Web browsers have always excited me. Whenever there is a new browser release, I’d have tried it as soon as possible. I guess it must be because web browsers are the most successful opensource software for the average computer user. Firefox while being extremely easy and friendly, is an extremely powerful and completely customisable tool. And as far as I know, it is much more popular than Internet Explorer.

I like Google because they have great ideals. They promote open source development and support open source projects and developers. So I was really excited when I heard about project Chromium. The browser was finally released as public beta a few days back, but only windows binaries are available for download.

It was announced somewhere that linux binaries would be released soon. So I went to their project page planning to download the source and building the binaries, but the sources are not ready either. Infact, building what is available would give us a command line ‘all tests pass’ executable.

Linux is the biggest Open Source operating system in the world, and no piece of code made however public can claim to be truely free unless it has a port that works in Linux! What’s the point of developing an open source software if the open source enthusiasts have to get on a windows computer to test it?

Well in the eyes of the public, developing Open Source software makes them look like revolutionaries, working against Microsoft, and by developing for windows, they can reach the masses. Its like Apple releasing a Safari beta for windows first just because more people can try it.

Bad Google. But guess what. There are a few good signs too. It claims to crash proof because each page is opened as a separate process which can be separately closed when it stops responding, without affecting the rest of your pages. And it has the all new V8 JavaScript engine which google claims to be 10 times faster than Firefox 3.0’s engine. It would be nice working in it, if only Google would let us.

By the way, I wonder if any browser would comeup with a way of using Python for clientside scripting.  I love the damn language so much.