Click here to see screenshots
Google ChromeYesterday, Dec. 15, I posted my review of the new Google Chrome browser, which is no longer a beta. Without a doubt Google Chrome is a very impressive new entry in the Web browser market and will have a big impact on how browser interfaces are built in the future.
But Google Chrome isn’t without its own shortcomings. As I point out in the review, Chrome is the least customizable browser out today. And it has more than a few of the weaknesses typical in a 1.0 release.
Since posting the review, I’ve already had a few questions and comments from readers about issues that weren’t covered in the review.
One reader asked about memory usage of the browser. While Chrome doesn’t appear to be a memory hog, it also doesn’t appear to be as thrifty as some might claim.
There’s a feature in Chrome where you can enter about:memory in the address bar and it will show you the memory usage of all the running browsers on your system. In this context Chrome looks pretty good, but, of course, it’s generating these numbers.
Based on my own use, it seems to be pretty good when it comes to memory usage. After a full day with lots of tabs and windows open it doesn’t seem to be a drag on the system, definitely not in the way that, say, Firefox 2 can be.
On my point about the difficulty of changing the user agent in Chrome, one reader pointed out that the new dev build has a command-line option to change the user agent. Of course, my review was of the current shipping version and not of dev builds or new betas.
Click here to read my full review of Google Chrome. And click here to see a screenshot walk-through of some of the features of Google Chrome.