Google has released its own web browser named "Chrome". Google claims their new browser combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier. Though its only out for Windows XP/Vista users , Linux and Mac folks will have to wait a little longer.Well, lets take a look and see what its all about shall we, I first had Chrome Beta installed so the first video I have is based on that, the second video further below is with the final release from Dec 11, 2008 showing some benchmarks I did recently...
As seen in my video walk through the installation was quick. It did ask to import my Firefox bookmarks which It didn't allow initially since I had Firefox running at the same time.My impression on its performance and speedOpening the browser was quick, then again I had no bookmarks and hadn't used it yet. However as I visited more and more pages the initial response to opening them was always faster than what I am used to in any other web browser. In other words there was little lag overall. Every tab you're using is run independently in the browser, so if one app crashes it won't take anything else down. You also have the ability to end the process and kill off individual items such as a flash video player using a built in google task manager.
My impression on GUI (Graphic User Interface)
The interface is indeed streamlined. Keeping with the minimalistic view and menu options I scrambled to find all the options and icons that I was used to seeing in IE and Firefox. One thing for sure the default theme is the only theme, you cant change it. To access your bookmarks you need to go to the far right and click "Other bookmarks" which is different.The browser buttons given are BACK, FORWARD, RELOAD and BOOKMARK. I whent into the options to add the HOME icon and that was it. If your wanting a STOP, HISTORY or PRINT button they arent there. You will have to access the History using the alternative methods such as CTRL+H and print a web page using CTRL+P. I did like the default open full screen look that gave me more viewing area. Along the top the familiar tabs are of fixed width and can be easily added or removed, dragged and dropped. These dynamic tabs allow you to gather multiple tabs into one window or arrange your tabs however you wish. When you open a new tab it shows your most visited websites, recently visited bookmarks, and recently-closed tabs and full history. One thing I didnt find along the top was the search box like in Firefox. Instead the URL field is used as the search, keeping with minimizing options and clutter. My impression on featuresFor web developers I was delighted to see that in the view the page source option Google shows it in multiple colors with line numbers and if you use the "inspect element" it displays the code used on a page in great detail.Like "InPrivate" browsing, a feature in IE8 beta 2, Chrome's "Incognito" browsing feature allows you to surf the Web without leaving any history behind. This feature is also referred to as the "porn mode" for browsing by teens.The download bar doesn't indicate progress, it just shows a megabyte number.Without any add-ons for it Google Chrome warns you if you're about to visit a suspected phishing, malware or otherwise unsafe website. Overall this browser is a good start for google.
Its been several months now I have used Firefox 3 Beta on Ubuntu 8.04. On my windows PC I have Firefox 2.x. With the latest version now being official I installed Firefox 3 in windows along side version 2.x just incase. In other words, I choose the custom install option when installing Firefox 3 and installed it into a separate directory on my Windows PC so that it would not overwrite version 2.x . That way I could compare side by side the results , differences and speed. My main concern are the security vulnerabilities and the consumption of memory that Firefox has. Other than that everything else about Firefox is superior to other browsers I have tried in the past. Below is a walkthrough reviewing my first experience with Firefox 3 Final release.
This is an unbiased look at Firefox, although I must say overall Firefox still is my browser of choice.
In Firefox 1.x - 2.x you might have noticed that after opening several tabs and browsing a while system memory starts to be eaten up a lot and performance start degrading a little. Here are some not so obvious tweaks to speeding up your internet browsing and improving performance. Enable Pipelining By default, the pipelining option is turned off in Firefox. By enabling it you can send several requests to a Web server at a time, rather than sending them one by one. 1-Type about:config into your address bar and hit Enter.
2-In the Filter text box, at the top of the page, type network.http. A list of settings appears, as you can see in the nearby figure. 3-Double-click the "network.http.pipelining" setting, to change it to true. 4-Double-click the "network.http.proxy.pipelining" setting, to change it to true. 5-Double-click the "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" setting, and in the text box that appears, type in 8 and click OK.
------------------------------------------------------------- Increase / Decrease Amount of Memory Used
One tweak you might want to try is adjusting the amount of RAM Firefox uses.
1-Type about:config into your address bar and hit Enter.
2-In the Filter text box, at the top of the page, type browser.cache.
3-Double-click the "browser.cache.memory.capacity" entry.
4-The default is 50000. If you don't have a lot of memory on your system, for example, between 512MB and 1GB, change the number to 15000 and click OK.
----------------------------------------------------------------- Reduce Unnecessary CPU Cycles and Bandwidth Usage
Firefox by default download pages from links you are not always visiting. Its called link prefetching. A webpage hints to the browser that certain pages are likely to be visited, so the browser downloads them immediately so they can be displayed immediately when the user requests it. But if you dont actually click the link this means you used up bandwidth and CPU cycles to store history for web page you may not ever view.
