I (heart) Google Chrome
Earlier today, Google released their latest contribution to the internet: Chrome. This effectively ended years of speculation that Google was writing a browser, that it would throw its hat into the ring and kick off another heated browser war.
(Oh, and those of you paying attention might also note that this effectively also answers the question about a Google OS.)
Figures that Google wouldn’t just drop a bomb, it would lay waste to the expectations of a browser. My hat is off to the Chrome development team — you guys pulled off a doozy.
Google (correctly) identified that there is a significant problem with browsers today: They’re too slow. That generalisation is borne of the increasingly complicated apps that are being developed each and every day on the web. There’s so many websites out there that require extensive scripting and content richness that even the most advanced browsers sometimes chug away.
So for only-Google-knows-how-long, the Chrome team slugged away with the fundamental problems of a browser: How to deliver something quickly. Browsers were all based on the same core model of sequential loading (there have been countless presentations to that effect) and this still causes a lot of optimisation headaches for complex web apps.
We’ve been stuck with the same model for almost two decades here, folks.
Google did what most mature applications do, and turned everything into multiple processes, running them independently so they’ll execute (overall) more quickly. Add onto that the complete rewrite and virtualisation of the JavaScript engine (courtesy of V8). Finally, take some of the caching/processing out of the browser and lob it over the fence to Google Gears (another one of Google’s underrated little gems), and you don’t have a browser anymore. You have something worthy of using the internet.
Sorry, I fully realise that I’m geeking out, here. I can’t help it. It’s exciting to see someone break a mold.
Yes, all this high praise comes with a major caveat — I’ve only used it for a couple of hours. But that’s a couple of hours of trying to break it with everything that bothered me in other browsers.
My personal favourite? Flickr. I love Flickr, don’t get me wrong, I’ve got (currently) 6,515 items and I will continue to use Flickr until either it disappears from the web, or I die. (Hopefully the latter will be the case — I don’t wanna move that many pictures and metadata.) My biggest gripe with Flickr isn’t even really with Flickr itself — it’s with how browsers handle Flickr’s map.
I love to place images on maps so I know where I’ve been. But the processing needed to do all that (without a plugin like Flash) ain’t light. And 30 minutes of placing images on the map in Firefox 2 would grind it to a halt, sucking up over 1 GB of memory on my computer. Although IE was better at memory management, its JavaScript engine is still pokey. Firefox 3 was a huge step over Firefox 2 (it corrected the memory leak). None of the other browsers compare to Chrome. It’s ability to literally fly over the map astounds me. Thirty minutes of hardcore panning, placement, jumping, and moving (with the hybrid map turned on) did nothing to kill performance.
With 1.3 GB of RAM already (intentionally) in use by other applications, I should add.
And I need to figure out how on the internet (as opposed to “how on Earth”) Chrome managed to slice 75% off the loading time for Rolex.com down here. I’m currently hanging out In Costa Rica, and (at least on the lousy connection I have right now) it takes forever to load my favourite website. But with Chrome, it was zip-BANG-done. I am stunned. Stunned, I tell you!
(I should note that down here in Costa Rica, the lags in response time are very exaggerated compared to the ones I’m used to in Calgary. So when something like Chrome suddenly yanks those delays out, you notice it.)
Okay, okay, so not everything is all sunshine and lollipops. I have noticed a few things:
- Chrome ain’t perfectly handling WordPress’s scripting. I have to remind Chrome where the cursor is supposed to be. (I noticed this as I wrote this entry.)
- It’s lauded memory management seems a bit weird. Although performance wasn’t affected, Chrome seems to cache a lot of material in memory. Over 100 MB of data while I was in Flickr (and I’m sure I haven’t downloaded 100 MB of map data). Given, it cleaned it all up when I closed the tab, but it still seems odd. I would like a little more control over that.
- Chrome kicks up a minimum of two processes in memory. It seems to be one for the browser itself, and one per tab (so the more tabs you have, the more running processes you have). This is inline with Google’s “multi-process” design … but do we really need to see each process?
- Plugins. We need plugins. Someone build Firebug for Chrome, please!!
- I’ve seen first-hand some rendering issues, notably with PNG transparencies controlled in CSS (drop shadows go solid, then vanish), font rendering when content is dynamically swapped in and out, and I’ve heard from others of some Flash-based rendering issues, too.
