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I think Google Chrome is the fastest, most user-friendly browser on the market.

Opera is close, but Google added speed and usability to the mix. I’ve been so enamored of Chrome that I only use Firefox for testing anymore.

I’ve also been using the developer channel for months.  Think of it as a big beta test.   That means I’ve seen more crashes than most.  But the way Google Chrome runs means that a bad extension, add-on or site with bad code doesn’t cause your browser to crash.

Even better?   Google’s announcement today that Google Chrome 4 is a stable version.    That means I can recommend using the browser to my clients, friends and family.  And I do.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer lost amazing amounts of market share to Firefox (which Google helped develop) because it was slow, bloated and bogged down like a typical Microsoft product.  Like lemmings, however, many users including me began bogging down Firefox as well.  And now Firefox crashes because there are 20 add-ons competing for resources and the system is sluggish.

Google Chrome’s architecture helps solve that.

My recommendations are that you download Google Chrome now. After that, take a look at the extensions gallery.  We wrote about Google Chrome extensions last month.  Many of your Firefox favorites are here, as are some new extensions from Google.  It’s almost time to update our list because there are some terrific new extensions and some that seemed great but were never used. Try Chrome out for a week.  I think you’ll enjoy the speed and usability.  But be careful about deleting any existing browsers. There are still sites that do not work well with Chrome.  You won’t be surprised to learn that Microsoft is one so if you’re an Office user or even just use Excel or Word, don’t get rid of Internet Explorer. Here is a Google video on Chrome extensions:

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Geeks old enough to remember using MS-DOS will undoubtedly remember the feeling of automating their bootup programs using a batch file. Around the same time that Bill Gates muttering that 640K ought to be enough memory for anyone, those same geeks looked at each other and begin whittling down their batch files so there was more memory. After all, Gates’ developers were working hard on Windows and the Office suite which would suck the memory out of anyone’s system. Along the way, we learned to be judicious with all of our new toys when we stretched them to the breaking point.  One more phone app? Okay, okay, but that’s a pretty clunky menu.

Google's Chrome extension page
Google’s Chrome extension page

And then Chrome, the uber-fast browser expected to be at the heart of Google’s operating system launching in 2010, went down the Firefox path and started adding extensions and themes.  There are some under-the-hood differences that won’t slow down Chrome’s sleek browsing as much, but everything — even wicked cool plugins — in moderation is a good axiom.

I think I’ve installed darn near everything I could lay my hands on up until now.  One reason that is so much easier is because you don’t have to reboot Chrome for changes to take effect. As of today, here are 10 Chrome Extensions I still like and have kept installed:

1.   Feedly.   I may have kept Firefox as active as I did simply to use this amazing UI for Google Reader.  Feedly is my favorite extension.

2.  Lorem Ipsum Generator.  We do a lot of mockups.  This easy dummy text generator ends the need for copy and paste.

3.  Xmarks.  This critical bookmark synchronization tool came out in Chrome’s dev channel as alpha.  It is a must install everywhere.

4.  Google Wave Notifier.  You may use Wave for business one day so it’s worth letting a process keep tabs on your incoming Waves for now.

5.  StumbleUpon.   You don’t use this wisdom of crowds page suggestion tool?   So start already.   Results become relevant as you do.

6.  News Reader. A Google contribution.  Click the button and get a balloon with the latest 5 US News stories — with hyperlinks.  Great.

7.  Cooliris. Another port to Chrome, this is the best browser image viewer on the planet

8.  Facebook. Warning — it’s unofficial.  But it’s a useful way to track your FB happenings without getting caught in the main site’s time suck.

9.  AddtoAny.  Another unofficial port, this of the terrific browser plugin that lets you spam communicate among multiple channels.

10.  DotSpots. There are only 17,000 users so far, but this is my darkhorse pick for annotating web pages and sharing across the world. I’ve tried to give you a good mix of ports, new stuff and old favorites.  As of this writing, only the Wave notifier, Cooliris and Xmarks are in the top 10 downloaded Chrome extensions so hopefully you got some great ideas here.  Just please don’t install AdThwart and AdBlock on that list.  We all have to make a living, right?

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Get ready because a ranking factor that was kind of important until now is receiving all sorts of quiet guidance from Google that things will change again.  Page Loading Time, call it Page Speed like Google does, is literally how fast an individual page loads.

Google is serious enough about this factor that there is a page speed section on Google Code describing their new plugin. Yes, the company that built the Chrome browser created a Firefox plugin that rides along with FireBug.  And this is some seriously good development advice, if not simple SEO advice.   After testing on our home page, we got results showing some inline CSS no longer being used.    Our big hit was on caching and setting expiration dates. I don’t feel so bad because visiting Google News showed that they too had CSS issues.

Amazon, which knows a thing or two about code but probably doesn’t care if it messes with usability, got beat up by the new tool, including a warning for my new favorite, “Serve static content from a cookieless domain”. After grumbling about the amount of work I had to do, I took the tool to the World Wide Web Consortium because if anyone gets good coding concepts, they would be the folks.    They got beat up too — almost as much as my sites did so I’m in good company. Meanwhile, page speed has been hinted at for months if not longer.  Now you need to start doing some reading and focus your radar a bit more on the entire concept.  Oh, and W3 folks?  Google says you need some help.  Here’s the screen shot from Monday morning.

Google's new Page Speed plugin finds fault at W3.org
Google’s new Page Speed plugin finds fault at W3.org