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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."
I imagine the first question on everyone's mind will be, "Why do we need a new web browser?" To which I imagine the truthful answer is: "We don't. At least not for technical reasons."
I believe what Google is looking to accomplish is to trade on their brand name in an attempt to further dislodge Internet Explorer.
Remember when AOL purchased Netscape? AOL didn't care about the browser in the slightest. They wanted Netscape for the brand name. To the vast majority of users, Netscape was the Internet.
Google has since taken that place. Google is the Internet to many people. So much so that Google has felt compelled to to prevent the genericizing of their mark.
In this particular case, however, the strength of their mark works to Google's advantage. They have already convinced millions of users to install their desktop software. If they can further convince millions of users to install and use their browser, they can cause enough of a disruption to finally remove IE's leadership in the browser market. Especially given the solid work already done by FireFox, Opera, and Safari. With only another 10% marketshare loss on the whole, even the most stubborn websites will be forced to support third party browsers. And once they support third party browser, it will be very little time before the technological superiority of the alternative browsers causes them to add special features not available for Internet Explorer users.
It will be Netscape vs. Internet Explorer all over again. Except that instead of two giants fighting it out, it will be Microsoft against everyone else. And when everyone else happens to be giants in their own right, Microsoft's prospects will start looking rather grim.
In effect, this move is a blow aimed squarly at Redmond. Not for the purposes of truth, justice, and the freedom of all mankind; as I'm sure many will imagine. Rather, for the purpose of hitting back at Microsoft for their attempts to leverage their monopoly in promoting MSN Search over Google. The only difference is that Google Search is a good product and it is entrenched. Internet Explorer hasn't been a good product since Microsoft stopped developing it nearly 8 years ago (piss-poor upgrades pretending to be standards-compliant not withstanding), and its entrenchments are slowly falling to competition.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Google was more productive when they underpromised and overdelivered. That's what gave us GMail, Google Maps, and the search engine itself.
With Android, municipal wi-fi, and so much else, they seem to have taken a page out of Microsoft's playbook.
Found the comic link: http://blogoscoped.com/google-chrome/
Note: This post was written for the April Fools' Day, so there's no Google Browser. At least not yet.
Difference is, of course, that today is not April fools day
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yeah, but it's September fools day, right?
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
Going with Webkit is an interesting choice. It seems like there are a lot of minor browsers using it rather than Gecko these days. Even Gnome's Epiphany has switched, I do believe.
Go ahead and read the last line of the summary.
False alarm. Strap the oat bags back on the horses, fellas.
Oh crap, that's what happens when you get distracted before reaching the end of TFS.
You just got troll'd!
Please, at the very least RTFS.
I believe you're confused as to what "404 Not Found" means. It means the page you're looking for isn't there, not that the server is overloaded or can't handle the request. It's not slashdotted.
However, this is not Google's normal 404 page. They've definitely configured www.google.com/chrome differently than the rest of the site, so they're obviously planning to put something there.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
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?
We do have a lot of great choices out there as far as browsers are concerned, it will be interesting to see if Google's browser really brings anything new to the table. Opera and Safari (and many others) have really failed to gain market penetration. Firefox has really been the only browser to pose a significant threat to IE. Should be interesting to see what they come up with.
Create web design estimates for free.
I wonder how this will affect Google's relationship with the Mozilla foundation? IIRC, Google is one of Mozilla's primary sources of funding, as they pay for the rights to be the default search engine on Firefox.
'Every story, if continued long enough, ends in death.' --Ernest Hemingway
Can't stay on task long enough to read a Slashdot summary ? Better up your Ritalin dose.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Just when you thought Google wasn't going to get any cooler, we try desperately to prove you wrong.
Don't worry, it won't be out of Beta until IE 10.
Now with Omni Bar, the omniscient Awesome Bar
Just when you thought data mining couldn't get any closer to home
OK, in all seriousness I think it's nice to see another Webkit based browser around. I'm personally waiting to see the Epiphany team's Webkit based browser. Hopefully, Google's Chrome project will spur some innovations that the Firefox/Safari/Opera/IE competition has failed to supply. Maybe the JS engine will prove it's worth as well, speedups in this area are always nice.
So uh, what's special about "tabs above the address bar (not below)"? I happen prefer my tabs on the bottom, and Opera provides an option for that. Come to think of it, I believe the default in Opera is for the tab bar to be placed above the address bar. I'm certain Firefox's tab bar placement can be changed, as well (through plugins or not).
It seems like a very odd feature to point out...javascript VM, open source, and TABS ON TOP!! Huh?
