Google Chrome: Is It The Best Web Browser?

The ongoing Browser Wars is spectacularly entertaining for those who follow it closely. For years, the unchallenged dominant internet browser was Microsofts Internet Explorer; before that, it was Netscapes Navigator. But the browser landscape has changed significantly in the last few years. Now there is Mozillas Firefox, Apples Safari and Opera. Those are just a few of the new browsers that have been developed to challenge Internet Explorers dominance. Last year, search engine giant Google announced its entry into the war with its new browser: Chrome. Google is renowned for its search engine dominance, so what about its browser is different to convince internet users that the Chrome is best for them?

Novelty

First of all, Google says it created Chrome with todays usage of the World Wide Web in mind. What most people use the web for today are not just web pages; they are applications. People watch and upload videos, play web games etc. Google opines that these things did not exist when the first browsers were created. So they decided to start from scratch and design a web browser based on the needs of these new web applications and todays users.

User Interface

Googles Chrome has been designed so that the primary user interface is the Tab. When a tab is opened, it displays the nine most visited pages and the sites that are searched on most. These can be clicked on to take the user easily to a site he or she must have been meaning to visit. Each tab has its own controls and its own URL box (address bar) which is called the Omnibox. When a user types a term into the URL box, it offers search suggestions; top pages visited before and pages that have not been visited but are popular. When a user searches on a site like Amazon or Google, the search box on those pages are captured on the local system and the user can search those same sites later with different terms straight from the address bar.

Multiple Processes

Chrome is a multi-process browser. This means that every tab that is opened creates a new process. If a tab crashes or hangs, it affects only that one tab because it is a separate process. Therefore, the entire browser is not affected unlike in other browsers where a faulty tab can lead to the entire browser shutting down as they are single-threaded. Chrome has a process manager just like an operating system. A user can use this functionality to troubleshoot a faulty tab or find out which sites are using the most memory, downloading the most bytes, slowing down the computer etc and correct them or end them as is applicable.

Speed

Googles browser employs the Webkit open source rendering engine. Webkit uses memory efficiently and is easily adaptable to embedded devices. Chromes developers also created a Javascript Virtual Machine called the V8. The V8, unlike other Javascript engines generates machine code that can be run directly on the CPU thats running the browser. V8 also uses precise garbage collection which helps reclaim system memory better and faster from objects to which there are no references anymore. All these combine to give a better interactive performance of web applications.

Development and Testing

The Chrome browser has undergone extensive testing. At each stage of its build, developers tested it on millions of web pages by utilizing Googles massive web page crawling infrastructure. This was done to ensure bugs were caught early and fixed. Google believes its browser is even better because it (Google) already ranks pages based on which pages the average user is most likely to visit, therefore, Chrome will be able to handle the kinds of sites people use on a day-to-day basis.

Security

Chrome employs a technique called Sandboxing. Processes on the browser have been stripped of their rights. They can compute but cannot write files to your hard drives or read files from sensitive areas like your Documents or Desktop. This means that a user cannot be monitored while he or she enters sensitive information like a credit card number, tax returns cannot be read, Windows cannot be told to run an application at startup etc. Sandboxing also protects users from malware. Chrome handles phishing and malware by continually downloading lists of harmful sites, one for phishing and another for malware. A user receives a warning if he or she goes to a website that matches the list.

Privacy Mode

There is a privacy mode where a user can create an Incognito window and nothing that occurs in that window is ever logged on the computer. None of the browsing history is saved in the browser and when the window is closed, the cookies from that session are wiped out.

Pop-up Handler

Pop ups on Chrome are relegated to the tab they come from and are not allowed to flash across the screen and interfere with the browsing experience. If the pop-up is something the user wants, it can be dragged and promoted to its own window.

Open Source

Google has released the Chrome browser as open source software which means other browser developers can take what they want out of it and modify it without having to ask for Googles permission or pay for its use. It has released the V8 engine for use by other developers as it has also used open source resources like Webkit and Mozilla.

All the above are enviable and impressive attributes for a browser and Google hopes to improve on them. It also hoping other developers will improve on the Google Chrome or create even better browsers based on the Chromes design. In this way, Google is hoping Chrome becomes the standard when it comes to browsers. But will it be enough to overcome Internet Explorers dominance?

Sources:

Google Chrome by the Google Chrome Team: /googlebooks/chrome/

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