When I think of chrome I think of those old school spinning animated gifs or the overused Photoshop F-X, mainly by me.

Now Google wants you to think beyond that (and it’s search engine) with its new Chrome browser. Only in beta for PC, Chrome was released to little fan fare on September 2nd. As a front end programmer I’m both slightly interested and slightly terrified. This means a new face to a field dominated by FireFox and Internet Explorer. But it also means a new browser to pull out what little hair I have left when it doesn’t do what I have it doing…in five other browsers.

Now what little time I’ve spent with the new kid at the parties has been great. She’s quick, efficient, uses multiple independent tabs, so if one site crashes on you, you don’t lose the entire browser. Like the search engine, Chrome’s a little plain to look at but I’m not all about the looks, yes ladies, I did enjoy the Notebook.

The experience on Chrome is very reminiscent of Safari as it should be, Chrome and Safari were both based off of Webkit. Which leaves me wondering why this isn’t already available for MAC. Apple users are generally more willing to embrace change so I assumed a MAC version would be released at the same time. So far nothing.

As I build in FF 2/3 first then test in IE6-7-8 and Safari I haven’t had a ton of time to spend with Google’s newest baby but what time I have has been very enjoyable, as all my sites work in it.

I looked forward to Chrome giving a dying franchise like IE8 and a poor update like FF3 a run for their money.

You can download and learn more about Chrome here.