Sep 4, 2008

Why a Firefox fan switched to Google Chrome?

chrome2sep2008

I just downloaded the new browser from Google called  Chrome and the very first thing I noticed was it's amazingly fast page rendering capabilities and significantly low memory usage. Something I had been complaining about on Firefox.

I have no accurate benchmarks to show and compare with other browsers but on a user's point of view, here is what I have to say:

1. Incredibly fast.

We're using a lot of Google's products and services in our daily office tasks particularly Google Apps. Google Apps leverages on AJAX to improve its usability features of its products, when using a regular and traditional browser, it takes some time to load everything. With Google Chrome, everything almost instantly appeared in a snap!

2. Low memory usage.

I normally open up and use 8 to 10 tabs all at the same and, you guessed it, sooner or later my browser just hang-up on me. When I hit CTRL-ALT-DEL to check, it has hit as high as 210 MB! Just for a browser. Memory leaks on Firefox is very notorious.

With  Chrome, all tabs runs on a separate process and memory usage is significantly lower that any browser I know and used.

3. User Interface Design

I admit, it's not as pretty as IE or Firefox but it gives me all the viewing space I need without the unnecessary clutter. This was intentionally designed this way so users can get to focus more on the content rather than buttons you see on a browser's toolbar.

4. Security

Well there is no real way to test this feature initially but according to their product specs, everything in Chrome is 'sandboxed' so no rogue or malicious programs can write on your disk or spy on what you type on your keyboard. I'd say, this security design is unique and very well thought of.

5. Application shortcuts

Even with the absence of my favorite extensions and plug-ins, suffice to say I am contented with the Application Shortcut feature of Chrome. It creates a shortcuts of my favorite sites as if it were a real application. I made a few shortcuts for my Google Mail, Google Reader, and Google Docs.

Chrome will has huge, huge potential in the browser market and it will create a massive followers soon after it has its developers develops plug-ins and extension for it. Why another browser? That I will write about on my next post.

Oh yes, I have now switched to Google Chrome.

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