Google's idea of a more polished browser

KUALA LUMPUR: News of Google’s web browser has hit the Internet and just like most products the company releases, the browser shows promise.

The browser, called Google Chrome, has some nifty features, according to a 38-page comic book explaining its features, which is online at http://blogoscoped.com/google-chrome.

First off, Chrome offers tabbed browsing — nothing new to Firefox and Internet Explorer users. But with Google’s browser, each tab functions independently; meaning that if a fatal error occurs in one tab, for example, only that tab needs to be closed.

With the other browsers, such an error would result in the user having to close all the tabs and restart the browser.

Google has also gone back to the drawingboard with Chrome. It is introducing its own Javascript virtual machine developed by a company called V8, from Denmark.

It claims its product is much faster and more capable at handling the increasingly larger web programs that run in browsers nowadays. This would help boost surfing speeds.

The king of Internet search was supposed to have had a near-simultaneous launch of Chrome worldwide on Thursday, but the appearance of the comic book on the Web resulted in a change of plan. Its regional launch in Singapore was brought forward one day.