What does this mean for Mozilla, which currently gets most of its financial support from Google? If Google has their own browser which competes against Firefox, will they be inclined to reduce their support of Firefox?
If not, it means Google will be paying for two competitors to Internet Explorer. I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft complains about unfair competition.
In any event, if Google's aim is to further drive people away from IE, they'll have to spend some cash on advertising. Their target is people who are already familiar with Google's brand name, but believe the blue "e" is "how you get to Google." Some of these people launch IE and type "www.google.com" into the address bar every time they want to search for something, because their home page is set to MSN and they are unaware that it can be changed (or that other sites can be bookmarked), let alone know how to do so.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
That's a clear sign something's broken at Google. Tabs belong on the left or right edge so that once you have a number of them you can still allocate reasonable space to their title bars. Tree Style Tab and Vertigo are your friends. I have 40+ tabs open in the window I'm writing this in, and I can navigate through all of them easily. I wouldn't be able to if my tab bar were on the top of the window.
Translation
"I own Microsoft stock options and I'm unhappy".
This is how IE came into existence. It was a hair pulling experience to support multiple browsers or you could write to only one that came with Windows and had over a %70 marketshare.
If all teh browsers followed standards we would not have this problem. After all any text editor today can read ascii text files. I guess html is a little different.
http://saveie6.com/
http://rapidshare.com/files/141852563/chrome.tar.bz2
DNA in your Linux: DNALinux
Google talks about multi-process threading and how a browser bug will only kill its tab - and that you'll never get rid of all the bugs.
One other thing you never seem to get rid of are all the Memory Leaks. And if you have multiple independent processes running now, does this mean that Google Chrome will have (memory leaks) * (# of tabs) = (much bigger memory leaks overall)?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
That's what Opera does, and it drives me nuts. It's like going back to MDI.
If that's not optional, it's not even worth bothering looking at.
I don't think Google has enough of my personal information, so this will be just wonderful.
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
For what it's worth, the 404 error page being served on http://www.google.com/chrome is not their standard one - their standard one is to search for the whole url from the looks of things?
would be an *online browser*. Like Google docs. Imagine just how great it would be not to need a browser to go online. History, cookies, bookmarks, all stored on Google servers. Plus it would be incredibly fast since the internet is already on Google servers!
Also that would be very convenient for Google, they could access our private information locally on their servers, no need to "call home". Hell they could even check with our e-bank statements to see how much money we can spend so they could offer really well-targeted ads.
That would be huge. All they need for me to sign up is to throw in some features involving blogs, mashups and Spacebook.
lucm, indeed.
Having a read of the section around multi-threading / multi-processes it looks like this is the Google OS.
In the same way that widgets on the desktop have become common place, google gear widgets would replace these...and eventually larger pieces of software.
Did anyone else notice the number of current or former Firefox developers name-checked in that comic? Ben Goodger was the Firefox project lead until recently. The most significant part of this news may be that Google is pulling people off Firefox development (assuming they were contributing to Firefox while working there) and getting them to write a new browser. Still, Firefox is working pretty well and their financial future is secure for the next few years - thanks to wads of cash from Google - so we need not be too worried.
Apart from that, my verdict is 'show us the code'. Announcements of future plans and vapourware are not really interesting, even when it's Google.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
I've always liked Webkit, but am not as big a fan of Safari since it doesn't have the extensibility and flexibility of Firefox - so I'm going to follow this project closely. There may be some side stories to keep an eye on:
- What will this do to Firefox? If Google Chrome is successful, I suspect it'll be at Firefox's expense rather than IE - at least in the near term.
- What will this mean for Google's add-ons for other browsers? They talk specifically about the "Gears" developers' dissatisfaction with the way current browsers work as a primary motivator for this project. So does this mean Google's tools on browsers other than Chrome are going to become unwanted step-children? That's could hurt the other browsers (if Chrome is popular), but it could also turn around and bite Google.
- What about the Mac (and Linux)? This is important to me, anyway. Google's Mac support is stellar in some areas and poor in others. Will Chrome's development on platforms other than Windows stay apace of its progress on Windows? Maybe the comic answers this, but I haven't managed to get all the way through it yet. I'm on page 10 and *still* there's no mention of any villian.
#DeleteChrome
I don't think so ;)
Actually, I think this will have a positive effect. It may cut into Firefox's market share, but it will also likely cut into IE's market share. Also, rumor has it will be based on WebKit, the same under-pinnings as Safari (which just passed Acid3). Both Firefox and WebKit are actually striving for WC3 compliance, so the net result should be pressure to support non-IE browsers.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
Well, I for one can't wait to be Rick-Roll-fork-bombed. But in all seriousness, giving each tab (each Javascript instance as well?) it's own process is a nice idea in theory, but has a bunch of problems in practice. Extra resources, longer start up time, slower synchronization primitives, having to use slow IPC and many other problems. Of course, they could be using the term "process" very liberally here (they mention having their own task manager), but they do talk about separate address spaces. A thread pool with some sort of separately maintained "heaps" for virtual processes that can be recycled seem like a better way to go.
