Google Chrome 5.0.375.55

In slightly more than a year, Google Chrome has surprised users and
critics alike by acquiring a skyrocketing percentage of the browser
market share. That attention and heavy usage is not undeserved. Chrome 5
is blazingly fast, more stable than previous versions, and introduces
support for extensions, better bookmark syncing and management, browser
preference syncing, and further HTML5 innovations.
Based on WebKit, the same open-source engine that powers Apple Safari,
Google's Android mobile platform, and several other Web-browsing
tools, but with a different JavaScript engine, Chrome's interface
remains a drastic departure from other browsers nearly two years after
it first debuted. Instead of the traditional toolbar, Chrome puts its
tabs on top. Moreover, the tabs are detachable: "tabs" and "windows"
are interchangeable here. Detached tabs can be dragged and dropped into
the browser, and tabs can be rearranged at any time. By isolating each
tab's processes, when one site crashes, the other tabs do not.
The search box and the address bar have been fused into a hybrid
"Omnibox," which includes suggestions for URLs culled from your
browser's history and search suggestions from your search engine. It
remembers site-specific search engine results. There's also Application
Shortcuts, a feature that lets you create desktop icons for Web-only
applications, such as Gmail. The stealth mode, Incognito, lets you surf
without the history-recording cookies, and can work with all of your
extensions or just the ones you choose.
Unlike previous editions of the browser, version 5 feels fully baked
in a way that they didn't. There are still complaints about wonky Web
site support, but those tend to be the rare exception, and not the
general rule. Minor problems aside, Chrome should be a serious option
for anybody who wants a browser that gets out of the way of browsing
the Web.




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