- Mac support. I know Macs aren’t a massive platform compared to PCs, but if you really want to appeal to an obsessive market, you need a Mac client.
Pros vs. cons aside, the biggest problem Chrome has is market presence. The average person doesn’t know about Chrome, and they’re not going to go out of their way to get Chrome (though they should). Despite a press conference that was held just before launch today (a note to CBS News: I watched the videocast; next time, send a reporter who wants to report, not be the first to ask a dumb question), the average person will take much longer to even hear of Chrome, let alone use it.
But Firefox, my old friend, you’ve been supplanted. Chrome wins this round. I still like you, though — you’ve been a trusted friend and assistant for years. And you’ll remain in my development toolset until further notice. Do yourself a favour — learn from Google. They’ve got a few tricks that you haven’t picked up on yet.
And Microsoft? PAY ATTENTION. This isn’t the first time another browser has challenged you to performance and standards compliance (yes, even Chrome doesn’t support Acid3 … yet). I know you’re all over IE8 right now, and we’ve read about how standards-compliance keeps coming back as an issue. I urge you to please see how a true next-generation browser works, and maybe add some of this smart-thinking to your offering. The web developers of the world would greatly appreciate this.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I suddenly feel a need to kneel at the Altar of Google and make a sacrifical offering. I hope a bottle of Coke will suffice.
Last 5 posts by Cory Brunsel
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i’m willing to try it out just to see if it works more efficiently than FireFox… if it’s faster than Firefox, has tabs and isn’t IE, then i’ll use it
[...] by Patrick on 2 Sep 2008 Out on the wild, wild Interweb, there are people spouting praise upon praise upon praise for the promise of Google’s new web browser, Chrome, which made its debut [...]
Try comparing Chrome (GC?) and IE7 dragging street maps in Google maps. Chrome is noticably slower on drag – with perhaps a 200px lag between cursor and map, compared with about 20px in IE. (This is under XP SP3 on a P4 2.6 with 1GB RAM.)
Otherwise, it’s my favourite browser for other features (based on an hour of use), and Gmail in GC runs fater than IE.
It does seem however to be thrashing the disk for no reason I can see sometimes, and CPU use can go above 50% with it just sitting there in the background.
MJPG, I can verify your finding on Google Maps. Quite surprising, given the performance I saw in Flickr’s map (built by Yahoo!), and that you’d think a Google product would run better in a Google browser.
I suspect once Google Maps is Gears-enabled (surprisingly, none of Google’s sites seem to be that way yet), we’ll likely see a significant boost in performance.
I also love the ability Chrome allows to resize text areas if they are too small, like the one I am writing this comment in.
And as far as 1 process per tab, once you run into an issue with one page crashing and actually NOT crashing your whole browser this approach seems almost necessary. Plus it creates a lot less opportunity for memory leaks that are so prevalent with Firefox.
Chrome has been amazing so far, I love everything about it, and yes some issues still exist.
IT’S STILL IN BETA FOR GOD SAKES….
I’ve praised Google for a very long time now and their company just keeps pushing forward. I was however, reluctant to go Chrome, because I do love Firefox so very much.It’s been good to me where IE5-7 have just made me disgusted, IE needs to wake up and crawl out of the middle ages of the internet already, because what it’s done so far has just made me tuck tail and run. I’ve looked at the beta for IE8 and it looks nice and all, but I’d stick with FF2 if three hadn’t come out already.
Back to Google Chrome, the fact that there aren’t add ons or Skins for chrome so far isn’t Google’s problem, it’s ours. They gave us open source code to work with. It’s been a week. There should be some stuff moving by now, but code monkey’s don’t really know how to use it yet. (No offense, I praise the monkey’s.) Just give it some time and Google will have the same sort of Add-on basis that our beloved Firefox has, they’ve already stated that in the cool comic they made. It’s all about the future with Google, and I for one am thus impressed.
For now FF3 is still my primary browser, because it has everything that I use already incorporated, but Chrome has amazing potential. When Chrome One is finished I’ll be switching it to my primary. There’s nothing it wont have that I want.
I just installed Chrome 2, and it puts shadows in the wrong places on the Second Life forum site, which is a fairly blandly themed vBulletin forum.