Kyle LeBoeuf

A beta for the long rumored Google Chrome browser is finally available. I would recommend that anyone interested in browsers (basically anyone who doesn’t use Internet Explorer) should check it out.

My initial impressions are quite good. I really enjoy using the browser. It is a dead-simple browser to use, and does not over-crowd the screen real-estate like other browsers (to be fair, I use plenty of extensions for Firefox, so that does take up a bit of room). It’s also pretty fast, using the WebKit framework for page rendering (the same framework used by the Safari web browser from Apple). There are some other useful features that I’ve seen that I would implemented directly into other browsers (especially Firefox) without any kind of extention.

The chief of these features is the customized “home page” that appears when you first open the browser or open up a new tab. I’ve posted a screenshot of this page below:

A screenshot of the customized home page in Google Chrome

Some other features include a “private browsing” feature, which doesn’t store anything on your computer while browsing (cookies, cache files, etc.), allowing for more secure browsing for banking and other secure transactions.

This browser certaintly beats out Internet Explorer in my book, but it will not replace Firefox for me. I need my extensions. The only beef I have with it right now, is the fact that it does not always render complex CSS properly, but I imagine that this will be fixed down the road.

kyle [at] kyleleboeuf.com