I find it really quite funny that people actually believe the story about some Google boss accidentally sending the email with the details of their new browser. The comic within was great, certainly a finished piece as far as I could see. And then, the launch of the browser the next day – funny how it was ready in time regardless of this so called accident. All in all what a great bit of publicity. It got a lot of attention on the national news here in the UK – after all news agencies love a story like when a big company supposedly makes a big mistake.
Besides the drama behind this beta launch there is a very good application waiting to be taken up by the hordes of internet users. You would expect no less than brilliance from the company with the reputation for innovation that Google rightly boasts. There are many things done right with this browser. Immediate impressions are of a clean interface with usability at the forefront of the design. For example, a pop-up window, when blocked will actually be placed at the bottom of the page, so if it was actually a requested page then it can easily be dragged up to full view. My only concern with the interface is it somehow looks a bit flat. I guess Google were thinking that its best not to distract from the real reason you are using a browser: to view websites. The icons and buttons are clean and simple, they get the job done.
Page load times seem fast which in my mind is a good indication of a good browser rendering engine. The HTML rendering does need a few tweaks though as some hyper links are showing incorrect colours and attributes as set in CSS style sheets. Still, this is only a beta version.
The browser also has many other features that take a little while to notice at first. For example, a built in spell checker and the ability to drag text areas as you can in safari.
All in all first impressions are very positive and I look forward to further developments.
looking forward for more information about this. thanks for sharing. Eugene