Several others have announced the release of and have commented on Google Chrome, so I'm not doing anything new here.  And while some have certainly mentioned them, I'd like to share my favorite features of Chrome that, more than anything, really show that the User Interface Designers at Google were willing to change the basic browser model if it meant having a better product.  So, my three favorite interfaces for Google Chrome are:

1. New, blank tab

This single interface has been one of the biggest reasons I want to use Chrome.  I love:

• That my bookmarks bar doesn't have to be a part of the regular browser chrome, but rather appears only when opening a new tab (which is almost always the only time I need to see the bookmarks bar, anyway).

• That it keeps track of my most visited sites, regardless of whether I've chosen to bookmark them.

• That the search box at the top right is not hard-coded -- this list actually grows as you access (presumably pre-identified) sites equipped with search engines so you can search those sites from this page.

• That recent bookmarks are highlighted immediately.

• That recently closed tabs are itemized there, so I don't have to think hard about how to recover a closed tab.

2. Find and Highlight

Does Internet search this workflow sound familiar?  Go to Google, enter a search term, open a link to one of the results, scan the page for the search term, give up scanning and do a find in the browser for the search term and keep clicking "find next" (or equivalent)?  Blah!  Well, that workflow isn't perfect, yet, but Chrome does make the last part of that process a bit easier.  When you do a find in Chrome, it overlays highlights on the vertical scroll bar to indicate the position on the page of each instance of the term for which you are searching.  This is great for quickly identifying where the "hot spot" on the page is.

3. Pretty View Source

This one may be relevant to a smaller audience, but like Firefox and IE 8, Chrome offers color syntax highlighting within the HTML source code view.  Additionally, it provides line numbers (even when the lines wrap), a eye-pleasing font, functional hyperlinks to referenced external files, and the same find-and-highlight functionality mentioned above.

Concluding Thoughts

While I love Google Chrome (especially version 2), it still lacks some of the useful (and in my book, essential) features offered via Firefox add-ons, but I suspect that'll change soon enough.  Now if only some of the Web apps I use on a daily basis supported Google Chrome...