Google Chrome browser revisited – a safe and reliable choice

Google Chrome outshines the rest

Google’s web browser, Chrome, is now in version 4.0.249.89.  I like it, especially in view of IE’s recent problems. Gurus and pundits are advising people to use IE only when absolutely necessary since it’s security credibility roughly resembles Swiss cheese. It’s full of holes and that can cause you problems.

There are seven or eight really good browsers. I’ve tried them all, and until recently, was happy with Firefox. However, Mozilla, trying to keep up with Microsoft, bloated and screwed up Firefox. It’s slow. It’s porky. It has way, way too many updates, add-ins and plugins. It’s a drag. Nor is Chrome perfect – the biggest issue is that Chrome doesn’t get along well with a lot of sites. Wordpress and Chrome – not a good fit, for example. On some sites, Chrome can’t display images or headlines. Chrome doesn’t even recognize Stumbleupon, a hugely important tool for web-writers like me. I’ve resorted to using Chrome most of the time, Firefox sometimes, and IE never.

Usually, the first thing I do when  setting up a new installation of IE or Firefox is turn off as many of the menus and toolbars as I can, leaving only the bare essentials like navigation buttons – I do like tabs. Well, for me Chrome is the way I like it, straight out of the box. Minimal menus. One toolbar. Clean text box for the URL I’m visiting, and a few navigation buttons, and tabs. The rest of my screen real estate is open for content, which, after all is what I’m really interested in seeing – not clever icons.

The folks at Google designed this browser to be an application platform, not just a web page viewer. Computer programs and web pages are becoming more and more like each other, and bridging the remaining small gap is something that Chrome does exceptionally well.

Chrome is significantly faster than all others, too, which seems logical, considering its clean, minimalist appearance. The program starts quickly and pages load faster. It can auto fill forms, remember passwords, and do things the big boys do. It has a neat little bookmark bar at the top for those sites you visit continuously – maybe Facebook? Twitter? the browser is secure, too. That may be because it hasn’t attracted hacker interest yet since its market share is rather small. But it downloads easily and quickly – about two seconds – installs like a flash and has no learning curve. You might give it a test drive and protect yourself form the threats hovering about IE and the sludge miring Firefox.

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