Was it only a few weeks ago, that we were looking at the latest crop of Web browsers?
Why,
yes, yes it was, but now Google has released yet another newer, faster,
better, and more feature-full version of its Chrome Web browser: Chrome
11.
Voice to Data
Besides
the usual improvements in security and speed, which I'll get to in a
moment, Chrome 11 comes with a new, interesting feature: voice-to-text,
or more properly, voice-to-data. So, with a Web site set up to handle
it, such as Google Translate, you can "talk" to the Web.
Currently,
Google Translate is the big Web application that uses it, but Google
promises there will be more. It's clear, for example, that a voice to
text feature, once it's perfected, for Google Docs would find fans.
This
voice-to-data feature uses HTML 5's Speech Input Web application
programming interface (API). This proposed API was developed and
proposed by, guess who, Google.
I
found it to work "amusingly" well. It made far too many mistakes for me
to consider using it, but when you consider that it's a first try at a
mass-market Web cloud-based real time translation tool, it is
impressive–just not very useful yet.
Eventually
it will mature, but for now it's a fun toy. For instance, with its
Google Translate function you can use your PC as a universal translator
ala Star Trek. It's not going to put Uhura out of work anytime soon. If
privacy is a concern, and it should be, you should also keep in mind, as
the feature currently tells you, "This page is recording speech from
your computer. Click here to stop recording."
Chrome 11 on the Test Bench
I've
been using Chrome 11 on my Linux and Windows PCs. For test purposes
though I used my Windows 7 test box: a Gateway DX4710. This PC is
powered by a 2.5-GHz Intel Core 2 Quad processor and has 6GBs of RAM and
an Intel GMA (Graphics Media Accelerator) 3100 for graphics. It's not
that fast, but it gets the job done. It's hooked to the Web via a
Netgear Gigabit Ethernet switch, which, in turn, is hooked up to a
25Mbps (Megabit per second) cable Web connection.
On
this system, I ran both Chrome 11 and the latest version of Internet
Explorer (IE) 9 Web browser, using a variety of benchmarks. Here's how
they did.
First
up, I ran the Acid 3 compatibility test. This checks out how Web
browser, or not, is with various Web standards such as Cascading Style
Sheets (CSS), JavaScript, and Extensible Markup Language (XML). Here,
Chrome, with a perfect score of 100, out did IE 9 with its 95.
Next
up was the HTML5 Test. This benchmark is exactly what its sounds like"
It checks to see how compliant the Web browser is with the HTML5 Web
page standard. Once more Chrome came out on top with a score of 293 out
of a maximum of 400. IE really trailed on this benchmark. It scored only
130 points.
Thus, if being compliant with Web standards matters to you, Chrome is the Web browser for you.
Moving
on to Web performance benchmarks, I started with Kraken 1.0. This is
Mozilla's update of its SunSpider JavaScript benchmark but, according to
Mozilla, "Kraken focuses on realistic workloads and forward-looking
applications." In Kraken, the lower scores are best. Here, Chrome blew
away IE, 6,311.7 to 17,051.9.
Next
up, was Peacekeeper bechmarking tool by FutureMark. In Peacekeeper,
higher scores are better. Here, the two browsers were neck and neck.
Chrome edged ahead with a score of 8,427 to IE's 8,343.
According
to SunSpider JavaScript 0.9.1, the most popular Web browser benchmark,
IE finally won one. In this benchmark, lower is better and IE came on
top with a score of 252.6 to Chrome's 316.8.
Finally,
I looked at the V8 Benchmark Suite: This, yet another JavaScript
benchmark, comes from Google and was designed as a way to tune up
Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine. I'm sure it will come as no surprise to
anyone to learn that Chrome beats IE hollow on this benchmark. In this
test, higher is better and Chrome came in at 9122 with IE coming in with
2193.
So,
which Web browser is really faster? For me, it's Chrome. Not only does
it win at most of the benchmarks, it just feels faster.
In
part, that's because, thanks to its support of SPDY, Chrome is actually
about 15% faster at Web sites that support this replacement protocol to
HTTP. For now, though, only Google-based Web sites commonly support
SPDY. Still, if you spend a lot time with Gmail, doing Google Web
searches, and other Google Web sites, there's no question that Chrome is
the best choice of Web browser.
Beyond the Benchmarks
While
Chrome still doesn't equal IE when it comes to defending against some
kinds of social engineering attacks on the Web, it does include 25 other
security fixes. It also has a security update to its built-in version
of Adobe Flash. Chrome also includes some bug fixes to its Web cloud
print feature.
Of
course, Chrome has other useful built-in features as well. For example,
I'm still pleased that Chrome lets me sync Web browser bookmarks and
passwords between all my PCs using Chrome. And, of course, Chrome runs
remarkably well on Linux, Mac OS X, and all versions of Windows.
Taken
all-in-all, I think Chrome 11 is simply the best Web browser around.
And, with its remarkable development speed, I don't see any of the other
Web browsers catching up with it anytime soon.
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