By Derek AshauerToday Google announced the launch of Chrome, a new open source browser they have been developing. As with most things Google, it is still in beta meaning it is not a finished product. The reason for Google creating Chrome is because they still see a lot of room for improvement in the browser area. Specifically, many websites are now web applications and browsers need to be able to handle the special needs these applications require from a browser. They also want people to use their stuff thus driving traffic to their site thus making money on their advertising systems.
So why post this on a web design company blog? Well, browsers are a big deal for us. Each browser has it’s own quirks in how it will display the same website. We have to build HTML and CSS which can be a little “not-the-original-intention” in order to make it actually display properly. When FireFox was introduced, the web design community was ecstatic because it promised to render web pages as they were intended – unlike Internet Explorer (which is a major headache for most web designers). With Google’s Chrome browser, we have to wait and see if our websites display properly. If not, we have to start considering the special requirements of yet another browser. However, that won’t happen for quite some time (if ever) because Chrome won’t (and may never) have a large enough percentage of users to make it worthwhile to check your site. It even took a couple years before it became necessary for web designers to check their website in Internet Explorer and FireFox as it has finally gained a strong enough marketshare.
Will we be using the new Chrome browser? Nope. We use Macs and for now it is only available to PCs.