| By Yakov Fain |
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| September 13, 2008 01:10 PM EDT |
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8,302 |
I like this browser based on Webkit - it's simple and minimalistic, has a small memory footprint, is easy on the CPU, and pretty responsive. Flash player works fine on my Windows XP box. I'm sure, Mac and Linux version will be available soon too (this is what Sergey Brin has to say ). You may not like the fact that it spawns a new process (23-24Kb) for each opened tab though (on the other hand, it allows you to drag the tabs out of the browser).
Open a couple of tabs and let's count the lines that are "stolen" from the page content: 5 on top and a toolbar at the bottom - total 6. Google Chrome takes away only three lines from the content.
I like the fact that there is no Applet support out of the box. The fact that IE supports Java 1.1 applets out of the box is pretty much useless for most of the cases. Chrome's Help clearly states that it requires Java 6 update 10. If I'd be running Sun Microsystems, I'd invite Google management for a dinner in a very expensive French restaurant. This should be a very happy day for JavaFX folks too - they couldn't even dream of a browser that is forcing people to install the very latest runtime required by JavaFX! Looking forward to seeing a least one example of the JavaFX application that will automatically detect that my PC doesn't have Java 6 Update 10 and will SEAMLESSLY install it in 10-20 seconds.
Here's another interesting twist - i was told that people who are sentenced to use IE because of the corporate policies that don't give you admin rights on your desktop CAN install Chrome. Try it for yourself, but keep quiet.
All these competitive RIA technologies worth nothing if the penetration of the runtime engine is low. Hence having a mechanism of spreading Java runtime for RIA is great for the Java community.
I'm sure, we'll see some quirks in the beta version of Chrome, but Google will iron them out. In a year, Chrome will bite off a decent chunk of the Web browser's market, and as any competition, it's great for us, the consumers.
Yakov Fain is a Managing Director of Farata Systems, consulting, training and product company. He has authored several Java books, dozens of technical articles. SYS-CON Books released his latest co-authored book , Rich Internet Applications with Adobe Flex and Java: Secrets of the Masters in Spring 2007. Sun Microsystems has nominated and awarded Yakov with the title Java Champion. He leads the Princeton Java Users Group. He is an Adobe Certified Flex Instructor. Currently Yakov works on the book for O'Reilly "Enterprise Application Development with Flex". He twits at twitter.com/yfain.
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