Is this going to be a portable browser that can operate under Gnome, KDE, and other environments ... unlike Firefox that becomes crippled (for example, it cannot figure out many data formats) when Gnome isn't present/active?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
So instead of making a site disappear, will Slashdot make this site appear?
Based on Page 4, Google is designing the browser as if it were an operating system. This is something that I commented on previously in the discussion of Microsoft's approach to IE8. Going from shared memory to protected memory was a big step for multitasking on the desktop, and since web applications are more and more complex, the same move needs to be made with browser design.
If IE8 and "Google Chrome" are moving in this direction, what will we see from Safari and Firefox? Safari 4 betas give no indication of a fundamental re-architecting. Firefox 4 is still at least a year away, and so far no one in that community has been publicly talking about this kind of redesign. And Opera... who knows?
The Rise and Fall of Online Community
most of this looks good, but damn there's bad in there as well.
Tabs above the address bar... no. Been there with Opera and I hate it, it's going back to MDI. Autocomplete inline... no. Not because it "flickers", because it doesn't flicker in Safari, but because of all the times I've typed in a URL that happened to be a shorter version of some URL I had previously typed. And yes, I *do* want it to autocomplete URLs I've pasted in. I don't want to have a web app opening without the browser location bar... ever. That puts the web app in control, not me, and is a great tool for phishers. Yes, they have their central phisher database, but it's better to avoid the problem in the first place.
So how open is it? Will they be willing at allow these things to be made optional, accept patches to let people change the way Google Chrome works?
Am I the only one who thinks that Google is trying to replay the whole dot-com bubble by themselves? When is Google Pet Supplies coming out? Will Google buy all the commercials in the next Super Bowl?
Have you read my blog lately?
Android uses WebKit for the browser/html rendering.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Google Chrome? It is positively raining VIA GPU drivers this week!
mmm, I'm all for healthy competition, and that means this new browser will give IE something to think about, hopefully anyways, but now, we gotta see the quirks this browser will have when we do our webpages. *sigh*, more cross-browser detection to play with. Oh well.. :)
Ah! Look who shows up in the comic on Page 18--it's our old friend Ben Goodger from Netscape and Mozilla, former lead developer on Firefox.
The Rise and Fall of Online Community
Slashdot makes an appearance on Page 22 of the comic. I guess they know which side of the bread they're buttered on over at Google.
The Rise and Fall of Online Community
most be ironic!
Dennis Onstenk
Are you kidding?? Did we just Slashdot Google? If not then why does it read "Not Found Error 404" on http://www.google.com/chrome?
Less surprising perhaps, I keep getting the status code 301 for www.microsoft.com/steve-ballmers-chair
She made the willows dance
Maybe YOU don't like to search your email instead of sorting it, but I and a lot of others actually prefer that.
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.
I actually like the tabs being below the address bar. I think it is a matter of preference. A decent browser would allow people to move the pieces of the browser wherever they want them to be, including tabs on the side (which I'd rather have, on the right side).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
This has to be the 404 page with the most hit ever...
Cmon lets set a new guiness...
Overuse of the Pumping Lemma causes blindness
I imagine the first question on everyone's mind will be, "Why do we need a new web browser?" To which I imagine the truthful answer is: "We don't. At least not for technical reasons."
No, sorry, but there's a big honking huge reason :
Multiple process.
This is going to greatly improve stability of browsing.
Currently, all browsers run a 1 single process (well with some exception for some browser plugins in Firefox - mostly the opensource one - which use a thin plugins to call an external processus like gnash or mplayer).
If anything fucks up (and boy that happens often with Flash plugin in Linux) the whole browser is gone.
If there's a bug in the engine (automatic dictionary recognition was broken when switching between tabs from one textarea straight into another), the whole browser is down.
If there's a freeze (old-style virus scanning plugins in Firefox or on-the-fly scan in Windows) the whole browser is inusable.
All this could be averted if each page and each plugin was enforced to run in a separate process.
In worst case you would only lose the current page.
Flash would only crash its very own process, buggy pages will only crash alone without taking down the whole browser. Virus scan won't stop the user browsing in other tabs.
And as a side effect, this kind of organisation will better benefit from the current crop of 4x and 3x cores desktop CPUs.
