This week, Google announced an official version of Google Chrome, a result of the Chromium project, at the Web 2.0 Summit in California. What that means is that outside of nightly developer builds, this version—build 4.0.223.8—is the first official release build of the software. While the Windows version has been official and crushing it for quite some time now, Google certainly took their time on the Mac side. However, if you plan on trying out Chrome for Mac, I would definitely say it’s worth the wait, as I have been using it for quite some time now on my machine even in the earlier builds.
Some of the most interesting features for Chrome lie in the simplistic and minimalistic interface. As you would expect, the normal navigational buttons are near the top of the screen with the address bar. However, unlike most browsers, Chrome places the tabs above the address bar and bookmarks bar instead of below it. To me, this doesn’t really alter how I use the software much, but it is sort of a refreshing change. Furthermore, the way Chrome handles tabs is really great. For instance, you can drag and drop tabs into new windows or from one window to another simply by moving them with the mouse.
Another interface aspect of the Chrome browser is the themes that can be applied. All you need to do is go to the theme page and install one straight from there in order to get a fresh new look. While I haven’t looked through all the themes, though, I have stuck with the default one, as it works very well with the look and feel of my Mac.
As far as features go, there are some things I like about Chrome other than the speed. For one, it will show you the actual URL of a link along the bottom when you hover over it, which is nice. Furthermore, it has a top sites feature much like that of Safari. All this said, there are still some issues that exist with the software. For instance, sometimes I’ll have to revert to Safari to get Java based components of sites, such as Facebook’s photo uploader.
Either way, I strongly suggest you try this piece of software out. It can be downloaded at google.com.
"Furthermore, the way Chrome handles tabs is really great. For instance, you can drag and drop tabs into new windows or from one window to another simply by moving them with the mouse."
You can do these with Safari too. Just drag a tab out of the window to create a new window for that site, and drag a tab from one window to another to move it. Not like I ever need more than one window of Safari open. I think the only time you'd need to use that would be for some sort of comparison you were doing between sites.
I bet a lot of people will praise the tabs on the top, yet there were SO many complaints when Apple tried that with the beta of Safari 4. I will download it and try it, but I will no doubt stick with Safari for its great built-in RSS reader (has Chrome got this? You never said), and bookmarks sync with my iPhone.