Earlier this week Google unveiled one of its newest projects, a new web browser named Chrome.  It is currently available in a Windows only beta, with OSX and Linux versions to follow.  It’s a pretty stable beta, so feel free to try it out.  I took it for spin to see what it offers and how it performs against today’s popular browsers, IE7, Firefox 3, and Safari.

Installation

The installer is pretty much standard fare, with the option to import settings (bookmarks, passwords, etc.) from browsers currently on your system.  I wanted to start with a nice clean install, so I chose not to import anything.  After that, the installer runs, the browser launches, and you’re greeted by the Chrome welcome screen.

Interface

I was immediately taken aback by the sheer simplicity of the Chrome interface.  At first it almost feels like there isn’t anything to click on at all, but perhaps the biggest difference that really makes Chrome stand out so much is the placement of your tabbed windows.  Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari all place the tabs below the address bar, bookmark buttons and options menus; but Chrome puts the tabs above all of that.  Google even went so far as to completely get rid of the Windows title bar.  It seems odd at first, but makes sense given that in a browser, all the title bar does is duplicate what is already displayed on the tab.  Removing it and placing your tabs at the most prominent location was a bold and intelligent design choice.

Google Chrome's new tab page

The tabs can be dragged and dropped to rearrange them as one would expect.  Or, you can drag a tab completely out of the window to start a new window with just that tab.  Perhaps the biggest improvement to browsing that Chrome offers however, is the new tab page.  Anytime you open a new tab the new tab page displays a multitude of content to navigate from.  Your bookmarks toolbar, a grid of thumbnails of your most visited sites, recent searches, recently closed tabs, and recent bookmarks are all displayed on any new tabs you open.  It is a great use of space and makes getting to the content you want quick and easy.  The new tab page loads really quickly as well, even after opening up a ton of them at once.

dragging a tab to a new window

The address bar, or “omnibox,” is another area where the browser shines.  The autocomplete in the Chrome address bar combines not only history and most recent sites (as Firefox 3 does), but it also performs searches if it can’t find any matches.  If you have ever performed a search at a site, Chrome will then let you perform a search from that site by starting to type the site name then hitting tab and typing your search.  It’s very useful and negates the need for a search box, everything is done from the address bar.  The left of the address bar contains the one-click bookmarking button.  Just click the star and the current site is automatically bookmarked and a small form appears so you can edit the bookmark data, or remove if it if you want.

the Omnibox

The browser menus are all contained within two simple buttons, one for controlling the current page and another for accessing the Google Chrome settings.  The settings are very minimal, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  After several hours of usage I didn’t find any glaring omissions from the options, and was able to get everything set up how I wanted it.  But I’m sure this won’t be the case with everyone, so more options are likely going to be something Google needs to add.

The now ubiquitous bookmarks toolbar is hidden by default, accessible via Ctrl+B.  You can change this behavior from the settings menu so that the bookmarks bar is always shown.  I think it tends to clutter things up though, so I chose to leave it hidden.  The history and downloads are accessible via the settings button and load up as simple web pages.  They both look nice, but browsing your history isn’t as easy because you can’t collapse and expand days and months.

Overall, the design choices Google made with the Chrome interface are a fresh take on today’s browser, and a positive step in the right direction.  It’s clean, intuitive, and puts the emphasis on the website content, not the browser rendering it.

Performance

How does it perform?  Very well.  Keep in mind it is still a beta, so things will likely improve, but based on my few days with it, Chrome is stacking up quite nicely in comparison.  It loads up flash and javascript heavy sites nimbly, and moving between lots of open tabs always feels quick and responsive.  Typically, Firefox and Safari (for Windows) tend to eat up processing time when sitting idle if a page with flash is open in one of the tabs.  Thankfully, Chrome performs similarly to Internet Explorer 7 in this regard with only 1 or 2 percent popping up periodically.

One of the main features Google was touting was the fact that each part of Chrome is started as a seperate process, so theoretically a tab can crash for whatever reason and the rest of the browser can recover.  As a result of this, chrome initiates a seperate process for each tab and plugin that it is running.  That sounds extreme, but it ends up being pretty beneficial:  each one of the processes can be terminated individually without killing the whole browser.  If a particular plugin or website is causing problems, you can just end the process in the Windows Task Manager.  [Tip: each process IDs can be found by going to the Chrome task manager via Shift+Esc, then clicking 'Stats for nerds']

Google’s new browser is looking very promising so far.  I’ve already switched over to using it as my daily browser when I’m in Windows.  We’ll likely see performance improvements and additions in the future (they’ve already announced an extension API in the works for plugin development) along with more options and settings available.  Try it out at www.google.com/chrome.