I've been dreaming for a good multi-process browser for ages.
I'm just astonished that it comes in the form of a new project from google and not as a complete rewrite of the Firefox browser.
But maybe Firefox has slowly reached the point where it is past it's revolutionary golden period and is now simply polishing it's current model but isn't going to switch to something new (just like "Mozilla 1.x" did stagnate until FireFox/FireBird/Phoenix emerge)
Or maybe Chrome will be the slight stimulation that Mozilla needed to stop masturbate over their growing market share and return back to revolutionize the browsing experience.
PS:
According to the comic, Google Chrom won't use a simple address bar, but what they call an "omni-bar".
Cue in all whine boys who where complaining about Mozilla's switch to "awesome bar" in FireFox 3.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Have you read the comic? Google has some really cool ideas for Chrome, making it quite different from another browsers, so you won't get 'another firefox' but an entire new browser. I hope it won't end up like another google products which never go past beta.
right now I use safari, but since about 1.5 years ago the browser has also drifted toward bloat.
Check out the Safari 4 beta if you can (there is a beta for developers). It's got some issues - it is beta, but it is screamin' fast both rendering and JavaScript.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
Did the OP say McCloud? I don't remember if Scott is his first name but did the one and only Highlander quit decapitating people and start working for google? That is sad news.
Anything and Everything about the Net
I have MiniMo, the pocketpc version of Mozilla on both my pocketpc phone and Dell Axim.
The Minimo I have is called Chrome.
I would think Google could do better than steal someone elses codename.
--Toll_Free
Am I the only one who read that as "Eternal Beta"?
Slashdot - the place where you can look like a genius by restating the obvious
I bet this will result in a double standard, just like we're experiencing now with CSS. Some websites will exploit the full capabilities of the new V8 VM on Chrome and experience problems on other browsers.
You could argue that it's open source - other browsers can adopt the google implementation, but I see it as google bullying the webstandards. There's been research into the next-gen javascript and - although it didn't yield big results - they did make progress in identifying the hot spots.
Secondly, the way the new VM is implemented appears to require an inherently multi-threaded or multi-process browser, will it be that easy to adopt it into other browsers ?
I applaud the new initiative and hopefully this will boost new web-applications. On the downside, it looks like google is going along the same road as MS: developers are force-fed new standards and practices.
"Violence is the last refuge of the competent, and, generally, the first refuge of the incompetent" - Thing_1
On page 13, they have completed Hitler's dream. Germany seems to occupy Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Switzerland,most of Austria, Croatia, Slovenia and Hungary.
Weird because the rest of the chart seems pretty correct.
This must mean all of Google are Nazi's.
As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields.
If you think Google's www.google.com address just goes to one server that picks out different content by file name, you're in for a surprise. Try the http://www.google.com/chrome address and the http://www.google.com/chrome1 address with a tool that lets you look at the HTTP headers. Look at the "Server" header. Different server code. Google runs a high performance, massively load balanced, widely geographically distributed, HTTP front end that figures out what server to pass things to based on the URI part of the URL. They don't need to do separate hostnames (although they can still do that, too, such as http://maps.google.com/ and http://mail.google.com/).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I find Firefox a pig, especially on G4 Macs. So I'm glad for the competition. Anyway, the new browser war is about speed and compliance so oddly enough it will lead to fewer incompatibles, not more. Finally, read the comic - there are some useful technical motivations to the browser which I think are compelling: Sandboxing, process pre-page, plugins in separate process, javascript compiled to native machine-code, fast garbage collection, etc...
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
include a new JavaScript virtual machine
I wonder if Google makes a better VM than Sun, Sun will go after Google like they did MS back in the day.
Well since it uses Webkit, it will be one of the most standards compliant browsers in existence, for HTML and CSS anyway, and I'd assume that they're pretty good at Javascript compliance as well
Buh-bye, windows!
That'll work in enoiugh applications for enough people a whole generation of hardware and software will need to be recycled.
Need Mercedes parts ?
It's tabbed browsing that's been causing memory leak all this time. That's it, I'm going back to IE6 until Chrome comes out.
I know you are being snarky, but I'll respond anyway. Historically, browsers use a single process. Over time, do to memory fragmentation and out-right leaks, that process uses more and more memory, more more more inefficiently. Closing a tab or window may release memory back to the process, but not to the system. By splitting the browser into a process per tab/window, when that tab is closed the memory really is returned to the OS rather than to the process's ever more fragmented pool. It's a good thing.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
They removed folders... To be replaced by labels, which can do everything folders can and more, and since email clients tend to treat them the same it's the EXACT same for client users, and the same except for the word "Label" instead of "Folder" on the web UI.
