Its been a while since Google originally released their own web browser, but at that time the software was only available for Windows machines.
We’ve posted in the past ways to download and build the Open Source version of the Chrome browser Chromium, but Today Google officially released a Developer Build of the browser for OSX and Linux.
Head over to the Chromium Blog to access the link for the download of the browser. But be warned that the browser is still missing a lot of features, including the ability to watch youtube videos and other flash supported features.
THe browser so far seems to do a fair job of rendering web pages, but the application is a bit clunky on my machine. I also prefer the Safari 4 UI for the tabs up top over the current design for Chrome.
Let us know what you think about the the initial developer release of Google Chrome for Mac OS X. Will it be enough to get you to ditch Safari or Firefox?
You can always tell how good an idea is by how quickly someone else copies it. Google Chrome’s multi-process per tab or window idea must be a good one.
Despite Google being embarrassed about not having an OS X version of Chrome ready at launch they have been working diligently to get one up and running. But, they aren’t fast enough. Stainless, a new web-kit based browser for OS X has released their initial build. And the number one feature that Stainless has is its ability to mimic in many ways Google Chrome’s multi-process capabilities.
But while Stainless will offer Google Chrome some competition in the OS X environment, it isn’t anywhere near ready for the main stream. The initial release basically just features the ability to have a process per tab and to browse the web while doing so.
Features like bookmarks, view source, history, and many others are still not available in Stainless. In fact, the initial release is just showing that multi-process browsing can be accomplished.
Stainless admits on their home page that their approach to multi-process browsing is far less ambitious and easier to do than what Google is trying to do with Chrome but is using the browser to show of their own productHypercube, a tool that lets you really control the widgets on the web and desktop.
Will Stainless continue to develop or have they done what they set out to do… Prove that multi-process browsing on OS X is easy enough?
Discuss Stainless, Google Chrome, Safari, and Firefox in the Maciverse Forums.
