Well, it’s been several months/years/millennium since my last blog post. However, lately, there have been a number of cool tech gadgets that have been released and I need a place to spout off my geek enthusiasm.

I am really digging the simplicity of Google’s new browser called Chrome. In case you haven’t been following the “Internets” these days, Chrome is Google’s attempt at a “new approach to the web browser.” Okay, so you may ask, “why do we need yet another web browser?” I mean, we do have Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (version 7.0 isn’t too terrible.) We have the very good and versatile Mozilla Firefox (my personal pick for quite a few years.) Don’t forget the under-rated and less-used Opera or the beautiful and refined Apple Safari (mostly used by the minority, techo-ellitist gang we like to call mac users who equate luxuriant expense with quality.) Google is touting that Chrome is different because it’s built for running the newly-prevalent torrent of Web applications that are coming on stage in today’s Web 2.0 world. Of course, some of the best examples include many of Google’s offerings such as Gmail and Google Docs. Because of the heavy client-side processing nature of these new Web applications, Chrome has some innovations that attempt to make “cloud computing” somewhat more palatable. The first innovation is that each browser tab is a browser unto itself. This means (for you tech savy individuals out there) that each tab “window” has it’s own process. That means that if one of your tabs hangs, only that tab needs killing. In other words, one tab doesn’t take down the whole browser (I wish they had a linux version. Firefox is always hanging for me in Ubuntu!) The second innovation (Among others. See Google’s comic book explanation for more information.) is new javascript engine called V8 that is supposed to increase browser speed for client-side processing and handle memory better (think leaving firefox running all day.)

So, being the early adopter that I am, I immediately jumped on the bandwagon and downloaded a copy of Chrome. I am using it to write this blog post actually. I must say the minimalist nature of it is refreshing. I have a lot of browser real estate for one. I always cringe when I use someone’s computer with their 8 toolbars stacked up taking half the screen. It’s difficult to re-train my eyes to look somewhere near the lower middle of the screen just to see the Web page contents! Chrome has none of that (so far.) For example, there is no status bar at the bottom (although you get an unobtrusive pop-up near the bottom as you load a page which is then automatically hidden once the page is loaded.) If you need to do search, you just type your search in the address bar. Of course the search defaults to Google but you can select other search engines as your default. And, yes, it does appear to run client-side javascript at noticeably-superior speed.

So the question is, does it unseat Firefox? For me, not quite yet. As a developer, I still find 3rd-party extensions for Firefox extremely useful for debugging my work. Also, Chrome does have issues (despite Google’s bragging about their ability to test it on millions and billions of websites) with some well-known web sites such as facebook and hotmail. For me, the real test will be to see if I’m still using it once the novelty wears off.