02 Nov 08 Pros of Chrome – Good points of Google Chrome

PROS OF CHROME – Here are some of the good things (I am listing only things which are not available in FireFox one way or another):

Process Isolated Tabs and Add-Ons – this adds stability to the browser in case a particular plugin or a page goes rogue. Also, since each tab is its own process, overall security should be better.

Faster JavaScript Engine – Chrome uses a custom built JavaScript environment which Google claims to be faster than anything currently in the market (though next version of FireFox is supposedly going to have something much faster).

DNS Prefetching – I am not sure if FireFox does this (I think not) or whether there is a plugin which turns this one, but Google Chrome performs prefetching at a number of places making for a faster browsing experience (as people have been pointing out). Here’s a detailed explanation of this feature on the Chromium Blog.

Page Search – The neat thing about Chrome is that it has a little itsy-bitsy things that set it apart from other browsers. One such thing is how it does page search. You can access page search by hitting Ctrl+F, and when type what you are looking for it highlights the word in the page – but that’s not all, other browsers do that as well. Chrome also marks all occurrences on the vertical scroll bar. This allows you to quickly scroll to the occurrence (useful if you are on a long page). Take a look at the screen shot below to see what I am talking about (all those yellow lines on the vertical scroll bar mark the occurrence of the word that I searched for):

THINGS WILL GET BETTER

Of course, Chrome will not always stay this way. It is an Open Source browser and enterprising folks will make it every bit as powerful as FireFox in time. There is already a non-Google version of Chrome (Chromium).

Here are some interesting links on what the early adventurers are doing with Chrome:

AdBlock for Chrome – this post on LifeHacker talks about how you can block ads on Chrome.
Chrome for Linux – there is port for Linux using Wine, go here.
Chrome for Mac – Chromium is the open source (non-Google) version of Chrome, and yes, there is a port for Mac as well, go here.
Greasemonkey for Chrome – its actually called GreaseMetal, but check it out.
Changing the User Agent of the Browser – if you can’t wait for an official way to do it, here’s a neat hack.
Users are reconsidering their original negative opinions already – take a look at this tweet.
The Chrome Song – yes, someone put together a song about the browser.
Backup your Google Chrome Profile – someone wrote a tool for this already and you can download it from here.