Of course you can't have the same email in multiple folders, but you can have the same email in multiple labels
I agree that "don't sort it, search it" can be annoying, but it's obvious that they won't remove folders for bookmarks or randomly order tabs.
Less surprising perhaps, I keep getting the status code 301 for www.microsoft.com/steve-ballmers-chair
"ERROR 404: Page not available."
There is no chair.
I agree, mail clients see GMail labels as folders. But mail clients cannot be used efficiently with GMail because IMAP/POP access is, at best, spotty. I can tell you that, my employer is using Google Partners for email and groupware, and using Thunderbird or any other client is just not possible, too many connections problems. It's ok if you check your email once every hour, but as a sysadmin I receive a lot of emails and IMAP/POP problems suck. (That's not even talking about Google infrastructure problems, delayed emails or mailboxes unavailable for hours at a time).
Maybe I was a bit ranting. Basically all I would need is a simple feature: the number of new mails for every label. Maybe there is a plugin somewhere to do it, I did not find it yet.
lucm, indeed.
Google is making sure that embrace extend extinguish does not happen. Silverlight is such a threat. Of course, only Bozos will install it, even with the OSS promises. This browser is really a great advance in comparison to Firefox and all others. It seems that, beyond sandboxing, they'll have blazing fast JS, and Gears will be built-in from the start.
Here's what Steve Ballmer has to say about Microsoft Silverlight.
Bozos.
That comic is really great. It deals with every question someone interested in the field would have at Google once he hears of this.
"Why a new Brower project?" "Why Webkit?" "Why yet another JavaScript VM?" (OMG, not *again* is what I thought first), etc.
Very informative indeed.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
If one single advertisement is hidden anywhere on the browser, then we all know that a very large population of tech-conscious users will not make the switch.
Opera has always had tabs above the address bar (so, really, Google is doing nothing new in this regard).
"I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart" (Linus van Pelt)
Oooh...Tabs _above_ the address bar. Now that's true innovation.
where my tabs ought to go? Why can't I pick the location, or not display them at all?
Come on, if you're going to make a browser, leap frog the competition. Don't do these incremental updates; we have IE8 for that. (Yes, I mock, because they are worthy.)
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
IIRC, WebKit is licensed under the LGPL, which includes a strong copyleft clause. I am no license guru, but i think it means that Google Chrome will have to use a pretty strong copyleft too. It could have interesting consequences, at least on the reception by the FSF and the FOSS community. When the license is known, it will also deserve a comparison with Mozilla's triple license policy.
Wow, that is what passes for flamebait now?
There are several answers for that question in the comic. Most of them can't be implemented in Firefox (in fact, any of the other browsers afaik) without a major rewrite, and you could want some of the features they are introducing there.
This isnt about "just another open source browser", it goes to the core of several problems that browsers have with today's web requirements.
I wonder if by default they will ask you what you want your search engine to be, or if it will just be Google...because if I remember correctly Google threw a big stink about Microsoft making Internet Explorer's default search engine Live.com without asking (though Firefox does it). I wouldn't want them to look like a bunch of hypocrites.
Why was I modded troll? Jeez, just because its not April 1st doesn't mean its forbidden to be funny...
One doesn't interact with a web page, nor even entering most 'commands' (links), at the bottom of the window.
The standard browser configuration is excellent for showing the user the context of what's on-screen: User provides address and direction at the top, and looks for status at the bottom. Each of those two zones draws a border showing where the page cannot render, meaning the user can easily separate the web page from the rest of the desktop. Security-related information about pages and links can be seen there while generally not having to worry that its being faked.
In recent years browsers like Firefox have strengthened this layout; its been quite a while since I've seen a pop-up window not having a status bar and address bar. The benefit it that I know where the web page is really supposed to be coming from, and hovering over links allows me to see them at the bottom before clicking.
A lot of the ideas Google have listed in the cartoon make a lot of sense. I'm looking forward to this.
Pro Coffee Drinker
On page 24, Glen Murphy says:
Translation:
Javascript doesn't allow arbitrary memory access, so there isn't any concept of an address space to share or separate.
You don't seem to understand how the concept of shared memory applies to interpreted languages. The "shared memory address space" in this instance is the aggregated discontinuous address space formed from all non-local variables and data areas in the program.
You don't need native hardware-level shared memory exposed in a system to suffer all of the same concurrency problems under multiprogramming and multiprocessing. In fact, there are a few more problems to add to the list when you're using a software VM, because so few of the VM primitives are naturally atomic.
The parent's point (that part of it) was accurate.
