I previously discussed Google’s latest foray into the software world with the Chrome OS, but had never discussed the original Chrome, Google’s web browser. I used to be a Firefox diehard until two things happened: Firefox started having trouble running smoothly on my desktop and Chrome started supported add-ons. I now only use Chrome.

The biggest difference a user will notice with Chrome is that the design is very minimalist. It takes up less space at the top of the screen (due largely in part to moving the tabs up to the very top of the window) and the information bar at the bottom of the screen has been totally removed. Look at this comparison between IE8 and Chrome. For someone who wants to do web design as his career, this is a great feature of a browser. Without Chrome, I never would have found a logic error in my CSS because the site fit perfectly in Firefox and IE8 with the bar at the bottom.

The second difference is something that I can feel the effort of developers of Google when I experience. Chrome acts fast. Google managed to design the browser in such a way that when it loads a page it appears to load faster than any other browser. Images and text just seem to pop into existence. Even when opening a new tab, it seems faster. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that all of its competitors are browsers that have been around for a while and have been added onto more and more, making them bloated and slow. Of course, if Chrome was not fast, it would not be able to get away with not having the information bar at the bottom of the browser. That’s where browsers put the loading bar, and if Chrome wasn’t fast, not having the loading bar would be a huge detriment because users would not have the feedback that page is loading and would likely stop using the browser because they thought it froze just seconds before the page would actually load.