What’s Fresh?

I don’t want to jump to any conclusions, but with only a couple day’s use of Chrome, Google’s entry into the web browser market, this might be the last time I click on that little “e” icon in my quick launch toolbar.

For the last couple of years I’ve utilized two browsers daily.  I do so because I can log into the same website with two separate accounts. For example, with both Firefox and IE7 open, I can log into different account profiles on Facebook; a personal account and work account.

With the introduction of Chrome, I now have the luxury of choosing which browsers I want to use. With Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer available to me (and Opera), this more than likely signals the end of Internet Explorer for me.

Personally speaking, without any scientific tests to back up that personal opinion mind you, Chrome feels so much faster than either Firefox or internet Explorer. And the look and feel of Chrome is lighter than IE. Apparently my feeling is on-point as many tests have proved that Chrome is faster.  Check out some of the test results here, here, and here.  Though Firefox, Google’s buddy, refutes some of those claims.

Chrome Features

In my day and a half of use, I’ve already discovered some cool new Chrome features.

We’re so used to seeing some customized homepage when you start using a browser, or having a few tabs open up after we’ve set our preferences, but with Chrome, it automatically shows you linked-screenshots for the most-visited sites at startup, all on one tab, and will do so with any subsequent new tabs that are opened.

That could be a good thing if you are the only one using the browser, could be a bad thing if your significant other or co-worker shares your computer.  Just saying.

One thing that has always bothered me are browser-specific websites, or more specifically sites that work on IE, but not Firefox.  With Google Chrome, Function Point and DART users can rejoice, you can now successfully log into both without having to use Internet Explorer!

Another cool little feature that I have already discovered was the “Find” feature.  it works as with any other browser, but with Chrome, when you press Control-F, it not only jumps to the first instance, but tells you how many instances of that same word is in the document. 

By many accounts, Chrome is great for everyday web browsing, but users that have more advanced tastes should probably wait until a later, more stable release.

One interesting SEO sidenote with Chrome, the browser tabs are brought all the way to the top of the window, eliminating the location where we usually see the full title tags.   Now title tags are limited to space of a tab. Is this a way for Google to focus more on content and less on meta data?  If Chrome, or Chrome’s layout, catches on, will that decrease the current 65-70 title tag character limit and mark a Google alorithm shift?

Anyways, I haven’t used Chrome for any significant amount of time, so I bet there are several cool secrets hidden in Chrome.  All I know is that Chrome, with it’s clean template and efficient web browser with speedy load times, that’s enough for me to move away from Internet Explorer.

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