Google is releasing a new browser. Here are some of the new features and things that caught my eye from the comic book they’ve launched about it:

Isolated Tabs

Each tab is a separate process. If a tab crashes you don’t loose the whole browser. Better garbagge collection because when a tab is closed a whole process is cleared from memory.

Testing

“Within each 20-30 minutes of each new browser build, we can test it on tens of thousands of different web pages.”

Speed: Webkit and V8

Based on Webkit, memory efficient and easy to adapt to embedded devices, and based on V8 that only interprets Javascript once and then compiles it to machine code. Better garbage collection by keeping a reference of where all the pointers are on the stack.

Search and User Experience

Tabs are on top instead of being below the URL bar. Tabs can be detached. Each tab has its own controls. Autocomplete works only on sites you’ve typed already and points only to the root site, not the whole address.

The initial page presents the nine most visited sites by you on the last days.

Privacy mode lets you create tabs where nothing that happens on that window will be logged.

Pop-ups are scoped to the tab where they were created.

Security, Sandboxing and Safe-browsing

Each tab, which is a process, is jailed. No writing to disk occurs. Blacklisting for harmful sites and phishing attempts.

Gears, Standars and Open-Source

Has Gears built into. All of it open-source.

Update: So this guy is saying Chrome is over twice as fast compared to Firefox 3, and not far from being twice as fast as Safari 4/WebKit nightly.

Since it is Webkit based it will have the same implementation for CSS as Safari does for example. And Webkit scores 100/100 in the Acid3, a test to check how well a web browser follows certain web standards.

Seems Chrome is planned to launch at 18:00 GMT.

A Blog I Like – dougmccune.com/blog

Posted on August 30, 2008 by Nuno Morgadinho

http://dougmccune.com/blog/ – A blog from a programmer living in the other part of the world.

I particulary like the post (link) where Doug talks about making the move from an independent subcontractor to a full-time employee and tackles on the subjects of building a team, product and intellectual challenges and the lifestyle and commitment issues involved in such decision.

Quotes from it include: “building a badass team to dominate the Flex world” and “One of the best parts of my job is getting to work with some of the smartest guys I know. Guys who teach me new stuff every day on a project.”

Another post (link) I quite enjoyed was the one where he admits that his original goal when he started blogging has to get a job in Adobe. He goes on to present a letter he had once wrote with a proposal for a job at Adobe (but which he never sent) which besides trying to convince Adobe to get him a job also tries to convince them that they should create a new job role that he would take and why that role would be an advantage for the company.

In one line, I would say that what attracts me in this blog is the personal side of Doug’s life, that he so openly talks about, mixed with technical bits here and there. Congratulations Doug and keep on!