Chrome, Google's browser
 

Bla bla bla

Apparantly the beta appears tomorrow. I'm going to give it a shot.

I'll be checking this out and posting a review on my site tomorrow evening.

It's pretty lame that it's Windows-only for now. I think it would have been worth it for Google to hold off and at least add OS X support but can't be helped now. Hopefully they'll roll out an OS X version within the next few weeks (months?).

My brief use of the browser has me pleased. It's effectively a streamlined skin of Firefox 2 and it looks like it would fit in nicely with Vista, if I used it. So far there's been a couple errors, like with the login page and some images here, but nothing I can't overlook. The Incognito browsing feature is curious, though I'd be happy with a Boss key or something.

I have to say, when I first picked up the browser, I wasn't expecting it to import my bookmarks toolbar from Firefox. Didn't realize other people used that, I figured it would've just imported everything into a bulk bookmarks folder.

I'm enjoying the minimalism of the whole thing, but I'm not enjoying its strange tendency to open itself multiple times when I have multiple tabs open, and for all its minimalism it doesn't really have much less of a memory footprint than Firefox.

Definitely something to keep my eye on, but my biggest question is what, exactly, does this browser do for me that Firefox doesn't already do?

Private browsing is something Safari has had for awhile, and I use it quite often but it's annoying switching between Firefox and Safari just to do some private browsing.

Anyway, running Windows was a bitch and I never want to do it again. Google Chrome, however, made up for that generally unpleasant experience. While some things aren't as powerful as others (Um, can we get an actual bookmark manager?), it is a quirky yet quaint browser with a lot of potential.

I think that if there was an OS X version, a bookmarks manager, the plugin API and a few of my favorite Firefox plugins ported over would seal this deal on at least a temporary switch.

Personally, I liked IE8b2 more.

Wow, you hated Chrome that much?

I used it, before giving my actual opinion. I had to get used to it a lot, and it sucked while playing Flash, but otherwise it indeed is fast, useful, and has everything FF has minus a few things (but hey, it's a beta).

Mark my words, this might outrun FireFox.

Chrome shat the bed when I tried to play a flash game on it. It also seems to scroll twice as much as every other program in Windows when I use my mousewheel and doesn't support the mouse wheel click method of scrolling (which I never realized I used as much as I do until I couldn't use it). It did seem pretty fast, but there was also a lack of Undo Close Tab, which I feel is a pretty necessary feature when you've got tabbed browsing.

CTRL-SHIFT-T

I was fully prepared to bash this into oblivion, but I am somehow impressed by the minimalism of it all. Well, it just works.

Chrome feels more like Opera than Firefox, which is a good thing, since the interface of the latter feels slow as shit (although that may be due to the Noia skin, which I'm using). The rendering also looks to be a bit more logical, as things load from top to bottom, all in order.

Really, I'll switch to Chrome if it retains or beats the rendering speed of Opera, while retaining the way that pages look in Firefox. Also, add instant-back and the DownThemAll plug-in (the only fucking reason I even bother Firefox anymore).

who want it to download:

http://cache.pack.google.com/chrome/..._installer.exe

This is pretty nice so far. Fast and all. I miss the Firefox's adblock though.

I'm not a connoisseur of web browsers or anything, but I think Chrome is pretty nice. It's got an accessible, simplistic interface and a slick, cool graphic layout. I might try it with more zeal in the coming days; I'm pretty sure I'll be sticking to Mozilla, but this one might grow on me and become a backup/second-hand browser of sorts.

No, I just liked IE8 better. They actually showed sign of progress in that, while Chrome is mozilla + opera + safari rolled into one.

This is like saying you'll give an A for effort when the student obviously still hasn't met course expectations.

IE will forever be a broken framework. Don't mark my words on this, but even developers have said it's probably impossible to bring Trident (IE) to the same place Gecko (Firefox) or WebKit (Safari) is without rewriting it from the ground up. A broken framework is a broken framework, and it may show substantial progress compared to any other browser today, but I'm not gonna use it just because the developers are trying. Call me back when it actually works.

Let's put it this way: IE8 scored an 11% on the Acid3 test in beta. Google Chrome scored a 78 or so out of 100, higher than most Firefox builds. Sure, you can like IE8 more, but the better student is obvious. And personally, I'd rather have all of the best rolled up into one than something that's barely making it.

browsers have never been this serious goddamn

Well, Firefox uses 117mb of ram, while Chrome uses 15mb. That's a huge difference for me.

Chrome has a ways to go before I'll make a permanent switch to it from FF3 but it's an excellent start and since it's beta it has nowhere to go but forward and up. Once it has the plug-in support and community of Firefox and resolves a bunch of its issues it'll be seeing a lot of use.

More like not being a fan of repackaging the same thing under a different brand. Chrome = Webkit, it even has the same vulnerabilities.

