For a while I have had the idea that someone ( possibly me ) should make a simpler, more user friendly web browser. Something that our grandparents could use. Not that all web browsers are bad at this but one designed to be simple could be even better. One of the greatest tenants for programming is to remove as much as possible, or minimilism. I strongly believe that most software could benefit from this.
The browser would still have to surf the web obviously. That means certain functionality would need to be present. A back button is required, forward as well. I would like to see some data on how much the forward button is actually used before including it honestly but as a convention it should be there. There has to be a bar to enter the url and a “go” button. Tabs are pretty much standard nowadays and you can’t live without bookmarks/favorites/whatever they are called in your browser. A quick search is nice as well but you could always navigate there by hand. That list covers well over 90% of what you do in the average internet session. And minimilism says that we may as well pull out anything that isn’t on the list. Note: making web pages isn’t a normal activity for most of us.
Thankfully I don’t have to write this browser ( and you should be equally grateful you don’t have to use it ). Google once more comes to the rescue with Google Chrome. It is literally all those things plus a few other cool features, like all the tabs run as their own process so one rogue page can’t take down the entire browser. In fact they were so psyched about it that they made it open source and had a comic drawn up to explain it, which goes into detail on the features. The comic is available here.
The first thing that struck me is how clean it looks. Not surprising when you consider Google’s homepage but still it is nice to not be molested with an annoying homepage when you first install it. It imported all my bookmarks from IE ( both of them ) but didn’t check any other browsers. When you hit a new tab you get a page with nine spots for your most commonly used pages ala Opera. Probably the slickest thing so far is the url bar. By default if you just enter plaintext it will take you to the Google results page for that search. Nice since otherwise it wouldn’t have a one click search. It also greys out the part of the url that isn’t the main page, which is aesthetically nice but also functional in allowing you to figure out where you are at a glance.
Have only used it for about an hour ( mostly to type this post ) so we will see if it has any other quirks. About the worst thing I can come up with is the logo looks like a funky Poke ball on my toolbar.
Oh and yes I am still alive, more posts to come.
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