I’ve been messing around with the developer build of Chrome just recently and it’s made my browsing life considerably more interesting – much in the way that bowling hand grenades would really spice up a Test Match.

For anybody unaware of Google’s peculiar approach to Chrome’s development it runs like this: a wild-eyed Chrome developer wakes up at 2am with an idea so cool that in Microsoft’s secret underground lair Steve Ballmer orders half-a-dozen cats to kick out of windows. He doesn’t know why, he’d just knows he’s angry and some kittens will have to pay.

Unfortunately, this idea is also so cool that it could conceivably bring about internet Armageddon. The solution: instead of inflicting the idea on the fifteen or twenty people using the stable Chrome release, our bedraggled Chrome developer sticks it into the developer build where it can wreak havoc without anybody getting hurt. He then pokes and prods the idea until it settles down, accepts its fate in Chrome’s brave new browser world and complies, or else he destroys it with his code voodoo. This is the world of Google; stern but benevolent – to borrow a line from Pinky and Brain.

Those ideas that beg for forgiveness from their Mountain View overlords and, you know, work and stuff, are boosted to the next rung up on the development ladder – the beta version of Chrome. The beta version of Chrome is what Burma is to Afghanistan; still a little bit unsafe, but stick to the secure bits and there’s every chance of leaving with your legs. The new homepage is an example of this progression, it’s been sat in the developer build for not-literally donkey’s years and has made the coveted beta cut, where it’ll sit for a further not-literally donkey’s years.

Eventually, after Google’s sure the new homepage isn’t some Microsoft funded, fifth-column trick to bring Chrome and its fifteen users to their knees, it’ll be sprinkled in baby tears, have the face of Schmidt tattooed on its bottom and be welcomed to the final development stage, the stable, Chrome release. Google being Google though, you can sign up to any of these releases and tinker to your heart’s content – hence my experiments with the developer’s build.

I initially installed it because I wanted to check out Google’s theme support, the first step towards the promised extension nirvana. Summary: themes work; they’re gaudier than an Elvis fan’s taste in curtains; Firefox’s are still considerably better. It’s early days though.

That should have been it, and would have been, except the developer build is so fast it’s like being escorted across the internet by a polite hurricane. And like a hurricane, you’re never entirely sure what it’s going to do next. The developer builds are updated every night, which means when you open Chrome in the morning anything could have happened. Well not anything, your hands won’t fall off or anything like that. I’d check the Ts&Cs first though.

At the beginning of the week I switched Chrome on to discover that new homepage I’ve been blathering about. That’s nice, thought I, scoffing down a lovely sticky bun. The following day my bookmark bar had disappeared. A quick scoot about revealed it would only appear when I opened a new page. Themes came and went, new options saunter into the menu bars, decide they don’t like the furniture and leave again. It’s like Google’s a mischievous imp that keeps rearranging the furniture in my house every time I go to sleep. Only this morning I woke up to find that imp waving at me through the window with a dentonator in one hand and a bazooka in the other. With a gleeful chuckle Chrome promptly exploded, returning the following lovely boo-boo message every time I tried to start it up.

It’s not come back on yet, which makes me think that a Google Developer woke up at 2am in the morning with an idea that refused to be tamed. It might come back on, or it might not. Either way, I can’t wait to see what’s waiting for me tomorrow. This unstable browser lark is bloody good fun.