Google Chrome browser set to weigh in
September 2nd, 2008
Last night I noticed John Resig twittering about a new Web browser from Google, called Chrome. It’s hitting the news in other places; here’s a piece from yesterday’s New York Times.
Reports say Google intends to release the browser for download from its site today at: google.com/chrome but so far nothing’s available.
I haven’t had time to immerse myself the details yet, but here are some of the important details:
- It will be open source
- It will offer a way for people to see how Web sites are consuming system resources
- It will handle tabbed browsing in a slightly different way
This could have a major impact on both Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser as well as the Mozilla Project’s Firefox.
You can find out more about the Google Chrome features at Google Blogscoped, a blog which follows the company; learn more about some of the technical implications of Google Chrome from John Resig on his blog.
As far as the impact on front end Web designers? It remains to be seen, but if you assume that Chrome adheres to Web standards and standard CSS implementations, it shouldn’t change the game all that much. Stay tuned….
Walt Mossberg’s review of Chrome:
http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20080902/first-test-of-googles-new-browser/
I’ve downloaded Chrome for Windows XP (not available yet for OS X). At first blush, no noticeable quirkiness in CSS/HTML rendering (which you’d expect).