that Chrome thing...

Google's released the first beta of their browser, Chrome, on September 2. Of course, it might be in beta for years, but anyway... the browser's features and some of what's under the hood were known the day before from a comic that was leaked onto the internet. The comic has since been released by Google. Google then released the browser a day early.

Chrome gained usage share quickly, surpassing Opera, in fact. At least for a while. It's currently at 0.68%, according to Net Applications. Check out their Chrome tracking for updated info.

And my opinion....

It's pretty sweet. The browser is lightweight and very usable. It feels like an awesome minamilist meld of Safari and Firefox. I really like the UI. And... add feed management, and then really nobody should use IE!

Of course, the browser is having it's share of troubles, such as being affected by the 2 second stop Flash bug like Firefox, or getting Hotmail's gander up because of the browser's user agent, which, interestingly enough, includes Safari and Mozilla.

So... I like Chrome. But it's not replacing Firefox for me. Except for one thing. Gmail. I use Gmail in Chrome as an application, which works much like Prism in Firefox. It's pretty speedy with Gmail, and the cache keeps loading time pretty quick, which is great because I'm on dial-up. And I don't have to reload Gmail if I have to restart Firefox or it crashes.

And... some links.

Wikipedia article for the technical rundown.

Grand Stream Dreams has two good posts on Chrome, here, where he shares a bunch of links, and here, where he pokes Chrome with a stick; reccomended reading, as he points out the real installer of Chrome (since the installer downloads Chrome from the internet) and also points out a sweet way to get the nightly builds.

September 19, 2008 Edit: Hmm, I forgot to post a link to Chrome. Lol. Download Chrome.