As you may or may not know, Google has its own web browser and it’s called Chrome. When first released it was done so in beta form, but now it’s been at version 1 (out of beta) for a little while now, so I figured I’d give it another shot.

This version of Chrome is 1.0.154.36 (see screen shot below). I am running it on Windows XP Professional Edition Service Pack 3.

Here’s a few things of note:

Task Manager

You get to this either by pressing SHIFT+Esc

..or

..by clicking the page icon (top right after address bar before the wrench icon), then Developer then Task Manager

..or

..by right-clicking an empty area of the top area above the address bar and clicking Task Manager from the menu that appears.

This is where you get to see different process information based on the browser itself and the tabs it has open.

It looks like this:

What does it look like in the Windows Task Manager? You’ll see it as multiple instances of chrome.exe for each tab you have open in the Chrome browser.

Application Shortcuts

Something that I don’t know is a perk or not is the availability of Application Shortcuts. If for example I go to the PCMech.com home page, then click the page icon at right of the address bar, then click Create Application shortcuts, I get this:

So let’s say you decide to plop an icon on the desktop, then double-click it. What happens? A Chrome window opens with no navigation buttons. Yeah, it acts like an app – which it’s supposed to – but the only way to go back and forward between web pages is to click the top left, drop down a menu and click “Back” or “Forward”.

Honestly I don’t see the usefulness of this being that a bookmark essentially does the same job?

“Going Incognito”

This is, admittedly, the best feature of the Chrome browser. To learn what “incognito” is, just read the above.

Internet Explorer is not going to get this until version 8. And Firefox is working on it also but at present doesn’t have it.

Google provides a deeper explanation of what incognito mode actually means. It’s a good read.

You get this mode of browsing by clicking the wrench icon (at right of address bar), then New Incognito Window, or just press CTRL+SHIFT+N.

Fortunately this mode of browsing purposely has a darker color scheme along with a guy in hat…

…so there is absolutely NO WAY you could not know you’re in incognito mode.

Is this browser useful?

I would hazard to say yes for two reasons:

1. It has the incognito mode.
2. It’s light and speedy.

This browser, compared to Firefox, will destroy it speed-wise because the tabs are put into separate processes – unlike the way Firefox (and all other browsers with tabs) do it.

The obvious nature of the incognito mode is welcome to those who want absolute confirmation that the browser will save absolutely nothing once the session has ended.

Those two things make it useful.

But for everything else, there’s no way I’m giving up Firefox.

See a video of Chrome in action

Watch below!

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