I'm pretty sure thats just FUD. I don't ever remember reading that it's impossible to get Trident up to speed, and I check the IE developers blog pretty often. And besides, they got Acid2 from dogshit to perfectly working in one release, which tells me that Trident is as far from hopeless as possible.

Look at it this way: the IE team has to catch up with 5 years of webstandards. IE is progressing faster than other browsers, but other browsers have a hell of a headstart. But eventually they will catch up at this speed. As long as Microsoft doesnt pull the carpet from under them, like they did once IE6 won the first browser war.

Furthermore, IE still has nearly 70% usage, and new versions spread hella fast due to windows update - Firefox implementing a new css standard is a nice perk, but IE implementing it means we can start using it in webages the minute the new release is out in the wild.

The new WebKit spec passes Acid3 100%. I'm sure Chrome will eventually use this spec, as this was after all a beta release. Why fix what ain't broken?

It was before the IE7 release so maybe that's why. It was at least one year ago, more than likely two.

This doesn't fix the fact that IE is broken right now. Furthermore IE has more like 50% usage, split between IE6 and IE7. This doesn't mean IE8 will have complete 50% usage because not everyone will upgrade. There's still a fair amount of people who probably use IE6, and there will be a fair amount of people still using IE7, so the actual usage stats will probably be more around 18% for IE8.

I dunno, I think Chrome has more potential than the flawed IE engine ever will.

Be aware that Chrome is collecting data and sends them to their central server (read: spyware). This includes all URLs that are visited during the browser use.

Read for example: Google-Browser entpuppt sich als Datenspion - pressetext.austria (use a translation service)

Anyone who wants privacy should currently stay away from the browser (or at least use a version where the sourcecode is patched, so the spyware code is disabled).

Isn't that only if you allow it to? Just send it lots of porn.

Luckily they don't learn anything new, since most of your browsing habits are already happily fed through their search engine and text ads every day.

It's like demanding a shower curtain when your bathroom floor is made of glass.

What if you just happen to love the intoxicating smell of wet plastic shower curtains?

@Bigblah: Who tells you that I'm using Google as a search engine?

To comment this a bit more:
1) I'm using a stripped down Seamonkey build, no integrated search feature activated
2) Adblock+ blocks most ads, modified hosts file does the rest
3) Cookie usage is restricted
3) I can fire up a I2P router for additional security/anonymity

I'm well aware that Google is collecting data. But it's IP-based data, maybe cookie supported (see above), so it's rather useless for them if the ISP uses dynamic IPs. Furthermore I can SSH-tunnel through my University server, effectively using this one as a proxy, making it nearly impossible to figure out who of the thousand of students is currently browsing the web.
And yes, I know some guys from the computer labs which run the network, this data is not recorded (currently at least...)

Jesus Christ you're one of them

I tell Google everything. Looking through my Google web history is quite enlightening, as they capture all the webpages I look at - and not just sites reached through a search. Amazing that they know what sites I visit via bookmarks!

Also, props to Chrome for crashing far quicker than either Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox 3, when I direct it to cool2.php

I'm not sure. If I have fully understood the article there is no config options to switch this on/off. I dunno about that privacy mode though, maybe it behaves different there.

@Zergrinch: Why don't you just use your regular browser-integrated history for that? That one is totally local and not visible for anyone else without access to your system.

You're taking this way too seriously, and furthermore, I really don't like you so I'm going to kindly tell you to shut the fuck up and leave forever.

Google also said they will retroactively change their Chrome EULA, giving you even more reason to stfu and leave.

The regular browser-integrated history has a max cap of, I think, 14 days wasn't it (in IE7). Not sure about Firefox.

But anyhow, this browsing activity is information I cannot access across different computers, or for that matter, different browsers on the same computer. Hence Google.

Besides, I don't consider what I browse as ultra top-secret information that must absolutely be safeguarded. If Google's employees want to know what I'm up to - out of several millions of other Google users, more power to them :3:

The only possible reason I can think of to be this paranoid and secretive about your web browsing would be if you were downloading kiddie porn or organising terrorist cells.

So what are you, a bomber or a nonce?

That's the same broken argument you get from proponents of government sanctioned wiretapping. "If you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to fear." LiquidAcid's approach might be somewhat overkill (the time invested in it alone, I suppose), but nothing wrong with protecting one's privacy out of the principle that it just isn't anyone else's goddamn business.

I probably haven't looked into it enough but I really don't like that the new tab shows your most viewed sites. I'd rather configure that to perhaps my favorite bookmarks or useful bookmarks. Let's just say I don't want to be at work and press ctrl-t and reveal to a coworker my browsing habits. That's pretty lame.

Also, the delete history doesn't work. That needs to be fixed.

