Today, Google released their first web browser without much fanfare.  It’s called Chrome and it’s all new code.  It’s very light.  The download is only 475k.  That is correct.  A full-blow browser that is less than one half megabyte.

I tried it in a few key applications that I must use on a daily basis.  At the top of the list is Blackboard.  Like most web applications, Blackboard uses a WYSIWYG editor which includes the common functions of a word processor (bold, italize, insert picture, etc).  That’s gone in Chrome.  Take a look at the difference.

Chrome Editor

Firefox Editor.

As you can see, the difference is a big deal and one reason I won’t be switching to Chrome any time soon.

There is one really cool thing about Chrome.  It handles tabs in a completely different way.  Instead of eating up valuable screen space below the URL and above the content of a web page (like every other browser I have used), Chrome places the tabs at the very top of the browser window.  It is space that is already used by useless title of the page, so no screen real estate is lost.  Clever.

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