Using Chrome

Ok -- I'm a sucker for something new, but this is pretty slick. I'm trying out the new Google web browser called "Chrome" and it's pretty fantastic. I've been designing web applications for the past 6+ years now and have done a lot of web sites over the years. Once upon a time I got into using the Macromedia (now Adobe) Flash player for the web application interface. The reason was the Flash Remoting system which allowed data to be sent/pulled all via little system calls . . . and the Flash player was cross platform/browser compatible. This allowed for an application to be built and come as close to a normal desktop application as possible.

With delving into Ajax and more of the newer libraries and resources available, I've been designing more around the browser end of things and not the Flash side, but there are still specific limitations. I think the new Google Chrome (www.google.com/chrome) browswer addresses a lot of those issues that I've come up against in the past. In fact, right now at my job I'm desiging a health care staffing system all web browser based, but the complexity is becoming a bit staggering on how it should all work and work very quickly.

I've been focused on the Firefox side of things and the latest iteration of Firefox (3.0) has been a wonderful thing, but in trying out Chrome, my app is lightning quick and I think it might just be the thing for a enterprise level application to survive on. I know our staff uses the web for many purposes, but tieing the staffing system to the same mechanism that might be used for normal web surfing patterns, well it was a little daunting. The Chrome one process/sandbox per tab methodology is exactly what I think will fix some of the shortfalls I was concerned about. I think the new V8 part might be a little daunting to integrate, but if the current Javascript rendering speed holds up, I will just have to see. I'm very anxious for the Mac/Linux versions of Chrome to come out since that's my desired platform. (The new child check-in system I'm working on could REALLY use that, so I hope the Linux version is very quick in coming out!)

Psst . . . Google if you happen to see this . . . KUDOS! I know many developers like myself are very excited to see web application programming get a stable platform to design enterprise level systems.

UPDATE: Wow, apparently my comments and blog are a little more read than I originally thought. I ended up getting a contact from Eric Lai from ComputerWorld and was included in this article: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9114063&intsrc=hm_list. At the time of this update, they had me listed as "Bradley Walker" . . . .DOH! I was very impressed that the writer tracked me down via our church secretary to get more info from me.