Martin gives a very short opinion about the Google Chrome beta, and shares a few, mostly developer-oriented features that might not be immediately obvious Everyone in the blogosphere seems already to have said their piece about Google Chrome 0.2.149.27. I’ve been holding myself back, but now I have to say something.What do I think? It’s very impressive, for a beta. It still has issues, but the memory usage is impressively low compared to every other browser I use (IE 7, IE 8 Beta 2, Firefox 3.0.1, Safari 3.1.3, and Opera 9.5.2) when browsing identical pages, and for the most part it’s impressively fast. It isn’t full-featured, but I can live with what’s there for now.What issues? Start with the official known issues, and add to that the 3 potentially serious security issues that have already been reported elsewhere. Then there are the cosmetic issues, such as the one illustrated at the left.It’s not easy to figure out all of Chrome’s features, so I’d like to share a few primarily developer-oriented features I’ve discovered on my own. They might be documented, but that’s not how I found out about them. JavaScript debugger: Alt+`, or select “Page (icon)|Developer|Debug JavaScript” JavaScript console: “Page (icon)|Developer|JavaScript console”, or use the Show Console icon at the bottom left of the Element inspector Element inspector: Right-click on the page, and select “Inspect Element”. You’ll have to navigate the tree control in the left-hand pane, but you should eventually be able to find the part of the page you’re seeking by watching what gets colored on the page as you hover in the DOM tree. Memory tracker: Shift-Esc or “Page (icon)|Developer|Task manager” gets you the dynamic memory, CPU, and Network usage of all currently running Chrome components. Clicking on Stats for Nerds at the bottom left of the Task Manager or browsing to about:memory gets you a snapshot of the memory details of all running Chrome, IE, Firefox, Opera, and Safari instances. Create a shortcut: Ctrl-D (like Firefox) or click on the star icon to the left of the address bar Rearrange tabs: just drag them where you want them to go; that includes dragging them out of the frame to create a new Chrome window, or dragging them into another Chrome window Add a Home button: “Wrench (icon)|Options|Basics|Home page|Show Home button on the toolbar” See where the Back or Forward icons will take you: click and hold the appropriate arrow, or right-click on the arrow. The bottom choice of the drop-down opens the full history, which can also be found using Ctrl-H or “Wrench (icon)|History” Several other features use the same keystrokes as Firefox, for example Ctrl++, Ctrl+0, and Ctrl+- to control the Text zoom.Finally, to report a bug, use the “Page (icon)|Report bug or broken website…” menu item. Chrome will offer to take a screen shot of the current page, so you don’t have to do that yourself.Enjoy! Software DevelopmentTechnology Industry