Elliott C. Back: Internet & Technology

Google Chrome, Google’s new web browser is out, and you can download it! Gizmodo earlier posted some screenshots (as did TechCrunch and Walter Mossberg), but I thought I should post a few of my own captures of the fast, new browser in action.

The first screen you see shows your recent history and a bookmarks bar

The about:memory page shows memory usage of Google Chrome, and any other browser you might have open (Firefox, IE, Opera, Safari). It’s a nice, sneaky feature that makes you feel better about how Chrome manages system resources.

Google Chrome stole Firefox’s Awesome bar. In fact, the Google “do anything” bar is less usable than Firefox’s, and uglier to boot.

As Reisigner noted, Chrome is faster than other browsers. It shows this off with its own task manager.

Chrome seamlessly imports bookmarks, passwords, and browsing history from Firefox

For those afraid Google might do some evil, and watch what you’re surfing on the internet, Matt Cuts in Preventing paranoia: when does Google Chrome talk to Google.com? writes about how Chrome will contact Google:

I knew that as soon as Google Chrome launched, some readers would ask tough questions about privacy and how/when Google Chrome communicates with google.com. So I decided to tackle this issue head-on. I talked to the Chrome team to find out if there’s anything to worry about. The short answer is no. For the long answer, read on.

So, Chrome is a gorgeous, fast, simple, and secure browser. Why not use it? No more crashing, lightning-fast page loading and rendering, faster javascript, a standards-compliant renderer, nice import features… there’s really no reason not to switch.

You’ll be surprised to see that Internet Explorer 8 Beta (8.0.6001.14184) does better on the Acid2 test than Firefox 2 (2.0.0.12) does:

Safari also passes the Acid2 test, but nobody uses it

The results are far worse on the Acid3 test, with IE8 scoring 17% and Firefox scoring 50%, but I believe they are intended. See, when Microsoft releases Beta 2 of their browser, it will definitely pass the Acid3 tests to give the community just that much more shock and awe:

Safari gets 39%, yay?

Ironically, the IE8 website throws an error when viewed with IE8. I guess that’s what they mean by improved standards compliance:

Worse, the Official Microsoft Site prompts to install some nasty, spyware-looking ActiveX control to view the IE8 site:

Congratulations Microsoft, on passing the Acid2, but unfortunately you have a laundry list of things to do, not limited to (a) make it faster and lighter than Firefox, (b) build in good developer tools, (c) get rid of ActiveX, (d) make a more usable UI, or (e) fix your own website to work in IE.

Today the IE blog made the most important announcement of its life with Microsoft’s Interoperability Principles and IE8, saying:

We’ve decided that IE8 will, by default, interpret web content in the most standards compliant way it can. This decision is a change from what we’ve posted previously. Microsoft recently published a set of Interoperability Principles. Thinking about IE8’s behavior with these principles in mind, interpreting web content in the most standards compliant way possible is a better thing to do.

Already, web designers are calling this the “holy grail” of Internet Explorer web development, and possibly the best suggestion the Microsoft IE team has ever made. Here’s a choice quote from Eric Meyer:

I’m glad that IE will act as browsers have always done, and default to the latest and greatest in the absence of any explicit direction to the contrary. I’m doubly glad that the IE team is willing to do that, even knowing what they have to handle. And I’m triply glad that the proposal was made in public ahead of time, with plenty of opportunity for debate, so that we could have a chance to weigh in and affect the browser’s behavior.

Broken Links is saying “I am very pleasantly surprised; this is a very wise decision.” Robert McLaws thinks, “This is great news for the web standards community… but not-so-great news for the billions of web pages out there.”