Google Chrome: A Browser with a Difference

At first glance, you have to wonder where all the stuff went, particularly if you have been using IE or Firefox. You know, all those tool bars that seem to multiply and take the top two inches of your screen. Rather than becoming more complex, the folks who designed Chrome decided to go with simplicity in terms of user interface and it is refreshing. If you need to do things like check your history, there are icons that bring up menus and you can get where you need to go. But the basic functions that are visible include refresh, forward, and backward. Further, the icons are clean and clear; they are simple line drawings. Plenty of times I have to guess what an icon does in other programs but Chrome makes it easy.

When you open Chrome, you get thumbnails of the websites you visit the most. This is really handy because it means you can get to the places you need to go without any fuss. Also, instead of having a separate search box, you type your search in the url box and your Google search comes up. Like other browsers, Chrome uses tabs and that is very convenient and familiar. One thing about Firefox is that there was a plug-in you could get where you could drag a link to a blank part of a web page and it would open in a new tab (even if the web page wasn't programmed to do that). The Chrome folks will probably add this feature in later versions of the program.

While we are on the subject of issues with Chrome, there are websites that don't work well on it. For example, you have to use Firefox or IE to download music from Amazon. This is probably a beta issue and it will be cleared up. The vast majority of websites work just fine on Chrome. Here's the best: Chrome is amazingly fast. Websites pop up just like they were supposed to do instead of taking forever to load.

It's healthy to rethink the function of a technology every now and then. Browsers were getting laden with stuff which slows things down and gets in the way of viewing web pages. Chrome's minimalist design is something others will probably emulate. Finally, along with being able to get Chrome free, there is an interesting online comic book that explains the development of Chrome and the concepts behind it. Chrome is a significant improvement on browsers because of its elegant simplicity and superb functionality.