The Accessible Web

The web is changing, I believe we can all agree on that. And as the web is changing so is the way people are interacting with it and as a result demand different things from the tools they use to access these services and applications. Google probably knows this better then most, I mean how many of us use Google Docs, Gmail, iGoogle, Google Calendar, Google Reader etc. etc.

With this the engineers over at Google looked at this scenario and asked the question, why not start from scratch and create a browser that fits the needs of current users on the web. At the same time this browser better have great support for advanced JavaScript, Ajax, CSS etc. In the end what is needed is a browser that is a perfect fusion of user and developer needs wrapped up in a slick package. The result of this thinking and work has resulted in Chrome, Google’s take on the browser or as they state ‘a fresh take on the browser’.

In this article I am not so much going to look at Chrome from a developer perspective but I am going to focus more on my thoughts and feelings i.e. first impressions, as a user of Chrome. So I guess the best place to start is at the beginning, installing Chrome.

Point your browser to http://google.com/chrome and click on Download Google Chrome, currently available for Windows. You will be asked to accept some basic terms of service agreement and whether you will like to send Google some anonymous user statistics to help improve Chrome. After this page you will see a installer pop-up stating, initializing Google Chrome installer. After a while Chrome will start downloading and before you know it, you will be ready to install and run Chrome.

If you have chosen to import your bookmarks and have for example Firefox running you will be prompted to close Firefox before this process can complete.

After the bookmarks has been imported and the remaining installation processes complete, Chrome will launch, and by the way, this all happens very quickly. So this is the screen you will be greeted with:

One thing I was particularly surprised with was that even though this is a Google product, the first thing Chrome asks you after launch is whether you wish to keep Google as your default search engine or whether you wish to change this:

As stated before, Chrome is based on the open source Webkit rendering engine, the same one found inside Safari, and uses some aspects of Firefox as well. With that said, Chrome has something that reminds me a lot of Opera’s speed dial. The difference is however, that instead of adding the sites you want Google will load these speed dial style blocks with the websites you visit most often. As this is also the basic idea behind speed dial I imagine you will end up with the same collection of sites, or maybe you will surprise yourself.

Besides this useful feature, Google has not stopped there and your default new tab page also includes a sidebar that allows you to search your history as well as a use the other search engines you used often, as well as recently closed tabs. When all of this comes together you end up with a basic iGoogle page set-up of your local history.

 Another thing that may have caught your eye while looking at the previous screen shots is the fact that Google has decided to please the tabs above the search bar as apposed to below as all other browsers have opted to do. The strange this is, even though this is the only browser that has chosen to go this route, I found it completely intuitive and did not find it awkward at all, in fact, I prefer it this way.

Speaking about tabs, one of the things that is really awesome is the crash gaurd inside Chrome. What this means is that if for whatever reason a page in one tab should crash, unlike in other browsers, only that tab will close and not the entire browser. This is definitely an awesome feature of Chrome.

Next let’s move away from the interface and look at some other inovative features that come stadard with Chrome, this is the applications bookmarks. Point Chrome to for example Google Docs, once the application has loaded click on the little ‘paper’ icon at the top right of the browser.

This will open a window that allows you to add a shortcut to Google Docs, not only on your desktop but your start menu as well as quick launch links. 

This is not what I expected, it is actually a lot more. This means you can now add your online applications to wour operating system envirnment as if it was any other desktop application. For example, not only do I have a desktop shortcut like this:

But I can launch Google Docs right from my quick launch menu as follows:

Clicking this quick launch link will instantly launch Chrome with Google Docs. There is another difference when launching an application like this in Chrome, it loads it in a Chrome window that has no address bar and no favourites bar, just the application inside the chrome window.

There is so much more to Chrome, crazy tabs that you can drag around pretty much as you want. You can even drag it out of the current browser window to create a new independant window and a host of other features. Read everything you might want to know at the Google Chrome Features website. But before I close of this article there is one more feature I want to mention. There are those times when you prefer that not all of your browsing history and search history remain after your browsing session ends, you may not even want the cookies of that seesion to remain. Google Icognito to the rescue, when you want to browse in private, click on the small arrow next to the page icon and select ‘New Icognito Window’. A new window will launch with a very apt icon that clearly shows you are now the dark sleuth.

That brings me to the end of the first part of my coverage of Google Chrome. Download it, give it a try, it definitely has a place and might very well become one of the strong contenders for it’s share of the web in months to come. BTW, This article was written using Chrome and as of right now Chrome is standing at 32 664K of memory usage while Firefox is standing at 166 516K, maybe that alone is enough reason to give Chrome for a spin.