Google Chrome, it’s a whole new ball game for browsers

Posted on September 3rd, 2008 by Richard Catto 1,047 views

Wow! Where do I start?

I downloaded the brand new Free Open Source Software Google Chrome web browser (it launched today) just a few hours ago, and I am simply blown away by it!

DOWNLOAD it now and come back and read this article using Chrome.

READ Google’s comic book overview of what Google Chrome is all about. Some of it is quite technical because it is instructive about the underlying software architecture that makes Chrome a whole huge step forward in the browser game.

Google has produced video demonstrations of each new aspect of Google Chrome, which must surely soon become a rival for the number one web browser.

It is FAST, it is slick, it is smooth, it is clean. So very very clean.

It’s actually quite hard getting used to such an uncluttered and clean interface.

Not everything works yet. Songza produces fuzzy text. The YouTube progress bar does not show the downloaded part.

It does not have any plugins or toolbars.

But it is a new toy and you should play with it and see it for yourself, so I’m not going to write a mini-review of it here. The objective of this article is simply to encourage you to go get it today!

Then come and write your own review of it in the comments.

Tags: Google Chrome, web browser
Filed under Google, Google Chrome |

9 Responses to “Google Chrome, it’s a whole new ball game for browsers”

1. Dre Says:
   September 3rd, 2008 at 14:15

   Yeah I also downloaded it and it is fast. It is made for browsing not playing. I miss the Firefox extensions so it won’t become my main browser…for now

   Dres last blog post..Why you get Spammed!

2. Richard Catto Says:
   September 3rd, 2008 at 19:33

   @Dre: So far no crashes.

   Firefox has become very unstable. Version 2, for me, became impossible to use because it crashed so much under the load of all the plugins I loaded.

   Switching to Firefox 3 did help loads, but Firefox still has the ability to crash my Internet connection as well as become completely unresponsive.

   I like the separate process architecture that Google is employing to increase system stability. I do notice that Chrome is using up much more memory than Firefox does, but then I’ve got the memory to spare on my system – that is not my problem. Stability is.

3. shearyadi Says:
   September 3rd, 2008 at 21:32

   Don’t like it, dunno if they finally launch the full version

   shearyadis last blog post..Gareth Nail fluid movement furniture designs

4. Richard Catto Says:
   September 4th, 2008 at 00:32

   @shearyadi: I’ve been using it all day long in lieu of my usual browser (Firefox 3) and I’m lovin’ it.

5. Dwacon Says:
   September 4th, 2008 at 02:52

   The comic book they published to explain chrome is hilarious!

   Dwacons last blog post..R.I.P. Don LaFontaine

6. Richard Catto Says:
   September 4th, 2008 at 03:04

   @Dwacon: I think it’s great, but some of the concepts discussed will fly over non-programmers’ heads, like the discussion about processes versus threads, and the whole javascript garbage collection.

   It’s quite a technical document, even though its using a comic book format.

7. Relax Max Says:
   September 6th, 2008 at 01:59

   Richard, went to look at it. Looks really exciting, actually. Couldn’t download it of course, but I think it looks great. And it sounds like you are having fun with it. Keep describing it so my mouth drools why don’t you. (Not for Mac users.) But if you keep on talking about it I will be forced to crank up my PC. Not desperate enough to do that yet. Heh. Hi Shearyadi Eddy. Oway.

   Relax Maxs last blog post..Squeal like a pig America! Obama is totally unstoppable now!

8. Richard Catto Says:
   September 6th, 2008 at 04:05

   @Relax Max: I think Google is happy, though, because Chrome managed to capture 1.5% of the browser market in 24 hours. Chrome has taken the no 3 most popular browser position on PCs, bumping Safari to no 4.

   I love Google products. Most of them are online apps, save for Google Desktop and Picassa2, neither of which I use frequently.

   I wonder if the next step for Google is to create a Google OS based on Linux?

9. Steve Mabbutt Says:
   October 21st, 2008 at 13:49

   Google Chrome: It’s not about the browser

   Chrome, Google’s new browser, was barely out of its wrapping before Internet pundits began writing it off. As the first wave of early-adopter enthusiasts lost interest in their experiments and returned to their original browsers, so analysts began to declare Chrome dead. But there is a far more interesting set of dynamics at work. Google is not after Microsoft’s share of the browser market: it’s after something much bigger.

   To understand what’s truly and enduringly interesting about Google Chrome, one needs to understand what is special about V8, its new Javascript engine. And to understand that, it’s useful to go back ten years to look at the position of Javascript’s remote cousin Java.

   Ten years ago, Java was so slow it was inconceivable that anybody could use it to build serious systems; its garbage collection process brought entire applications to a shuddering halt. Then a small start-up team led by Lars Bak, a graduate of Denmark’s famous Aarhus University, developed a new virtual machine for Java that enabled code to be compiled on the fly, improving Java’s performance 20 times or more. The start-up was rapidly acquired by Sun and Bak became the technology lead for Java Hotspot, Java’s current virtual machine.

   Hotspot changed everything: suddenly Java became a language to take very seriously indeed.

   Fast-forward ten years, and Lars Bak is back in Aarhus, leading the team developing V8, the Javascript engine behind Google Chrome.

   Without V8, Javascript suffers from the same problem Java had ten years ago: it’s painfully, unbelievably slow, tens or even hundreds of thousands of times slower than other languages. So despite its flexibility, it’s never been used for any kind of serious development; in fact, it’s been the single biggest hurdle to the development of more interesting applications that can run inside a browser.

   It’s not always Telkom’s fault when web pages load at a snail’s pace: Javascript is a big part of the problem. There have been a few attempts to replace it as the main tool for getting functionality into the browser, notably Microsoft’s Silverlight and Adobe’s Flex, both of which are being pushed hard. The goal for everyone is enable as much as possible to be done inside the browser, as efficiently as possible.

   Applications like Gmail and Google Maps have done amazingly well so far, but they are way out at the limits of what can be done inside a browser.

   Or rather, they WERE out at the limits of what could be done. Just as Hotspot changed everything for Java, so V8 is going to change everything for Javascript. In a below-the-radar blog post at the beginning of September announcing V8, Bak said it “has been designed for performance from the ground up. In particular, we wanted to remove some common bottlenecks that limit the amount and complexity of JavaScript code that can be used in Web applications.”

   Bak says there are three cornerstones of the V8 design: Compilation of JavaScript source code directly into native machine code, an efficient memory management system resulting in fast object allocation and small garbage collection pauses, and the Introduction of hidden classes and inline caches that speed up property access and function calls.

   That may not make a great deal of sense to those who aren’t programmers, but here’s the key point: V8 is fast. Very, very fast. So fast that it is now possible, for the first time, to develop seriously functionality inside a web browser without relying on obese plugins.

   Security is also much tighter with V8. Every tab opened in the browser is a separate process that is well sandboxed, allowing no leakage of malignant code. In other existing browsers, even Firefox, all tabs use a single execution thread and a single process, making the whole vulnerable to security problems. V8 provides a far superior environment for developing applications.

   Tellingly, V8 is open source, which will only magnify the huge ripple effect it is going to have. Slow runtime environments have been the biggest stumbling block to moving more functionality off the desktop and into the browser; with that removed, things are really going to take off. Google Docs, for one, will gather enormous strength, possibly making it a real alternative to Microsoft Office for the first time.

   Which brings us back to the starting point: Google is not interested in winning browser market share, it’s interested in replacing entire operating systems. A JavaScript engine that enables serious functionality to be offered inside the browser is a huge step in that direction.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.