Apparently, Google has released a developer preview version of Chrome. Though I’m not a developer, this is good news to me. I’ve been spending more time in Windows lately working on school projects, and Chrome 2.0 has become my default browser in Windows. My favorite features of 2.0 are:
- Tabs in the window border. This feature (a duplicate of Apple’s Windows versions of Safari) saves a lot of screen space.
- Incognito browsing. In Chrome, instead of having to clear private data to maintain your privacy and anonymity, you can open an “incognito” window. Basically, when you browse in an incognito window, all history and cookies associated with that window disappear when you close it.
- The download fucntionality. In Chrome, instead of dealing with dialog boxes when you download files, an arrow appears to direct your attention to a download bar at the bottom of the window. In the download bar, each downloaded file has its own button with an arrow to the right. Clicking on the arrow gives you the option to open the file. One drawback of this feature is that Chrome automatically saves files, rather than giving you the option to open them without permanently saving them. However, the visual slickness of this feature makes up for that minor drawback.
Thus, I am encouraged by Google’s new attempts to make a Linux version of Chrome. While you can download Crossover Chromium, the open-source core of Chrome, Chromium has a few issues. Though it has the first and third of my favorite Chrome features, it runs slow on Ubuntu on my machine (the download arrow creeps down the screen), and it sometimes flickers in and out in a strobe-like pattern that might induce seizures if I had such medical conditions.
Dances With Ubuntu 