Google has come out with its own browser and like anything Google, it has taken the tech fans by storm. There is lot of internet buzz around it and everybody who spends more than a couple of hours on the internet wants to at least check it out. Its a different question all together whether they will end up making this browser their first choice or not.
I have been playing around with Google Chrome quite a bit, have looked into different features and tips and tricks which I like and I think set it appart from the others of its ilk that I have used.
First off, I have a keyboard person. The more I can accomplish using just the set of keys, the better. I hate to move my hand to the mouse or the touch screen to move the curser. So lets take a look at the cool keyboard short cuts that Google Chrome provides:
1. Opening The Last Tabs
Lets say you close a tab by mistake and you want to open it again. Fret not. Chrome remembers the last 10 tabs that you closed. Use this combination to open them up.
Ctrl+Shift+T
2. Opening a Particular Tab
Lets say you have multiple tabs open and you want to go straight to a specific tab. Most users would either use the mouse or in Firefox use the cntrl + tab to switch in a sequential order. But in Chrome you can actually jump to the specific tab.
Ctrl+1 through Ctrl+8
3. Opening Your Home Page
Lets say you want to navigate back to your home page. In stead of using your mouse to hit on home, you can use the following keypad compbination
Alt+Home
Other Cool features:
- Your address bar actually doubles up as a Search field as well. Type whatever you want to search in it and hit enter.
- Different processes for each tab.
- Its supposed to be much faster than Firefox.
Things I miss In Google Chrome
Bookmark Folder
Google Chrome is not going to be my default browser anytime soon because of lot of critical features that I make use of in Firefox. One of them is that I have created folders for different categories on the browser bar where I can store different pages. For instance I have the bank folder which has all the links to the login page of different banks I have accounts with.
RSS
I don’t see an instant RSS feed the kind that forms on the right side of the address bar.
Incognito
I don’t understand what the big deal about incognito mode is. Firefox has the Clear All History button and that works equally awesome. Nothing new in there.
Control+B will display your bookmarks folder
Clear all history is not even close to the same as incognito….
Your history is important…if you clear it then you lose ALL of your cookies and saved information which makes your browsing experience more than just a static web 1.0 use case.
Your browsing experience is supposed to carry over from one session to the next. For example, if you clear your history then you’ll never be able to find old web pages that were useful without bookmarking everything (thats dumb). Any website that keeps track of user settings in cookies also gets wiped.
You can switch from one tab to another using Ctrl+1-8 in Firefox as well. Also, in both those browsers, Ctrl+9 will take you to the last tab.
I think one critical reason for Google jumping into the Browser wars is to safe guard its online advertising revenue model.
I don’t think Google would want to come with plugins like Ad-Block etc which would hide ads and hence hit Google’s bottom line.
You can create folders for bookmarks in both the ‘bookmarks bar and ‘other bookmarks’. I don’t however see a way to make a ‘Live Bookmark’. That would be nice.
I think one of the greatest improvements of Chrome over Firefox or any other browser for that matter is it’s JavaScript engine. I think the fact that they made it open source so firefox can adopt it shows how google just needed a browser out there that would run their apps efficiently, and isn’t necessarily trying to put Firefox out of business. Good competition is always helpful to keep spurring innovation along.
I’m sure protecting their business model to keep offering free services could also be a factor. I’m guessing not their biggest motivator as they could probably spend a lot less time and money figuring ways around ad-blocker than rewriting javascript from the ground up.
It sounds like Firefox has also revamped javascript. http://arstechnica.com/journals/linux.ars/2008/09/03/new-firefox-javascript-engine-is-faster-than-chromes-v8
If that keeps firefox running just as smooth, then I’m sure they have nothing to worry about. Still it sure is nice to just kill the process of a misbehaving tab in Chrome rather than your whole browser falling to its knees. Separate processes for each tab, genius.
Is everyone forgetting about the features of IE7? In IE7 you can also press [alt] + [#] to go to that tab. In another blog I read in, it was talking about how you can press the mouse scroll-wheel to open links. The said that it was stolen from FF3! Guess what? IE7 has the function also! I also allows you to mouse-wheel click to close tabs! Just like IE7!