Google Chrome - First Impressions

I'm writing this blog entry using Google's new browser Chrome. My first impression is that it's fast! Faster than Firefox used to be and MSIE never was.

Some of the problem with Firefox's speed may be my own fault by installing all the plugins, that may also account for the larger footprint.

Speaking of footprint Chrome runs a process for each tab you have open. With just one tab open though I still have two Chrome.exe process running.

Incognito Browsing

This is an interesting feature.

You've gone incognito. Pages you view in this window won'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. Any files you download or bookmarks you create will be preserved, however.

Going incognito doesn't affect the behavior of other people, servers, or software. Be wary of:

• Websites that collect or share information about you
• Internet service providers or employers that track the
• pages you visit
• Malicious software that tracks your keystrokes in
• exchange for free smileys
• Surveillance by secret agents
• People standing behind you

So, so long as your employee doesn't track the websites you visit you can surf morally questionable sites at work and not have to clean up after. It won't save browser cache, cookies, search history etc.

Text Area Enlarging

I just realized that you can enlarge the size of text-areas. The little drag marker at the bottom right of my BlogCFC body textarea grabbed a hold of it and enlarged it to fit my screen. Very cool feature!

Built in Spell Checker

This is something I had installed extra into Firefox and has proved handy as I can switch between languages as I use Firefox for both English and German email writing. My only complaint is that I can easily change the Spellchecker language. I have to close all browsers for the change to take effect. Would be nice to be able to change it on the fly.

Own Task Manger

Under the developer menu there is a Task Manager menu item which provides you with your very own Chrome Task Manager. This allows you to shut down a non-responding tab.

After ending a process you get the following message in the the tab.

I have my browser language set to German, I wonder if they have thought it out enough to provide a suitably funny error message in German? Apparently so! Instead of Aw, Snap you have a similar So'n Mist!.

All in all I like the new browser. I may even set it up to be my default browser.