tools are already integrated. I think a lot of this is thanks to Apples WebKit rendering engine. And that kind of sucks, but only because Apple didn’t make a good browser with what is obviously superior technology.

I guess it sort of frustrates that Google made the browser that Apple should have made. Apple made a great Web Rendering API in WebKit, but just because the API is doing all the hard work, doesn’t mean the Browser should be boring. Yeah, I’ve liked Safari, but it never really did anything for me. It seemed like a good browser, but nothing about it really stood out. Chrome on the other hand is just different enough to actually stand out, and shows enough promise for me to really keep an eye on new developments.

So overall, Chrome is just another browser for web developers to keep in mind, although Safari/WebKit is pretty standards based, so it should be all good. And, at the very least I’m glad that Google made something different enough to be a welcome addition to the market, even though it’s probably not a Firefox killer (yet).

New theme, and update.

Posting from my iPod! Just updated wordpress to make use of the touch app for wordpress. Seems pretty slick so far.