We very much needed a *technically* better browser for a multicore world in which individual pages are not to be trusted and must be sandboxed with MMU-guaranteed isolation, which means separate O/S processes. It looks like Chrome might be the first major browser based on such a proper design.
Not Found http://code.google.com/p/gchrome/
Forbidden http://code.google.com/p/chrome/
This HAS to mean something ;)
Multiprocessing, or rather the lack thereof, is one of the biggest weaknesses of FF. To put it differently: FF still sucks incredibly in that respect. One can still end up with all browser windows becoming unresponsive because of some action in one tab. Or all browser windows and tabs crashing because of one problematic plugin.
I am really looking forward to this - if only to see the FF developers struggle and invest some of the Google money into getting this aspect of their browser improved finally.
Have a look at this graph. The marketshare of Mozilla Firefox is steadily increasing.
I doubt Google are going to try and compete with Firefox. Chrome will rather be aimed at Internet Explorer users. Expect to see 'Unhappy with your web browser? Try Google Chrome!' ads whenever you are on Google.com with IE soon.
"Slashdot - the one place on the internet where guys brag about how small it is." - that IT girl
I don't think this is ultimately intended to go up against IE or Firefox - I think they're going head to head with Windows itself. Google Gears, processes ...
They may call it a browser now, but not for long. Think about it!
I bet users will be able to use the "omnibox" to search whitin omnibox-enabled sites. They'll integrate Google search with every site. They will give you an API so you can code for it and get nice reports of what your visitors search for (read: little rings of power). And off course, every search will pass through their "omni" engine.
Precious!
That would hold if Firefox and the other non-IE browsers required divergent coding. And it's true that they have slight differences and bugs, but a site targeted at standards will run fine in Safari, Firefox, Opera, and Chrome.
The marketshare you need to look at is Internet Explorer vs. "standards compliant" browsers, not Firefox vs. IE.
Google being a web services company that makes web apps, do we still need FF or IE to navigate to Chrome so we can then surf the net with it?
I hope this comment is well received... I could have moderated instead!
Persecutors will be violated!
Am I alone in thinking that the name of the VM doesn't exactly send the signal that it will be the fastest one around?
Safari, FireFox, and Opera (in that order) have been showing marked improvements in Javascript performance. To the point where Javascript performance is a major point of competition.
I was playing with haXe which is a programming language that targets both Flash and Javascript back ends. You can (within some constraints) compile the same program to both targets, so that's what I did yesterday:
Use keys 1-9 to change demos, and click with the mouse to fire blocks.
I found that Adobe's Flash plugin beat everything, Safari+Javascript was pretty slow, and Firefox+Javascript was in the middle (but still pretty slow compared to Flash). Gnash doesn't run this demo at all, although it can run other haXe code.
Rich.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
Javascript can be enormously faster: compare ActionScript 2.0 and 3.0 (in Adobe's Flash).
This is a competitor in the AIR / silverlight / JavaFX space.
If Google can basically get these things right: local persistence, speed and animation tools (or improve them quickly), they will kick everyone's ass to hell and back. Unfortunately, Google hasn't shown (cultural) aptitude for animation.
And while we at it, give me an option to disable tabs permanently. I hate them with a passion.
Honestly, that's what the window manager is there for.
Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
That name for the new JS engine is just nasty and politically incorrect.
Can you please rename it to Garden Patch, or at least to I4?
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Aren't the V8 people also behind the Dalvik Java VM, which is used in Android?
If Google owns their own browser and their sights are the most visited on the internet I'm guessing they will be optimized to work together. So Google will work faster on Google browser like MS Office on MS windows, Since more people surf to and through Google their browser will be popular. And why not.
Why even have the address bar? Every browser out there has Control+L grab an address input, and you know that they're going to throw a "Google Search" box in the browser- probably Google Desktop as well.
Because a monoculture sucks even if it's an open-source monoculture.
You've never taken your craft seriously! Have you?
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
Here I was thinking they were building it on top of Firefox, considering Mozilla calls their XUL user interface "chrome", until I saw the part about WebKit.
All their moves are remarkably coherent for the amount of activty/discussion they provoke. I think some of the people around google (investors) are a little wonky, but the major moves seem to be consistantly towards a handful of goals:
-Divorce the application market from the platform. To the extent of making their applications more desirable (with ad placement). Thus preventing users from offline software. I worry about this goal as it also is encouraging software subscription models.. The alleged chrome aims to bring these 'gadgets' to browsers to allow richer content than the current standards provide. Without the process of trying to ratify standards, just putting it out there and saying 'standardized or not, here it is under a license that lets other browsers copy it'. Firefox will probaably embrace it, though MS will push silverlight for all its worth.