I actually like that frontpage, but you can change it to a more traditional homepage under the options. I would like it to be more customizable as well, such as by having the option to have pages never appear (right now, Google Chrome Help Centre is number 4, as an example), and to have more buttons (I'd like 16).

Also, since this is basically ripped off from Speed Dial on Opera, how come the numpad keyboard shortcuts don't work? :(

Anyway, I already like this browser a lot better than Firefox, which I never really liked. There are small niggles (such as ctrl+i for italics not working anymore on GFF :mad: ) but the 90% decrease in memory usage alone is enough for me to switch. I accidentally clicked on "Open all bookmarks" and it took about half a second to do just that. I have hundreds if not thousands of bookmarks. That was awesome.

It's funny how typing ":%" in the address bar is fatal to Chrome... :3:

lol yeah just did that too

Were you on /g/? =')

I've been using Chrome at work, and while I'm impressed with how it performs for general browsing, it doesn't seem to like the work-related web apps the EPA uses. For travel arrangements, we use GovTrip, which opens a new window just about every time you perform an action (yes, it's terrible). I can't log in, because when I click to accept the terms, it just opens a new window with the same box to accept the terms and won't proceed beyond that. We use a different program to track correspondence, and I've had several problems with that. Most importantly, the program uses some kind of java applet to open any Word, pdf, etc. that's filed, and Chrome just sits there on the opening screen, without actually launching the applet.

It's a shame, because I really like what I see with Chrome. My only other big gripe is that with IE/Firefox, I constantly used the dropdown menu in the URL box to go to recently visited sites, and I don't see an easy way to do that in Chrome.

Full ack. I'm a bit allergic to surveillance (and I don't think that is limited to my person). We already had this in the past (see: Stasi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) and currently our government is on it's best way to what some call Stasi 2.0.
Not wanting this and protecting himself from it has nothing to do with paranoia, it's a (hard) lesson learned from the past. Some of you should really have a talk with people from East Germany who suffered greatly from the whole Stasi surveillance thing. That is nothing to laugh about...

Oh, it's not really that much trouble to set it up.
Points 1) to 3) are a one time thing, I usually do this when installing a system. Point 4) (sry, it's not correctly labeled) is rarely used by me. But it's just a matter of starting an application and changing the proxy server in my browser, so it's really no rocket science.

Using the university proxy isn't also very hard. I usually have a SSH connection to the main university server open (to have access to my files there and to some superior CPU power *g*). If that connection is up it's also only changing the browser proxy. Really simple, so nothing that takes minutes of setup.

And everybody complaining about bugs in the beta:
chromium - Google Code

There is bugtracker hosted on the site, so if you encounter a bug look it up in the list and if you don't find it then post it.

@Memory usage: Initial releases usually have a very low memory consumption, compared to other applications that do the same thing. That was the same for initial releases of the FF browser.
Before jumping to any kind of conclusions most of you should wait for some final release and then track then memory usage with every following release. It's going to increase as well (same as FF), up to the point where everybody complains and a lot of code is rewritten to fix this issue (example: FF3).
I really don't think it's going to stay this way.

A few issues I've come across:

1) There seems to be no real home page other than the "recently visited sites". If I'm browsing I can't simply click a home button which was a feature I really enjoyed in other browsers, especially at work.

2) No bookmark manager.

3) No click scroll wheel. ;___;

I will be adding more as I go along but that's whats been irking me so far.

You can set a home page and make the home button show up under the Basics tab in the options menu.

You'll have to install the Java plug-in for Chrome. How you would do so though I have no idea. :/

While writing this post in Chrome, I've just discovered that the highlight color is white on dark blue. This makes it IMPOSSIBLE to see what you've highlighted on GFF. GJ, Google.

Also how are people getting Chrome to use only 15MB of RAM? According to my Chrome task manager, each TAB uses 15MB on average, and the browser itself sits at 70MB. I've got 7 tabs open and I'm using 160MB. I'm not really complaining since that's still comparable to FF3, and according to Google the difference becomes more dramatic as you open more tabs, but I'm just curious how other people are getting these results.

I've heard that too, but I really don't know what to tell you--I didn't tweak a damn thing about Chrome. Then again I get a very bad performance out of Firefox 3 and people keep telling me it's much less of a memory hog than FF2.

The highlight thing is a pretty annoying oversight for sure. It's like Google didn't test Chrome on GFF, don't they know it's the most important site in the world :mad:

Yeah, you're right. I hadn't seen that quite yet as I've only begun using it at work today and haven't had much time to rummage through the options yet.

I still don't like how the tabs open up as recently visited sites.

http://planetquo.net/tinfoil%20(550%20x%20374).jpg

No, that's not quite it...

http://newssohot.com/bed_bugs/pics/tinhat.jpg

No, that's not it either...

http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u...infoil-hat.jpg

There's the money shot.

It's a work thing.

Tin foil hats don't work too well on bosses, after all.

