The Real Bruce

I can still remember the days when I fired up my Netscape Navigator and began to surf the web, at the incredible speed, of a dial up connection. There were few pictures, no music and definitely no streaming video. How the browser world has changed!

Each and every time a new browser version is released from Microsoft or Mozilla, I always think about what could they do to make it better this time? Most of the the time, pages load a little faster. I will say most of the time, because sometimes it seems as if has become slower. Normally, however, there are no major changes.

Probably the biggest improvement in my mind over the last few years has been tabbed browsing. At first I wondered how I would used tabbed browsing, but soon I found myself toggling back and forth with several web pages open at a time. How did I ever live without it?

Then came Google Chrome, and for me, everything changed. Not only is it the fastest loading browser, in my opinion, it almost doesn’t feel like a browser at all. It just gets out of your way and lets you use the Internet. I know that is what Google’s intent is. They want it to seem like your desktop. They want you to get use to using a browser for all your applications. Then comes Chrome OS. I know I am falling into their plan, but I am fine with it, because quite simply it is the best browser I have ever used.

Like I mentioned before, it just stays out of the way. There is no huge blue title bar at the top, instead a slim bar that shows your tabs, similar to the application bar at the bottom of your Windows desktop. Obviously this is not a mistake. Just think a year or two, or maybe sooner, we will be toggling between email, word processor, and Photoshop by clicking the tabs of our browser and running the Google OS in the background.

The one feature that stands out, above all else,  has to be the simplest feature of all. The address bar is also a search bar. I mean, how basic is that. Why didn’t every browser company think of this. I think IE may be doing it now, but wow, I love this feature. If I don’t know the URL I can just type in what I think and  the Google results come up. No more installing a Google toolbar every time I format my system. I just download Google Chrome and I am good to go.

If you spend a lot of time on the web and haven’t used Chrome, check it out. I am sure you will like it. If you have used it, I would love to hear your thoughts. Do you like it? Do you find it better than FireFox or IE? Feel free to comment. I would love to hear your opinion.