-Get everyone looking at ads they charge for, and correlating whatever data they can to make it targeted (search related, location related in maps). Android is a recent example, a move essentially to get people looking at the internet more, and undoubtedly to provide ad-revenure-influenced POI in their GPS capabilities.
-Help the general state of internet-based commerce. I don't know much about google checkout, but at least google is making sure they have a controlling stake in the game. In part, they directly profit, but more importantly, they have the capacity encourage secure online payment strategies to more arbitrary vendors. Google Chrome (if real) would play into this based on the comic. A lot of emphasis on sandbox and isolation. Hopefully, meaningfully more secure, but at the least instilling consumer confidence in online commerce in the face of media discussion of online commerce and identity theft.
-Trying not to look like a big, scary company as they do this. They realize their product is the attention of the users. They must keep the users from being mad, which means free services of quality. The more they succeed, the more data they inherently have access to, and the more privacy concerns they face. For the time being, they haven't been too overt in doing evil, as they know how tenuous their position is. Google came from nowhere, and is currently a funnel for revnue and investing. Google always must know the next anybody is waiting for their chance to usurp when the masses declare google either stagnant or evil.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
here is a real screenshot: http://xyber.freeblog.hu/files/gchrome.jpg
Here is a screenshot: http://xyber.freeblog.hu/files/gchrome.jpg
its highly relevant, for any browser's success is also dependent on its acceptance by developers.
each additional browser is annoying us web developers profoundly. it requires you develop the application/site by testing in not only different browsers, but also their different versions.
currently we have firefox 2, 3, ie 6,7 to test for with 8 pending. not even talking about konqueror or safari. now enter google's browser and its 1-2 versions coming up in 1-1.5 years.
you do the math.
and NO - you cant produce 'standards compliant' code and expect to sit pretty. because regardless of their promises, every browser comes up failing at some point in regard to standards.
Read radical news here
at least, according to the Official Google Blog. The beta will be released in 100 countries (i suppose that that means 100 languages, counting different things like English-US and English-UK), and, unfortunately, initially only for Windows (Mac/Linux version will be released later).
Marketing = Propaganda.
Both copies of the comic (on Google Blogoscoped and on Google Books) appear to be getting very heavy traffic.
You can find a torrent here.
Here's the entire book, hosted by Google: http://books.google.com/books?id=8UsqHohwwVYC&printsec=frontcover
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Opera_9.5.png
Once again, Opera leads the way.
I would never use a browser having its tabs under the address bar: when using the pointing device you should travel more screen real estate to switch tabs, and this is a Bad Thing.
Don't be complex! Google's plan for world domination seems pretty obvious. By persistently striving to create products with simple user interfaces, they reduce the hazards of patent law suits while at the same time fostering a computing environment where the user simply doesn't care about the product as a product (Brand X vs. Brand Z). It's a different strategy from Steve Jobs's iThings (which probably don't strive for world domination) where ease of use is sometimes subordinated to the idea of sci-fi elegance (the Star Trekkish iPhone, for example, lacks the tactile feedback of conventional cellphones).
For Google simplicity is sexy. A product is elegant the more it resembles the Google start page. Here then is a software battlefield where Microsoft's billions in development funds are less likely to make a difference than in the race for the coolest 3D, surround sound, biofeedback, jack-it-in, teledildonic Operating System.
The Mac windowing paradigm gives each "thing" its own Web page, even within apps. If you have two files open in Photoshop, each is its own window on the desktop. Macs have this great thing called Expose that makes it dead simple to manage all your open windows and switch between them. Tabbed browsing breaks all of this. I always turn off tabbed browsing in Firefox on my Mac. I'm so used to using Expose, and if I have more than one tab open within a Firefox window that content is effectively hidden from my normal workflow.
To address the topic of this discussion--I certainly hope the Mac version of Google Chrome has an option to put each "tab" in its own OS-level window.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Firefox has been kicking butt against IE for some time now. It is also ubiquitous across all platforms. So exactly how is "Chrome" an attack on IE that is different from or better than Firefox? Of course any of us who have peaked in the innards of Firefox or Mozilla at all have long seen "chrome". So it is a very odd choice of name. And Chrome is not even available for OS X or for Linux? Why on earth would a spend time learning a one OS way to access fundamentally OS agnostic material?
I think Google is losing it big time. With all that data and brilliance in its analysis is this the best they can come up with? How about a search engine that gives me room for feedback and learns to tune results according to my actual interests and feedback? That would be cool and a very important piece of software that most of us would rave about.