You know, this little browser isn't too bad. However, I opened the task manager to see how much RAM it was using and I found that it always uses 2 processes even though I only have one window open. The one thing I did like about it though is that it only use about 15 MB for each of those instances. I also noticed that every tab I opened was creating a separate process and when said tab was closed, the process would end thus clearing that bit of RAM.

I don't know how they came up with that but, goddamnit, that's fucking genius. Where Firefox was clocking in a massive 275+ MB for me with my Gmail tab, my work email tab, GFF, stock.xchng and Digg open Chrome only clocked (an estimated) 120 MB.

That's a huge fucking difference for me, guys.

You can grab the Chrome Nightly builds here if you want. I'm not exactly sure of the changelogs, but I'm hoping they're going to fix the carpetbomb thing. They've fixed the :% crashbug, at least.

Also, I like how you can drag Chrome's tabs around. You can reorder them, or even drag them out of the window and it'll automatically produce a new frame/window. I wish they'd add a few options to the browser, though. I miss middle-clicking links and automatically switching to a new tab.

I'm also not too fond of the blue 'frame' they give you in XP. I like how the frame sort of 'adapts' to either XP or Vista, but I think it should still try to follow your current visual style. The blue just doesn't fit, really.

[edit] Okay, checking out the latest build [1778], there's a 'Minor Tweaks' tab in the options. You can set it to 'Always ask where to download files'. I'm not sure if that'll be a fix for the carpetbomb, but it's a start.

What's this carpetbomb thing that you mention?

Also, Firefox 3 already gives the ability to drag tabs around, and to other Firefox windows. I suppose the ability to drag out to produce a new window entirely is an added innovation.

If I remember correctly, Firefox 2 allowed you to switch tabs around too. I could be wrong though. I also want to know about this "carpetbomb" crash bug or whatever that is.

EDIT:
Is there any word on a Mac version of this?

The 'carpetbomb' thing was a hole that was in the earlier builds of Safari, too. It's a WebKit thing, apparently. It basically allows a simple script to download and run [malicious or not] applications without you even knowing.

Also, I didn't actually know Firefox let you drag tabs around. I guess I never really tried it until I read that Chrome could do it. :eagletear:

You shouldn't. The latest built has that fixed now.

Right now I'm not too concerned with how the browser looks so long as it works. I'm sure they'll be adding skins to it later.

Another thing I did notice today is that this browser isn't really playing nice with Flash-intensive sites. It doesn't crash the browser for me but, oh lawdy does it run slow on my old Pentium machines.

Here's a blog post from the Mac team. Short version: there's still a while to go before they have anything usable and they're not setting a date yet. Right now they only have components of it working, so they still have to work on the rest of the codebase in addition to whatever changes they make because of the Windows beta testing.

Also some guy wrote a post about the communication Chrome does with Google. Executive summary:

• it doesn't send what sites you're visiting

It does query for search completions, automatically update, and grab malware URL lists and spellcheck dictionaries.

"It does query for search completions" <- then it has to send data about the typed in URL to the server. What's the difference?

Another vulnerability:
EvilFingers - Google Chrome Browser 0.2.149.27 in chrome.dll

It doesn't have to be Google if you've chosen another default search engine, and you can disable it.

I actually laughed pretty hard when I heard about this one.

Not have extension / plugin support in a browser pretty much kills its usability.

I don't really see the memory footprint as an advantage because it can't do half of the cool shit I'm getting Firefox to do with various extensions and then of course there is the whole who-fucking-cares-if-my-browser-is-using-150megs-of-my-3GB-of-RAM-by-offering-actual-functionality-and-living-in-an-age-of-OSes-that-having-something-call-memory-managers-and-schedulers-making-this-memory-usage-paranoia-retarded.

Unused RAM is pointless. When the fuck will people ever realize this. Also caching is awesome. We need bigger caches and large memory footprints. It makes shit go faster.

FUCK, THIS BETA SOFTWARE IS USELESS, IT'S NOT EVEN FINISHED YET

Even if they add extension support later a library of extensions does not magically appear along with it. It took Firefox ten years to build its current library. Also software in its beta stage usually has its full feature set. Just saying....

A month later, how many of you are still using Chrome? I've been willing to overlook the bugs (shaky Youtube support, some issues with Acrobat) in exchange for a fast, minimalist browser, and use Chrome for almost all my browsing at home and work.

From what I've heard it seems as though Google just ripped all of the good features of every other browser and packaged it into one bug-filled app. After the coolness factor wears, few people will actually still use it, in my opinion. I use IE7 and Firefox together, and they both work great, no need to pick up a brand new app.

From what you've heard? That means you haven't actually used it, therefore your opinion means jack shit.

I used it for a while until I found the "google update" service running in the background, and if I remember correctly there was something else that was silently installed. I'm back on FF3.03 for now.