In the Filter text box, at the top of the page, type network.prefetch-next and set the value key to false. -------------------------------------------------------------- Decrease the Wait Time
A hidden trick that reduces the number of milliseconds to wait before first displaying a page is to create create a new config option.
Right-click anywhere in the about:config screen
and select New-> Integer.
Name it "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" , then press OK.
Next screen set its value to "0".
This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.
Will IE 8 be a FireFox 3 killer? With Beta 2 of IE8 being release late August it makes you wonder if Microsoft has learned their lesson and added the basic features that makes other web browsers like Opera and Firefox 3 and recently Google Chrome more attractive.Currently in Beta 2, IE 8 is noticeably faster, leaner and more intuitive to use. Watch PCWizKid's Video Review of IE 8 Beta 2 with comparison to Firefox 3.0.3.
- The address bar now highlights just the domain in the URL decreasing your risk from domain phishing attacks by accidentally clicking links which are fake and malicious. This smart search has been around in other browsers like Firefox and Google Chrome and is a great addition to IE 8.- The search box now sports the ability to display an icon for the search provider you have currently selected. You can add more providers and customize which is the default one.- The Bookmarking interface has been improved as well as access to all your other bookmarks are available from the “Favorites” button on the left side.For one, IE 8 compared to IE 7 has better : WC3 standards adherence and compatibility for viewing websites“IE8 has been significantly enhanced, and was designed with great support for current Internet standards. This is evidenced by the fact that even in its first beta, IE8 correctly renders the popular test known as ‘Acid2,’ which was created by the Web community to promote real-world interoperability,” said Ray Ozzie, Microsoft chief software architect. “Our initial plan had been to use IE7-compatible behavior as the default setting for IE8, to minimize potential impact on the world’s existing Web sites. We have now decided to make our most current standards-based mode the default in IE8. Automatic Crash Recovery Undo close tab Saving and restoring sessions Accelerators WebSlices Favorites Bar Group Tabing InPrivate browsing Improved Phishing Filter Most anticipated new features The most obvious new features are InPrivate Browsing, Accelerators and WebSlices. These give you context sensitive options for looking up data (maps, search and so on), or doing stuff with it (emailing it, sharing on Facebook), rather like IE6's abandoned Smart Tags, and the latter are Sidebar Gadget-style clippings that let you view web content without actually visiting the website. Performance and Standards IE8 beta so far is faster. Microsoft says key systems including the HTML parser, CSS processing, JavaScript parsing and memory management are speedier than before, but it's still tweaking performance. Opening my http://youtube.com/PCWizKid channel was very fast the first time (without being cached). One thing for sure IE 8 Beta 2 uses more memory than Firefox 3 at the moment. The Phishing Filter is back, but this time it's supplemented with Domain Highlighting – a Firefox-style feature that makes it clear whether the site you're visiting is the site you think you're visiting. The SmartScreen filtering, a replacement for the Phishing Filter offers a better interface, quicker performance and better analysis of unknown websites. It will also check servers to see if they're areas to avoid, so if you click on a potentially unsafe link in a chat window IE8 will pop up a warning message telling you about it. Safety In addition to these changes, IE8 will make ActiveX controls site specific, they will include protection against cross domain and cross site exploits and its Data Execution Prevention system will stop certain kinds of code from writing data to the system memory. When IE8 crashes you should be able to resume your last session when you restart the browser just like Firefox 3 does today. Last but definitely not least, IE8 will be CSS 2.1 compliant and run in standards mode by default. There's also an Emulate IE7 option for when you encounter sites designed specifically for IE7, and a Quirks mode for IE5 emulation. Developers also get a Developer Toolbar for easy HTML, CSS and JavaScript debugging.Details on these initial features from Microsoft IE8 feature list are here If you cant wait to download IE 8, get the Beta now here
As the time for releasing the final cut of Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.1 gets closer, PCWizKid takes a closer look at the state of each of these browsers and how they stack up so far against each other. While trying to keep an objective and unbiased position when reviewing web browsers, I must admit Firefox is and always has been my preferred browser since the Netscape days. PCWizKid's browser experiences touched on Lynx, Internet Explorer 5 to 7, Safari and the new Google Chrome which was reviewed earlier.So lets say that the review and comparison you are about to see is straight to the point, looking for what is available in each browser and asks can it "do the basics". The way I see is, if these browsers cannot deliver constantly and efficiently a basic web browsing experience then there is no point using it. After that then we can talk about who has the most features and add-ons sure, but there has never really been any contest there.
The home page is the page Firefox shows when you start it or when you click the Home button in the toolbar. You can change the start page to any web site you want. If you keep getting a "Firefox has just updated" tab, see Firefox has just updated tab shows each time you start Firefox. source: http://support.mozilla.com/ar/kb/How+to+set+the+home+page
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