Google's open source Chrome browser has been released!
Naturally, being a web developer I was itching to get my hands on the new browser, mainly to see how it performs compared to the other popular browsers available and more importantly to see if my sites worked well enough to not warrant more browser snagging.
Although the browser is in the beta stage (isn't everything these days?), its performance exceeds IE7, Opera and Firefox on many tasks. Javascript is the most noticable improvement - with Google Mail and Reader zipping along 50+ times faster than IE7.
Chrome does have a few flaws, to be expected with a new release - such as the lack of a Google Toolbar, poor accessibility and numerous bugs already spotted by bloggers across the 'net. But, its simplicity and forward thinking more than makes up for it.
Something that Mozilla, Microsoft and the likes are probably kicking themselves about right now, is that Google's Chrome handles tabs independantly - each within its own process. For those of us using 10's (even 100's) of tabs simultaneously, we'll appreciate this feature the most. Ever had numerous pages open at once, only to have one of the tabs crash on you, bringing down the whole browser as it does so? Chrome solves this along with other single-threaded/process issues.
Time will tell if Chrome will build up a user-base to rival IE7, Firefox, Opera and Safari. I'm currently using it alongside Firefox/IE7 at home and may end up replacing the latter permanently if Chrome meets all my browsing needs.
For other developers out there, you'll also be pleased to hear that it uses an existing rendering engine behind the scenes - WebKit (as used by Apple's Safari), which should mean that if you've already checked your site(s) in Safari, then you shouldn't need to alter much else to be Chrome compliant.
Let me know if you're trying out Chrome and if you'll be using it long-term...