As a media professional who devotes most of his time online, I pay a lot of attend to the speed of my internet browser. It means efficiency for me. Before I was introduced to Google Chrome, I have always been a Firefox fan. I’ve even written a post about how to make Firefox go faster (Check it out). Lately, I started experimenting Google Chrome. Surprisingly, I really began to like this browser. Although Chrome is new (debuted on Sept. 2008), there is definitely potential for its future. In comparison to Firefox, I will outline 7 things that make Chrome a better browser for me.
1. Much Faster Loading Time
On Chrome’s home page, it says “Google Chrome runs web pages and applications with lightning speed.” Basically Chrome uses something called “multiprocess foundation,” meaning one slow site won’t slow down your browsing experience. In other words, each site is isolated. Besides, when I click on the Chrome icon to launch the browser, the program itself opens within seconds. To be fair, this distinct feature has separated Chrome apart from most of its competitors.
2. No Browser Crash
Because of the multiprocess feature, a bad web page won’t drag down your entire Chrome browser. My Firefox browser used to crash all the time, which was really frustrating for me. Since I am used to keeping many tabs open, it usually takes a long time to recover all those tabs. For Chrome on the other hand, every tab, window, and plug-in runs in its own environment. This limited environment won’t let an individual site affect other sites that you are browsing simultaneously.
3. Impressive Tab Features
Unlike Firefox, you don’t have to install addons to have those impressive tab features. With Firefox, I used to install Tiny Menu and Tab Mix Plus. Chrome does them all by itself. My favorite tab feature with Chrome is its ability to close those unwanted tabs all at once while keeping your current tab open (Use features such as “close all other tabs” and “close tabs on the right“). Again, sometimes I have around 20 – 30 tabs open. This feature allows me to close unwanted tabs at once altogether without wasting time. For other tab-related features, check out the following video.
4. Amazing Default Home Page
The default home page is the newly opened tab. It displays a snapshot of the most frequented websites and recently closed tabs (See my screenshot below).
My Chrome Default Home Page
As you can see from the above picture, here is a list of my most visited websites:
- My Entrepreneur Group on Meetup
- PayPal where I manage most of my online payment transactions
- My Facebook Account
- Gmail
- My Tech Blog – Web Studio 13
- My LinkedIn Account
- My Twitter Account
Every time I want to frequent any of those websites listed above, I just open a new tab and click on the corresponding link. The whole process takes me no longer than 3 seconds. As you may have noticed, at the bottom of this default page is a list of recently visited websites. In the scenario where I mistakenly closed a tab, I now can always find it from this list and reopen that tab (or use the “reopen closed tab” feature).
5. The All-Purpose Omnibox
The Omnibox in Chrome is what we refer to as the address bar in Firefox. Chrome merges both address bar and Google search, meaning you can type in either an URL or a search term in the Omnibox and Chrome takes you to the right place without asking any questions. See the following demo for example.
6. The “Incognito” Mode
By staying incognito, you are actually participating in Chrome’s private browsing option. Under the incognito mode, Chrome will not record any of your login information, browsing history, etc. Chrome’s Incognito window is isolated from your regular browsing windows. So the incognito feature won’t interfere with your normal browsing experience and will operate independently.
7. A Promising Future
Unlike Firefox, Chrome was just released on Sept. 2008. Currently, Google is still experimenting many new features with this browser. It’s safe to assume that there will be more exciting features and addons to this browser in the future. That’s why I choose to stay with Chrome now. In general, its future seems very promising.
Conclusion
To clarify, by writing this post, I am not saying Chrome is better than Firefox or any other browsers. Instead, I indicate it works better for my particular needs, such as faster web browsing experience. I have introduced some killer features that the current Chrome browser has to offer. If this is something that sounds promising to you, you should definitely try it out. Would love to hear your opinions about it.
