Google Chrome browser out today

By Rafe Needleman on 02 September 2008, 3:26pm

Google is today set to launch its long-rumoured open-source Web browser, Chrome. In a post on its official blog, the search behemoth promised that that Chrome would "add value for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the Web". Yesterday a Web comic explaining Chrome's features was leaked and Crave's sister site Webware took a closer look at what it promises.

Stability
Each tab will run in its own process. These processes will be completely isolated from each other, will be killable from the operating system's process manager, and will be sandboxed to prevent them from accessing information on the user's computer. This architecture should lead to a more stable and more consistent browsing experience -- performance of the browser should not degrade over time.

Google is using its search index to prioritise testing of the browser -- the pages that are linked to the most from Google Search are getting the most automated hits to make sure Chrome is behaving correctly on them.

Speed
The browser is being written with WebKit, the open-source engine at the core of Apple's Safari and Google's Android. The browser is also getting a new Javascript virtual machine, V8. It's said to be a better solution for complex and rich Web applications -- it should yield better performance as well as "smoother drag and drops" in interactive applications.

Search and user experience
In Chrome, browser tabs will take over the interface, becoming the primary navigational element. Each tab will get its own window controls. Users will be able to tear off tabs into standalone windows. Developers will be able to control which window controls appear in a tab, creating, if they wish, Web applications that are embedded in a browser but that appear to be more like traditional desktop apps.

Chrome's URL entry field will be called the 'Omnibox', and, like Mozilla's 'Awesome bar', will feed you suggestions based on your browsing history and live search results. It will be respectful of users, the comic says: "Inline completions will never flicker, never flash. It's perfect, aesthetically non-distracting."

The browser's default start page will show thumbnails of the user's most frequently visited pages and a list of their top searches. There will also be a private browsing mode, as IE 8 has.

Security
Chrome's architecture lends itself to secure browsing. Each Web page, or tab, runs in its own process, and is blocked from accessing other processes on the computer. "We've taking the existing process boundary," the comic says, "and made it into a jail." Different and more flexible permissions are being developed for plug-ins, however.

A database and API to access phishing and scam sites will be used in Chrome (and made public), which will hopefully reduce 'zero-day' scam exploits. The browser will be constantly updated with this information.

Standards
The browser will be released as an open-source project. Also, Google will build the open-source local runtime Gears into the browser, and is hoping that it is taking up widely to "improve the base functionality of all browsers."

CNET News.com Editor in Chief Dan Farber's analysis of Google Chrome on Monday was this: "It would be in line with other Google open-source projects, such as OpenSocial and Google Gears. Creating a competitor to Firefox, as well as Internet Explorer and Opera, could spur more innovation."

"Open sourcing the code is a smart way to avoid the 'Google wants to take over the world' fear, but it seems that Google has ambitions to create a comprehensive Internet operating system, including a browser, applications, middleware and cloud infrastructure." -Rafe Needleman