Lean browsers are In, at least as far as the user interface is concerned. Mozilla says its Firefox 4 is prettier than 3.x. Microsoft is expected to show a drastically different IE9 next month. Google plows ahead and strips Chrome of everything that is not absolutely needed and raises the question if the streamlining trend has gone too far. Chrome 6 is just about to enter the beta stage and here is what you can expect Chrome 6 to look like.

I am going to be straight forward. It has taken me some time to get used to Chrome’s minimalistic user interface and I was not a big fan when the browser first came out. Today, I believe that Chrome is a compelling browser and it is 6^th generation the best browser currently available, even if we know that IE9 is making a case for HTML5 graphics hardware acceleration and is drawing significant attention.

However, both Firefox and IE9 are duplicating Chrome’s streamlined interface approach and it appears that Google has no intention of falling behind. Chrome 6’s interface is much simpler than what we see in Chrome 5 today and Google is approaching a limit of what can be removed. Today’s web browsers do much of what we had to configure in the past automatically in the background and enable interfaces to be simpler than ever before.

The key user interface elements of the Chrome 6 interface are the back and forward buttons, the reload button, the home button (if you want it), the URL bar, the bookmark button and the tools menu. That’s it.

New in Chrome 6

Gone and replaced: The Stop and the Go buttons. In place of the Go button (which was positioned to the right of the URL bar) you now see the star icon to bookmark a page or edit an existing bookmark. The stop button has been merged with the reload button: As long as a page is loading you will see the option to stop the process. If the load process is complete, the button changed dynamically to a reload option.

Page and Tools: The page menu has been merged into the tools menu, which has now dynamic elements for zoom and editing of content.

Extremely naked by default: The home button and bookmark bar is deactivated by default in the most recent developer version 6.0.464.0. If you are new to Chrome, this may cause some confusion as there is no way to access your bookmarks, if you do not know where to activate the bar (tools/tools/always show bookmark bar). The same goes for the home button, which however, you can easily live without, if you configure a custom start page. Simply open a new tab and you are “at home”.

Native PDF: Chrome 6 will integrate a native PDF reader, so you do not need to install the Acrobat Reader anymore. Also, you don’t have to worry about security updates anymore, as Google will update the PDF reader, when necessary, automatically. The format is improved from version to version at this time, with the most recent addition being vector print support, which avoids ugly pixilation we usually see in the PDF preview in Gmail.

WebM, VP8: Chrome 6 supports VP8, a new royalty-free container for web video, and the WebM codec.

Advancing Sync: Cloud synchronization of user data may be one of the most useful recent feature additions in browsers (Firefox will get it in the final version of Firefox 4). Chrome 6 has two new options for syncing browser data: Extensions and auto form fills.

Smarter URL bar: Chrome 6 now shows content symbols in the URL bar as soon as you begin typing. Chrome tries to figure out what you are looking for and will offer several options – search queries, URLs, search results in your favorites or your browsing history as well as an option to send the query directly to your search engine. Every option is marked with a symbol.

The big question mark: Graphics acceleration

Google was already working on graphics acceleration and abandoned the project earlier this year. However, Google already said that it is looking for new ways to accelerate the graphics performance, but no clear information has been provided so far. What is somewhat interesting is that the different developer versions of Chrome have very different capabilities. For example, the current 6.0.464.0 does not support various HTML5 and multimedia elements the 6.0.458.1 does support – such as H.264 video, MP3 audio, AAC audio custom scheme and custom content handlers. This may be due to fluctuation, but we also noticed that the HTML5 graphics performance of Chrome 6 dev versions is changing: In Microsoft’s IE9 platform tests, the Chrome 6.0.464.0 dev version handles the graphics tests (with exception of the fish tank test) substantially better than the current 5.0 or preceding developer versions, even if it is still a far cry from Microsoft’s engine. Hardware graphics acceleration could make a surprise appearance in Chrome 6.

Is it better?

If you like a streamlined user interface, then there is no better browser than Chrome 6 at this time, and I would expect this to remain this way at least until the end of the year. The actual JavaScript performance has not changed much since early version of Chrome 6, but is ahead of Chrome 5. Page load times are, on our Windows Vista system, notably faster than with IE9, Opera 10.60 and Safari 5, but this may be different on your system.

I have to say that I like Chrome 6, but Google should not be cutting more than what is gone already. A legacy interface may also be a good idea if it is provided as a choice. The integration have made Chrome 6 a bulky browser at 23 MB for the ZIP file and 57 MB when unpacked and Google will have to be a bit careful what feature are added next.

You can try the developer version of Chrome by downloading it from Google’s Chromium channel. Please remember that this is not a stable version and should be used for every day and business critical applications.

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