Less than a year old and already at the 3.0 beta stage, Google Chrome is quickly gaining on its rivals in the browser market. However, in this case haste isn't making waste: The Google Chrome 3.0 beta showcases several new features that catch the browser up with competitors, and, if we see a few more additions by the time it releases, Chrome 3.0 looks like it will be a worthwhile upgrade.Mozilla Firefox has been out for more than five years and is just at Version
3.0. Apple Safari was originally released six years ago and is at Version 4.0.
Google Chrome has been out for less than nine months, and Google just made
Version 3.0 available. Google clearly is hell-bent on quickly making up for its
late start in the browser market.
Of course, sometimes going too fast can be a bad thing, leading to a product
that isnt as stable as one that takes a slower upgrade path. But while Google
has been moving fast with its browser, so far things are looking good.
The Google Chrome 3.0 beta showcases several new features, most of which are
examples of catching up to similar features in browsers such as Apple Safari,
Opera and Mozilla Firefox. But they are welcome changes, and, if we see a few
more additions by the time it releases, Chrome 3.0 looks like it will be a
worthwhile upgrade.
From a usability standpoint, the most obvious new capabilities are found in
the page that Chrome launches when a user opens a blank new tab in the browser.
Chrome 3.0like Safari and Operalets users customize this page, which by
default shows thumbnails of the most frequently visited Websites.
I could choose to delete Websites from showing in this page and could move
thumbnails by dragging and dropping them. I could also pin a site so that it
would always show in a specific spot on the page no matter how frequently it
was visited. It is also possible to display a list of sites, rather than
thumbnails.
The Omniboxthe term for the address bar in the browserhas always been one
of my favorite features of Chrome. Chrome auto-suggests content as a user types
in the Omnibox, and in the 3.0 beta the browser also displays icons to show
what type of content is being suggestedsuch as Websites, searches, or content
from the browser bookmarks and history. This feature was nice, but the nature
of the icons isnt instantly apparent (Is the clock history? Is the magnifying
glass search?).
In the browser world, the generic term chrome has usually referred to the
ability to trick out an interface with custom themes and icons. So it was
always somewhat strange that Google Chrome had limited features for controlling
the chrome of the browser.
That's all changed with the 3.0 beta, which provides users with the option
for changing the look and feel of the browser by applying new themes. From the
browser Options screen, choosing Get Themes took me to a Web page where there
are currently 29 themes from which to choose. This is a pretty basic
customization option, but it's a start.
Performance
Google has always emphasized the speed and performance of Chrome, and with
the beta of Version 3.0 the company is once again touting the browser's speed.
I used various online performance tests and Futuremarks Peacekeeper benchmark
(at http://service.futuremark.com/peacekeeper/)
to evaluate performance and found that the 3.0 beta did show an improvement
over Chrome 2.0 and was right at the top of the browser performance chart
alongside Safari 4.0.
Standards support is also being touted in Chrome 3.0, most noticeably in
terms of support for the anticipated HTML 5 standard. Like Opera and Firefox
3.5, the Chrome 3.0 beta supports many elements of HTML 5, including the
ability to run HTML natively within the browser without need for third-party
plug-ins.
Chrome 3.0 also appears to improve on Chromes already very good rating on
the Web Standards Projects Acid3 test. During my evaluation, the Google Chrome
3.0 achieved a perfect score in the test.
If you are a Chrome user who subscribes to the beta or developer channels,
your browser has most likely already upgraded to the 3.0 beta. If youd like to
download it yourself, to try it out, go to http://www.google.com/landing/chrome/beta/.
Chief Technology Analyst Jim Rapoza can be reached at jrapoza@eweek.com.
Web Services, Web 2.0 & SOA 
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