Google unleashed the final version of Chrome 6 week, after an unusually short beta phase of just over 3 weeks. Still, despite it has been criticized as a very thin upgrade with just a few new features, it has been one of the most significant upgrades of the browser yet. This new “naked” browser, as we like to call it, spearheads a new generation of browsers that represent a dramatic shift in how we use the main tool for browsing Internet content.

Chrome is now in its sixth generation since its initial launch about two years ago. From a user’s point of view, the modifications we have seen in Chrome have been more significant than IE’s changes over the past decade. Despite the fact that Chrome has just about 8-10% market share, it is shaping the development of every other browser these days.

We tend to judge browsers and their relevance by their market share, which is a rather naïve approach. In a rapidly evolving environment such as IT, the status quo rarely is the benchmark. Chrome has set the pace and the trend for the immediate future of browsers in which especially IE9 and Firefox try to resemble the look and feel of Chrome while adding their own unique features as differentiators and attempts to reclaim the important role of the trendsetter. This can be seen in UIs that closely match Chrome’s UI in IE9 and Firefox. IE9 adds its own flavor with  hardware acceleration as well as tight Windows 7 integration and Firefox’ does this with hardware acceleration as well as the new Panorama feature.

For now, it is our opinion here at CTech that Chrome 6 is the benchmark that all other browsers have to meet in terms of development direction, regardless of its market share. In direct comparison, Chrome 6 is, subjectively, faster and fresher than IE8, Firefox 3.6.x and Opera 10.6. I will not spend any time on benchmarks in this article – there are plenty of data sets out there already, you can read about our previous results for example here, or run the benchmarks yourself to see how the browsers perform on your system. That said, JavaScript benchmarks are an increasingly difficult way to determine browser speed as they only measure one of many capabilities of modern browsers. Also, please note that we do not claim to say that Chrome is the “best” browser, as we firmly believe that there is no such thing as a “best” browser. All browsers have their advantages that cater to different kinds of users and you may prefer one of the other, while someone else will disagree. More on that below.

Let’s look through Chrome 6 and how you can take advantage of those features.

Streamlined Interface: Less is More

It is somewhat interesting to see that we have been used to overloaded menus with features we never really used. As time passes, the interfaces are now reduced to the essential bare bones browser interface. Buttons and menus are moved, merged or deleted. The main menu bar is completely gone and the key elements focus only on content navigation. If you are switching from Firefox 3.6 or from IE8, this may be confusing at first, but it is really a matter of getting used to. And if you think about it, navigation and bookmarks is really all you need, at least if the browser does the rest for you in the background. Chrome 6 focuses entirely on content and eliminates those UI elements you really don’t need 90% of the time.

Stop/Reload: The Stop and Reload button have been merged. As long as a website is still loading, the UI shows the Stop button, but turns it into a Reload button as soon as the website is loaded. The net gain is the space of one button.

Go: The Go button is gone and replaced with your Enter key on your keyboard.

Bookmarks: The bookmark button has been moved from the left to the right side of the URL bar.

Menu: The Page menu has been merged into the Tools (Wrench) menu. There are a few unusual buttons for cut, copy, paste and zoom, which some believe to be an indicator for a touchscreen enabled Chrome.

Home/Bookmarks: The Home button and the bookmarks bar may be gone by default once you have installed Chrome 6. If you like the reduced UI, you may actually find the missing Home button to be a benefit as you can return to your homepage simply by opening a tab. However, if you want to add the Home button, you will find it in the Tools (wrench) menu in the Options entry. The bookmark bar can be added again via the Tools menu as well or you can turn it on/off via the CTRL+SHIFT+B shortcut.

Pin Tabs: This feature has been available for some time, but we mention it again as hardly anyone knows it is there. You can add a permanent tab simply by right-clicking the tab and changing it into a Pin Tab. This will make sure that you do not close the Tab accidentally.

Other Changes: Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that the UI is now in a grey-shade and has lost its light-blue coloring. The remaining buttons also do not have their borders anymore and are integrated seamlessly into the UI.

You could argue whether the new interface is now more useful or not. If you are used to a legacy interface, the new reduced interface may feel a bit empty and you may feel that you are losing control over what the browser does. However, Chrome still provides access to configuration and customization of the browser, while focusing entirely on navigating the Internet. In that view, Chrome’s UI is a much more refined interface than what we had in Chrome 5.

Read on the next page: New Features, Why Chrome 6 is already old

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