Chrome

Well, with the recent release of Chrome version 10, it's about time I revisited the blog with a technology oriented piece. Of course, in speaking about internet browsers, I'm going to have to force you to read through the story of my life's involvement in these pieces of software. You love it; it's why you come back...or do you? Basically I first got onto the internet in the early to mid-nineties. In this form, I was using Compuserve; I remember the day my dad came home with an e-mail account, but none of us knew what to do with it.

Compuserve was a pretty controlled piece of internet real estate, and they eventually let us browse the world wide web using Spry Mosaic. I'm not entirely sure on the following decade, but I'm sure I would go on to use variants of Netscape and Internet Explorer. Speed ahead to my university days and I would experience my first little browser war as Mozilla comes out and provides some features that Internet Explorer couldn't. I recall Mozilla introducing tabs, which concreted it as the browser of choice for an incredibly long time. IE would only be used for compatibility and testing, but it was always the joke. Speed ahead another few years and Firefox jumped out (I believe it was an offspring of Mozilla, indeed, it was "Mozilla Firefox" for some time, I think) and would proceed to take the way to the mainstream.

But then Google jumped into the ring with Chrome, just a few years ago. Excited by these browsers (which seems like a terrible thing) I decided to try it out, just as I tried Opera a while back too. Unfortunately it just didn't cut it; I couldn't easily find favourites/bookmarks and the minimalist design wasn't enough for me. During those days I was using Firefox with all sorts of plug-ins enabled. Firefox became a beast of a system to use, and I didn't feel like Chrome could cut it. So I put it away.

All of a sudden, version 2, 3, 4 and 5 were out. Did the browser really advance that much so quickly? I tried it out again but wasn't overly interested in the whole matter anymore. But something was happening to my Firefox: it looked like crap. IE was really advancing and because I had to use it at work (custom applications) I was really appreciating the modern graphics. Firefox was focused on the system itself and I think is always a problem with open-source programs: the graphical user interface is always the last thing to get attention. So, I tried Chrome again, and at that time, it was leaps and bounds above itself from just a year previous. The absolute killer feature was syncing my bookmarks to my Google account. You can sync much more than that now, and it's integration into my Google account is absolutely key, as I have fully embraced Google and it's cloud based services. I could recall sending favourites to myself through e-mail from work to home, or vice versa. Now, I could just bookmark it and it would magically appear on all my computers, anywhere I went.

The real beauty of Chrome, I find, is the UI. As my web needs become simpler, I find that Chrome is a better fit. It's simple, yet elegant. There are nice themes to apply, and tabs going on top of the address bar, as opposed to being under, makes so much sense it's scary. No need for an entire strip across the top of the window for useless menus: hide them away where I visit them every three months. There are many things Chrome does that seems to fit my current browsing lifestyle. At work, I still use IE primarily, but always have Chrome opened in the background. Browsers have come a long way, and it's interesting to see what they come up with next. I've been into technology for a very long time, but have never paid attention to them before, but now you have to pay attention as their market share and growth statistics are reported on, practically on a weekly basis. You just want to get online and surf. Chrome let's me consume the web in the way I need to.