Review: Chrome Has Lit a Fire Under the Market

Call the Google Chrome browser a “pearl” or the “grain of sand”.

Call it a “harbinger of change”.

Call it a “break through” or whatever else you want, but one thing is clear, Chrome has lit a fire under the market.

Talk of market share, competing features and confident stances by existing browser makers have filled the web.

Here are some I found particularly interesting.

Gregg Keizer at “Computer World” world writes about how Firefox is adding a privacy mode (in response to Chrome).

Mary Jo Foley at “ZDNet” write about whether Microsoft should create a “lite” IE for time where you want to do a quick browse.

Matt Asay at “cnet” is raising up Microsoft’s SharePoint as the Microsoft’s real answer to Google, the Chrome browser and web apps.

There are reports on how Chrome is taking market share from Safari and Opera  but not IE (Brian Kraemer at ChannelWeb), and then there are reports on how Chrome is taking market share from IE (Gregg Keizer at Computerworld).

There’s even a mention of Chrome as a Firefox Killer (Michael Desmond at “The Redmond Developer”).

Beyond market share, there’s talk from Thomas Claburn at “InformationWeek” about the long road Chrome has before it’s welcomed as an enterprise solution.

With all the press stories pointing in all directions and the comments from the other browser makers on their view of Chrome, one thing is for certain, Chrome has definitely made it’s mark.

Read Greg Keizer’s “Computerworld” stories here and here.

Read Mary Jo Foley’s “ZDNet” story here.

Matt Asay’s “cnet” article about Sharepoint is here.

Michael Desmond’s “The Redmond Developer” story is here.

Thomas Claburn’s story in “Information Week” is here.

Chrome’s Amazing Speed: See For Yourself!

How fast is Chrome?

When Google introduced Chrome, they talked about its speed.

Some people tried it after release and disagreed saying some existing browsers were just as fast.

Maybe they weren’t running the right application?

Here’s how you can see for yourself.

1. Start Chrome and an existing browser(I picked my fav Firefox) and then point them to:
http://www.oisyn.nl/wolfjs/wolfjs.html

(Note: be fair by shutting down all copies of your “existing browser” and then restarting fresh when you do this test.)

2. If you don’t see an image showing blue brick walls and a green looking door, find and uncheck the checkbox called: “Use <canvas> feature (does not work on IE):”

3. Use your arrow keys in  and look at the frame rate (frames per second or fps) showing under the window showing the blue brick walls. You will see a significant different between the fps for Firefox and the fps for Chrome.

4. To emphasize the speed differences even more, change the options:

• “Window Size”  to be “1024×768″
• “Subdiv:” to be “1″

Here are my FPS results at these settings:

• Chrome = average ~32fps
• Firefox = average ~6fps

Your results may show different numbers than mine, but I’m guessing there will still be a big difference.

I think this demo of Chrome’s speed speaks for itself.

And if you have any doubts about the usefulness of tabs as different processes, here’s another test for you.

While running the “wolfjs” application as above, open a new tab in each of your browsers and start browsing around.

Chrome was fast and responsive for me. Unfortunately, Firefox was sluggish at best, even becoming completely unresponsive at times.

Again, I think the results of this demo speaks for itself. Chrome is FAST.

Note: Special thanks to oisyn.nl for posting his “Wolfenstein-like” rendering test.

Google Reveals Reasons For Chrome Browser as Open Source

When Google announced the Chrome browser, part of that announcement included the fact that it would be released as open source.

That wasn’t much of a surprise, but they didn’t really specify the reasons for it.

Fortunately for us, Ben Goodger, former lead developer on Firefox and now one of the technical wizards behind Google’s Chrome browser shared his thinking with Wired magazine on the topic.

His 3 reasons:

1. “We’ll be able to scale our testing efforts”
2. “It’ll enable people to do things we haven’t thought of”
3. “And it’ll generate trust that we’re not doing something evil.”

It’s great when smart developers doing great work have their hearts and minds focused on doing the right things in the right way. Go Ben!

Ben Goodger’s personal blog is here.

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