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Google Chrome, the Google Browser
Philipp Lenssen writes "Google announced their very own browser project called Google Chrome — an announcement in the form of a comic book drawn by Scott McCloud, no less. Google says Google Chrome will be open source, include a new JavaScript virtual machine, include the Google Gears add-on by default, and put the tabs above the address bar (not below), among other things. I've also uploaded Google's comic book with all the details (details given from Google's perspective, anyway... let's see how this holds up). While Google provided the URL www.google.com/chrome there's nothing up there yet."
These days, there isn't much to differentiate between browsers as far as end-users are concerned. A "smart homepage" is a very effective way of capturing a user's interest, providing significant convenience, and making it less likely for them to switch away. Opera have started down this road with their speed dial feature, but Google seem to be taking it a big step further. Google have tried this once before, with iGoogle, but building it into the browser means they can incorporate things like surfing history and bookmarks to determine which websites are most important to a user without needing manual configuration in the same way an online homepage would.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Now they can monitor everything you do easier...
Google is a marketing company, and in the past has used nefarious ad tracking to even Firefox searches reporting information to the Google servers.
Now they want a browser? Why? What reason would they need for a new browser?
So instead of putting full support behind a 'generic' Firefox, they want to enter the market so they can gather even more information from the user.
Nice... Geesh
Sadly they will get some of the Dell and other bundling deals, because they can afford to pay these companies to put this browser on machines, and most users won't know what is going on behind, even if the tech community finds Google doing the most nefarious things possible with the browser.
This type of concern makes the IE8 privacy mode and blocking sites from tracking users the 'non-evil' choice.
What was Google's ad hoc motto again, and was it just words after all?
I know you're being snarky, but if you actually think about it, the address bar really *does* belong under the tab bar.
The address is a property of the current page. Placing it above the tabs puts it into the same space as the persistent elements like the file/edit menus. Those are application-wide. Below the tabs puts it into the same space as the page content, which makes sense as it isn't an application-wide property, but is directly related to the selected tab.
I'd never thought about it before, and can't say I'm bothered with the current setup (address above the tabs) but there is a sense to it.
From the article:
One aim of V8 was to speed up JavaScript performance in the browser, as it's such an important component on the web today.
This is probably one of the main reasons they've done it. They've been trying to push applications on the web, and the speed hasn't been completely impressive. With faster JavaScript execution, their products are much more viable.
the address bar really *does* belong under the tab bar
Not that I care, but maybe the "user" perceives the content of tabs & current page as more related while not being aware of the address of the current page at all.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Reading the comic, it looks like their plan is to use the browser as a thin-client platform for remote desktop applications: that is, what the project Mozilla Prisms tries to achieve with XUL and Microsoft wants to do with XAML. The difference is that Google already has a lot applications to offer (YouTube, Gmail, Google Office suite, etc). Looks like being cross-platform is quite important for these. It will surely be interesting :).
I guess they will make it seamless to the point you can click an icon and get a remote application launched (without having to open the browser at any time). As for having a beta version released soon, I really doubt Google would release the comic and show their plans to its competitors (mainly Microsoft) if they hadn't something to show very soon.
I'm only 9 pages into the comic but the fact that every tab and plugin will run as a separate process seems significant to me and something more than just a rebranding.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Unless they develop a mostly working implementation of Flash, I don't see any point choosing them over Mozilla or Opera or Konqueror. They can optimize the rest of the browsing components all they want, but Flash is now the weakest link in the components needed to view the web in all its glory. Though a new faster JavaScript engine is nice too.
When I read the comic I seemed to think it looked completely different to Firefox, new process for each tab/plugin/script, new Javascript VM... I suppose they're similar in the fact that they both render web pages, have tabs and extensions, but every browser has those, and that's where the similarities end.
The V8 Javascript engine sounds like a huge improvement as well. Finally, precise, incremental garbage collection for Javascript! I'm hoping this is the beginning of the end for conservative garbage collection and (ugh!) reference counting. The JIT sounds good as well but there will be stiff competition in this area from Firefox 3.1 with TracingMonkey, and SquirrelFish is nothing to sneeze at either.
Now that Javascript performance is on its way to being solved, and local storage and offline mode are close to becoming standard, the last bastion of non-Web applications is graphics. Browsers still don't provide a graphics API that could seriously challenge native apps for things like image and video editing, 3D graphics and games. VRML and SVG don't work as graphics APIs. Some people have forgotten, but we learned long ago that immediate mode is the only way to do graphics; scene graphs/retained mode are a dead end. We need OpenGL ES in the browser.
Looking even further ahead: if OpenCL was exposed to web applications as well, there's practically nothing that couldn't be done in a web app. At that point, Windows becomes irrelevant, and Microsoft's monopoly is finally broken.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}