It will also be made freely available for other browsers to use if they so please.
The virtual machine leverages the concepts of hidden class transitions, precise garbage collection, and machine code generation to make JavaScript-heavy applications snappier. To improve the performance of JavaScript processes, Google also decided to build its own JavaScript virtual machine (called V8) from the ground up.
Google decided to implement the Webkit rendering engine (also found in Safari and the forthcoming Android mobile platform) because of its speed and simplicity. When Google started testing Chrome, it only rendered 23% of those pages correctly ( no word on how many it gets right as of today now it apparently renders 99% correctly). These webpages are chosen on the basis of their popularity, which has already been determined by Google with the data it collects from its search users. The company is claiming that its Chrome Bot can test the browser on tens of thousands of different webpages within 20-30 minutes of each build. Google is leveraging its massive server infrastructure to run automatic performance tests for Chrome.
It’s main purpose is to spot bad actors and close them before they ruin your browsing experience. Google Chrome also features a task manager that can be used to determine just which tabs and plugins are hogging just how much memory. It also prevents your computer from slowing down after you browse for an extended period of time and open/close lots of tabs. The multi-process design requires more memory allocation up front but less memory over time as users tend to multitask. This speeds up overall performance and saves the entire browser from crashing when one tab causes problems. Unlike other modern web browsers, which can only run one process at a time, Google Chrome will give each tab its own process. The cartoon breaks down Google Chrome’s features into the following four topics: Super Tabs and Scalable Testing It also makes for an awkward relationship with Mozilla, whose Firefox browser Google basically funds. This is a straight shot over the bow of Microsoft, which has tightly integrated its Live Search offering into its dominant Internet Explorer browser (and which, surprise, is in turn tightly integrated into Windows). No word yet, however, on when it will be released. Google Blogoscoped has published a lengthy cartoon sent to them by Google and drawn by Scott McCloud that provides the first public details about Google Chrome, an open source browser based on WebKit and powered by Google Gears that has been rumored but never before confirmed.Īccording to the cartoon (which can be seen in its entirely here – thanks Marshall), the Google Chrome project has already undergone a substantial period of development with engineers working to create a product that’s secure, user friendly, fast, stable, safe, and easily testable.