A couple of days ago, Google released a new open-source browser called Google Chrome. (The name "chrome" comes from the developer’s term for the graphics that go around the window of a browser). Their goal was to totally rethink the way people interact with the web, stripping the browser down to its barest essence with a minimum of tools and options. I am particularly fond of the "omnibar" as they call it: rather than having a separate address bar and search tool, it’s all combined into one. This will make my mother happy, who often types URLs in a search box and then wonders why it doesn’t take her to the website. (This will hopefully keep me from reverting to my annoyed adolescent voice: "Because you have to use the ADDRESS BAR, Mom! Duh!")

In my first few hours of using Chrome, I’m really, really loving it. It launches almost instantly, it renders pages faster than any other browser, and under the hood it’s better constructed than any browser that came before, with far better memory usage and protection against rogue pages and processes. Plus, it’s all opensource. Even though it’s only in beta, I can see myself switching over to Chrome as my default browser.

Read about the technical advancements and the philosophy of Chrome, as told by excellent cartoonist Scott McCloud. I absolutely love that they chose a cartoon medium to tell their story, which would otherwise be way too complicated, geeky or boring to explain. Scott McCloud did an excellent job of helping you visualize and understand what makes Google Chrome so much better than its predecessors. 

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