Google Chrome
By now you’ve probably heard that Google has released their first version of Chrome.
enaresh.com
news.cnet.com
kurogane.animeblogger.net
googleblog.blogspot.com
Chrome is a browser based on Webkit just like Safari. That’s good news for designers as they don’t have to deal wth another peculiar set of HTML and CSS rules and exceptions.
Pixels for free!
The first thing that comes to mind when opening Chrome is the lack of chrome. The toolbar containing files, edit, bookmarks, etc. has been removed, the search bar known from IE7 and Firefox has been integrated into the address bar (Google has named this Omnibox) and the status bar is hidden by default and is set only to show it’s ugly face when you hover your mouse over a link. Let’s look at just how much extra space Chrome can offer in comparison to it’s two biggest competitors.
- Chrome: 1663 x 930 = 1546590 pixels
- IE7: 1659 x 904 = 1499736 pixels
- FF3: 1663 x 867 = 1441821 pixels
To find the actual view port I took a screen shot at 1680×1050 and cropped the image to contain only the view port area. All browsers were set to their default configurations.
Chrome offers a blasting 1546590 pixels on a screen resolution of 1680×1050 pixels. That’s a mind bobbeling 7 percent more than what Firefox 3 can offer and 3 percent more than IE7.
If Chrome becomes the browser of choice we might see that extra space used to display more ads, bigger top banners and a like. With the extra space Google could fit even another sponsored link on top of the search results. Let’s just hope that doesn’t happen.
Performance
General performance seems to have increased slightly from Firefox 3, but the real performance gain is found in the way it renders JavaScript. Google’s own numbers show that Chrome are about three times faster than Firefox 3 and up to ten times faster then IE7.
blogs.zdnet.com
ejohn.org/blog/
Test the JavaScript performance yourself
The virtual JavaScript engine is called V8 and has been developed by a Danish Google division.
Chrome can be downloaded here but unfortunately it can only be run on Windows environments.
