Techiebytes

Techie channels are abuzz about Google’s new browser, Chrome. Built for speed,  Chrome has a minimalistic interface mimicking Google’s search page. This “one box for everything” browser seems foreign at first, but soon gives way to an efficient and enjoyable experience.

• Unified Address Box
  Combines history, suggested sites, and searches which offers a quick solution to finding anything.
• New Tab Page
  Offers a consolidated view of your most visited sites, bookmarked pages, recently closed tabs and most used searches.
• Independent Tabs
  Each tab runs independently allowing one to fail without affecting the others.
• Incognito Mode
  Allows users to browse websites without storing local history.

Chrome isn’t life changing, but it is a distinctly different browsing experience. Although Chrome is still in Beta, it seems stable. Installation time was under two minutes and required no reboot, so it’s well worth the effort. You can get chrome at http://www.google.com/chrome/.

While not a dramatically different browsing experience, it’s worth mentioning that Microsoft has released IE 8.0 Beta 2. A big push for IE 8.0 is browser personalization though Accelerators and Web Slices.

• Accelerators
  IE plug-ins that allow you to utilize information on a web page by sending it to a different web page or service provider. For example: map an address with Live Maps.
• Web Slices
  Allows users to subscribe to sections of a website. When content within that section of the website is updated, the browser notifies you and allows you to preview the information.

Overall IE 8.0 is rather boring and seems to be yet another MS catch-up browser release. The time to install is over 15 Minutes and requires a reboot. I’d say it’s not worth the effort, but if you want to try it out visit http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/default.mspx.

Filed under: Technology | Tagged: Browser, Chrome, IE 8.0