Google Chrome

What we liked:
For a good web-browsing experience, speed and stability are vitally important and this is where Chrome really shines. A specially written JavaScript engine means certain pages display much faster than they do in other browsers. Tabs are managed independently so, should a page or web application lock up, it will only crash the tab and not the entire browser.

In keeping with most Google output, the design is smart and minimalist. One particularly welcome and intuitive feature is the Omnibox: as you type words into it, sites, searches and pages from your browsing history appear as suggestions, with no need for a separate search box. Another great feature is the Most Visited screen, which shows your nine most-frequently accessed sites every time you open a new tab.

Chrome’s private browsing mode is ideal for anyone who doesn’t want every site they visit to be logged, and the pull-out tabs feature, which lets you drag pages out into new windows, is surprisingly useful. So too is being able to create Desktop shortcuts for your favourite web applications.

Although many of the features you would have expected to see as standard – such as a bookmarks manager, full-screen mode and support for add-ons – were absent when Chrome launched in September 2008, Google has been steadily bolting on the missing parts and polishing things up nicely.

How it can be improved:
It’s early days for Chrome and Google is still playing catch-up in some areas. For anyone thinking of making the switch from Firefox, Chrome’s lack of add-ons will be a turn-off. Fortunately, support for extensions is expected to arrive around May. There are other small niggles, including the lack of a master password to protect your saved login details and built-in RSS support.

Our verdict:
Chrome is a fast, secure and stable browser with much to recommend it. The interface is missing too many important features to be top dog just yet, but Google is bound to have future tricks up its sleeve.

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