The Good:
- Simple: Google Chrome's Design is made to be simple, and it works!
- Efficient: Google Chrome works fast and easily without many bugs.
- Well Designed: Google Chrome has a simple and easy layout and theme.
- No Widgets or Plug-Ins: The lack of widgets and plug-ins without using developing versions (widgets that haven't been fully tested) limits customisability.
Google Chrome is Google’s new internet browser. Coming with hefty promises of “being the future of the web” and “allowing the web to evolve”, one thing that attracts me is that it’s open source, which means that you can access the coding behind the browser. With such big claims and lively ideas, is Google Chrome really the future of the internet?
Features and Design
Google wasn’t keen on the whole internet explorer look – basic and grey. Oh no, Chrome comes with a vibrant blue and white theme. There is a blue bar at the top featuring the tabs (which are always displayed) and the minimize, maximize and close buttons. Going down form there is the main part of the browser, with the two buttons at the right end to access options and the like followed by the URL bar and the forward, back, reload and bookmark buttons. There are options to display the bookmarks bar below that and also to display the home button next to the URL bar. It has themes, which you can download for free but no add-ons on official download unless, I believe, you go on the developer’s channel. That’s one of the good features; Channels. There are three channels; the “Stable” Channel, not updated much, not many things other than the basic set of features. The “Beta” Channel, like a middle ground, with more updates than the “stable” channel and some extra features that are tried and tested already and the “Developer preview” Channel, with a lot more extra downloadable features and it’s updated a lot more often, however, the problem with the “developer preview” channel is that it’s not as stable as the other two and some of the extras can have major flaws, like, maybe, not working at all.
Efficiency
This is meant to be a strong point of Google Chrome, and, to be honest, it is. It works fast and when one of your pages freezes you can choose to “kill the page” and not affect any of your other pages. Also, when one of your pages is running slowly it doesn’t affect the other ones. Security is also decent, and just as good as Safari or Firefox with all the detail and extra options. The options page is easy to understand and still doesn’t lose much of the detail with the more complicated options. To be honest, I can’t think of many major flaws with the efficiency of Google Chrome (and I’m pedantic usually!).
So, to end, Google Chrome has lived up to its reputation. It is a very good browser with themes, a practical layout, a options menu that’s easy to understand (heresy! Burn it!) And lots more that I’ve mentioned in the rest of the review. The only problem is that you can’t get extras or add-ons without going on the “developer preview” channel which isn’t as stable and neither are the extras, and I don’t want to risk it (I don’t know about you, fancy a game of computer coding roulette?).
