Haven’t used that thing called IE for ages now.

Prologue

I am in a state of introspection, and probably should call myself a hypocrite for voicing contrasting opinions in two of my previous posts , firstly I lambasted RGV for his arrogant movie making, and I myself ended up writing a so called arrogant post which almost caused a verbal riot. Neverthless it managed to get maximum hits (literally too), by far in number compared to my earlier posts, May be I should celebrating a box-office success. But I am pretty sure if I should be writing blogs for myself or for people who read them. After flirting with controversies, I just managed to recollect the fact that I have a draft ready from last week on Formula1, which I now feel is stale, thanks to innumerous revisions it has been through. I managed to push its release further, owing to reasons unknown to me. I was wondering where my next post would come from, as always Google comes to my rescue (this time its not work-related).

I wake up on a holiday to see Times of India publish something about Google, surprisingly this news wasn't stale. Google ? Browser ? I had decided I had to get it !! Its called Google Chrome

Google Chrome, one of my friends mistook this as the launch of Google’s famous “Personal Genome Project”, hopefully by the time its out, I would still be blogging. (Wondering how you were not aware of this one – get yourself a copy of “The Google Story”). Fortunately this one is not that complex, Google has finally managed to unleash yet another beta project, this time a browser called “GOOGLE CHROME”

I have been a die-hard fan of Mozilla firefox for a very very long time, ever since I got myself introduced to the Internet way back in 2000-2001 (not a early starter or may be I am), It just took me a couple of years to realize the power of firefox, ever since then it has been Firefox all the way. No wonder when people started asking me “If it was the end of the road for IE ?”, I retaliated saying “ IE ?? IE was never in the picture,It was always between Firefox and maybe Opera or Safari !!". I know there are 2 kinds of people who would oppose me from making such a statement, people who haven’t used anything else apart from IE, and the oversmart ones who would try suggesting Avant Browser, Konqueror, Flock, Epiphany, K-Meleon and AOL Explorer.

I wish I could try convince people and demonstrate the power of firefox, but I have no plans of re-inventing the wheel, a simple google search should bombard you with enough reasons to use firefox for a lifetime, especially when I am standing at the cross roads, wondering if I should shift my loyalties towards Google Chrome.

Is the Google brand name enough to trust Chrome ?
Let me quickly pen down my first impressions on Google Chrome

1) The User Interface: So simple yet so powerful, Just like the Google Homepage & Gmail Inbox. The UI is so light…I feel like flying.

2) Auto-Complete: The URL auto-complete goes one step ahead, Chrome helps you complete your URL with a list of virtually all the websites on the internet, (unlike the other browsers who auto-complete from the browser’s history). This is only possible with Google, thanks to all the crawling google has done for years now.

3) Incognito Window: Equivalent to “Anonymous surfing” on Safari. You can surf all the porn in the world, without leaving any traces of history, webpages or offline content. You don’t even have to clear the history. So Kinky of Google.

4) Restoring Previously opened pages: Firefox’s Restore Earlier opened windows

5) Default homepage – Shows graphical tabs of most visited websites

Couple of other things that took me by surprise.

1) Google not misusing their monopoly by restricting Google as the default search engine, You have option of changing it to Yahoo/rediff/MSN/Guruji (not sure how many of them would take that option too seriously)

2) Surprisingly Chrome’s borrows its Network/Proxy Settings from Internet Explorer, May be Google believes in humiliating competition infront of their eyes, rather than de-throne and rule in monopoly.

I am sure, most people wouldn’t find the browser feature rich, but Google is known for its strategy of throwing in BETA projects at users, and trying to develop them based on users opinions, rather than force users to use something you build. Interesting? More on that on “The Google Story”

Would Google Chrome work ? It’s too early to comment on issues like Stability (No. of times it crashes) & Security (I have no idea what tht means) . On the other hand, having got crashed too many times, I haven’t even bothered to check the developments on IE7. I still occasionally use IE, thanks to most Web-admins who are too stubborn to make agnostic webpages, I also recommend “IE Tab - Switch rendering engine” plugin to the firefox fraternity who face the same problem as mine. The browser war is far from over, with Soon to be launched IE.8 & recently launched Firefox3.0, Chrome is just a baby.

Meanwhile I still continue to await for the day, when the final nail would be banged on IE's coffin, Who is going to do it ? Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome ?

P.S.: My humble request to people is not to label me as geek/nerd, The opinions mentioned in this blog are surely biased; If you want it that way. I hope I don’t get sued by Microsoft for this. May be I am dreaming…May be I am long long away from even dreaming. The opinions in this blog are purely personal, and are definitely not echoed by my current employer, nor my future employers.

- Posted via Mozilla Firefox