Google Chrome

Chrome was released last week and I downloaded it right away to check and see how sites would render in it compared to other browsers. From a SharePoint point of view, the site I work on rendered fine and functioned as expected. Chrome does render some CSS styles differently which will cause headaches for web designers.

Other features of Chrome that are interesting include separate sand boxes for each tab so if one tab crashes it will not affect the other tabs.

When using the browser it tracks where you go and adds it to your browser history and search history. If you want to browse somewhere without it showing up in your history or without leaving traces (such as cookies) on your computer there is the option to use an Incognito Window.

Google Gears is built into the browser to allow you to work offline with many of the Google services including Reader and Gmail.

There is the option to create Application Shortcuts when you browse to a site. If you go to Gmail or Google Reader and then click on the icon that looks like a page and select Create Application Shortcuts, it will create a shortcut on your desktop to connect to that application.

There is only one box to enter in either your searches or URLs. You simply enter the search keywords into the box and hit enter to get search results.

There is a developer menu that includes a Javascript Console, the ability to debug Javascript, and a task manager to see how many CPU cycles each tab is using and the ability to kill a tab's process.

Chrome is also faster on loading many sites that I have tried it with and is based on WebKit. If you want to try it for yourself you can get it from the Google site.