Google complied on Sunday last ten years, as the culmination of a week in which, without warning, introduced its Web browser Chrome. In its first day of public life accumulated over 6.5 million downloads, courtesy of attraction, for one reason or another, generates the giant online searches.
Chrome is downloaded from www.google.com / chrome, is in Spanish and for Windows; eventually there will be versions for Mac OS X and Linux. It is open source, and shares its kernel (the engine that handles interpret HTML web pages) with Safari, Apple's browser. Firefox also has components and adds elements such as an engine of JavaScript aimed at optimizing the use of online applications.
In those last two words is the key to success in the world of browsers, which in nearly two decades of life on the Web have had a father, Mosaic, and two sons who will compete for the inheritance, Internet Explorer (IE) Microsoft and Netscape incarnations (now Firefox). At stake is much more than an application to see blogs or read news, taking into account the importance of the Web today for any of us. Hence the so-called war of the browsers, which had as early victor in Netscape and IE dominates years ago, but lost considerable ground in recent years.
Google is no longer just a search engine; their services compete with versions that are installed on the PC, such as e-mail clients, photo albums or office suites. To make these services are really attractive, should be added functions, which makes them more complex.
This forces the browser to handle more information, including things for which there was devised, and the browser (whatever) not always successful, nor offers performance than those owned by Google would like to see.
At least, we see in the offices of the giant Web: static sites, with a few text and images, are now a thing of the past. Today, they argue, everything tends to the interactive, multimedia as a sum of the most powerful online tools, to what is known in computer jargon Cloud Computing, ie to accommodate applications on the Internet and allow the user to access them remotely with the computer, as was the case at the dawn of the computer terminals, accessing applications hosted on a central server, locally loading an interface (client software).
The difference here is that access is done anywhere in the world, from connections and equipment on which it is impossible to have control. With Chrome, Google seeks to optimize at least one component, ie, the browser that serves as an interface to access these services.
The logic behind Google's strategy of offering a product for free, open source, in which any developer can build on the ideas and technologies put into operation by the company, which is a browser thought since we are going online for these applications (such as Chrome would) have a better performance by accessing them.
By making these sites more useful because their tools achieve their missions in a timely manner, users will be more interested in using Web services instead of relying on traditional versions, and that Google has everything to gain.
For years it was speculated that Google might develop an operating system, the company suits him more of a cross-platform browser, to take a path of universal access to their services and not worry about the compatibility of hardware, support and other applications. So, too, will have a version Android, the open source operating system for mobile that propels the company.
A browser discreet
Chrome is minimalist. Not looking protagonist, is just a vehicle for accessing Web applications. It offers tabs, a bar and multiple uses half a dozen buttons. To view past pages visited, for example, we must keep pressing the arrow button backspace. The menus are hidden in two buttons in the first page, you can create a shortcut on the desktop to a given page, to open it, not even show the tab or the address bar. We behave more like an application, which only stored on a remote hard drive.
You can also transform a tab to its own window with just picking up the other.
Chrome uses a bar addresses multiple roles. Besides noting there address on the Web page you want to visit, we can start a search on Google and other services. These can be added by clicking the mouse button mouse on the bar and then selecting Edit search engines. The browser also acknowledges, sometimes search services specific to a site and allows incorporation. Then they can make a query by typing the keyword to activate (flickr, for example) and consultation.
Moreover, by typing a word, it displays pages that have already visited that word in the right direction (like Firefox) and suggest phrases entered in this popular search engine.
You can create a bookmark a page favorite, and on the home page shows, automatically, miniatures of the last 9 pages visited. This is controlled from Tools> Options, where you can also tell the application to restore the tabs closed to leave the browser. This is useful because it gives no warning when closing all tabs.
Chrome allows you to browse without a trace in history (Page> New Window Control or Shift incognito N); well, no sites visited will appear among the suggestions from the application or the historical record of pages accessed. It also includes a download manager and security functions necessary today in any browser, to operate seamlessly with e-banking, and a system of defense against malicious code, which limits its powers and does not allow him to leave the field browser.
One of the most promoted and functions that make more than a browser is an environment of access to remote applications is the independent management of the processes activated when visiting a site, and its engine JavaScript optimized for these applications online. Each tab is handled in a discreet, so if one of them stops responding (because the code that sent the site is wrong, or is awaiting more data) is close as possible without jeopardizing the other sessions. In fact, Chrome includes a task manager (with the active shortcut Shift Esc), showing what each is doing tab, how much RAM and processor cycles consumes, and allows close if not functioning properly.
For now it is not possible to add functions to the browser. It includes a plug for playing Flash content; to load Java applications is necessary version 6.10 (still developing), where you can download here: http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp. It must be said that lowering the JRE Update 6 RC 10.
There is also an unofficial version of Chrome that does not require installation (to bring in a pendrive, for example), available at http://stadt-bremerhaven.de/2008/09/03/portable-chrome-021510/.
A Chrome not lacking in challenges. Although it has the formidable backing of Google, and works well, to be a player weight must convince users of Internet Explorer leaving ground known. And it remains to be seen how Microsoft responds with version 8 of its browser, now in development. For users of Firefox extensions are absent that complement this browser (though not rule out the inclusion of a similar system in future versions of Chrome). In addition to the 3.1 version of Firefox developers promise a JavaScript engine capable of offering a performance similar to that offered by Chrome, a further indication that the war of the browsers, which seemed finished, is more active than ever.
