...creating clean code that validates and works on many different browsers will be an important skill for webmasters and web designers. - Matt Cutts
Just days after Microsoft released IE 8 Beta 2, we have Google Chrome making an entry into the browsersphere.
Google Chrome is a new open source browser almost built from scratch that supposedly took over two years of work. It uses the same rendering engine as Apple’s Safari browser - WebKit. To install you need to get the 475KB Installer which will in turn download another 7MB to get you started. The beta currently works only on Windows OSs.The UI is minimalistic. So minimalistic, it lacks the Search box that most browsers have. The address bar doubles up as Search box as well and it is called Omnibox. Next to the Omnibox, there are just two icons for the Page & Tools menu that in turn show options for the direly essential tasks.
As my preferred language was set to Hindi(India) in Regional and Language Options in Vista, when Chrome opened all the menu options & dialog boxes were in Hindi. As the font was too small & language not colloquial, I switched to English(India).
The search engine provider can be customized by selecting the option on right-clicking the address bar. I could only see India-based search engine providers in the customization list.
Tabs are on the extreme top. There is no title bar, no status bar (a temporary bar just shows up below while a page is loading). Tabs can be dragged and their positions switched. You can drag tabs out of the window to its own new window and then if required bring the tab back to the original window by dragging it exactly to the Tabs area.
The Incognito mode is equivalent to Private Browsing in Safari or InPrivate Browing in IE8b2. The keyboard shortcut to open a new incognito window is Ctrl+Shift+N. It opens as a new window with a incognito "spy" icon in the top left corner. You can also right-click any link on a web page and select Open link in incognito window.
The context menu is extremely context-sensitive and the list of options you get on right clicking will vary depending on where you click.
Shift+Esc activates the Chrome Task Manager from where you can kill erring processes.
Chrome has better support for Google Gears enabled websites to access web content in offline mode.
I guess faster, standards compliant Browsers will bode well for Web users and developers.
Also see:
Internet Explorer 8 (Beta 2) - a promising, bold new version