But no. Instead they do a very questionable "me too" play. This is lame. It may even be more or less evil.
An ad blocker. That's kind of a deal breaker for me.
Great stuff right up to the point where they make web apps look like local apps. Unless I read TFA wrong you cannot tell if you're being phished unless you completely trust their database of zero day phishing sites.
So even if their sandbox is impenetrable, they're helping phishers coerce dummies into entering their identity info.
More significantly, the page does exist, but there's an access restriction or mod_rewrite style rule to 404 the page.
Compare:
http://www.google.com/chrome
http://www.google.com/thisdontexist
So hopefully we don't have to wait long for the other shoe to drop :-)
**AA: a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes
Why would you link to some mirror hosted by some random blog instead of using the one hosted by Google itself?
This time, everyone (except for Microsoft) is trying to support web standards.
Rather than worrying about pages not working the same on all browsers, this is likely to push people to code as close to the standards as possible.
It's a good thing.
AdBlock is the first one that comes to mind. I wonder if an ad-supported corporation will tolerate an ad-blocking plugin for their browser...
I think we'll find out soon.
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
Dear Google, please consider including sound control in your browser. My computer, if awake, virtually always plays music or video, so I really hate websites with unrequested audio content. I would love a setting that fully mutes the browser, plus an optional toolbar button. I promise to be a grateful user.
I'm surprised at comments such as: "do we really need another browser". If you bother to read through that comic, there are some impressive features. I have done enterprise dev and maintained enterprise dev where a bloody site will take so damn long to do something that it would just time out. Features like the memory usage stamp for a website would be able to let you know possibly per page you click what you need to work on. The favorites page on a New Tab is also pretty cool. Also isolating your plugin processes such that if your flash component in a website causes a crash you don't have to reboot the entire PC (especially on a M$ crap box where Ctrl + Alt + delete != sudo kill -9 processId). Follow through the comic strip, as geeks you'll be pleasantly surprised at what Google is about to bring to the table. RTFM (the comic strip in this case).
Interesting that their proposed UI is similar to Opera's. Opera already places the address bar below the tabs, where it does make more sense -- the address is part of the page, and it brings things like the back and refresh buttons closer to the content, so they can be accessed quicker.
Google is also including Speed Dial, the ability to search your history through the address bar, and the launching of address bar-less seperate windows, all of which are standard Opera features. (Though you can easily force windows to always open with the full UI, or to only open as new tabs, not new windows.)
For the engine, they seem to be borrowing the best bits of webkit and Gecko and rolling their own javascript engine and adding in Google Gears.
So the total will be something quite similar to the Opera UI running on the best open source code. This could be the best of all worlds.
<div style="preemptive-sarcasm">
Aha, yet another feature shamelessly stolen from Opera!
</div>
The most interesting part of it is the name - consider what is usually called "chrome" in UI development. So they're pretty open about what they're making - just "chrome" for all the Web-based Google projects.
The comic pages in the /. link are partially slashdotted...
Google has posted an official (fast) link for it:
http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome
why all the fuss with tabbased browsing, I personally don't like the whole tabbased browsing.. and having the urlbar under the tabs, is IMHO just as dumb as the urlbar above the menu's in IE7.. Don't get me wrong, the whole story seems to be very interesting, but I think it's just a populair/simple means to get to a lot of people who really think this is any different from other (new) browsers... But we'll see when it actually is running on a lot of machines...
So, this is Safari with Google Gears and their logo stuck on the front? I buy the idea that they want to scatter the browser market, but personally, it would take much more for me to switch.
Claiming to be pedantic on Slashdot is asking for trouble
http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/
does it run on Linux?
I mean it, seriously. The comic presentation is cool, but it keeps talking about Windows and Vista. I'm not hearing anything about other O/S.
It's a bit bit rich to say - oh yeah, we're big into OSS - that's why we chose the most closed O/S to try out on.
Ah... but Windows has a bigger base, you say. You're Beta testing it - what the hell do you want a big base for.
<sulking/>
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
This is a cultural thing. Here in Australia 'to chrome' and 'chroming' refers to the practice of inhaling common volatile substances such as aerosol paints and petrol sniffing, leading to a solvent-induced high. This sad, unfortunate and highly dangerous practice is often done by the young members of the indigenous population, because of its availability and cheap means of a 'hit'. It can cause permanent brain damage or death.
Why, did you still have any faith in the moderation system? ;-)
You just got troll'd!
"this" in the code is "window" by the way. Just so you know.
That bit of code is years old now, but I know it works in Firefox (> 1.5), Explorer (> 6, seen it work on 5 and 5.5), Konqueror (at least 3.4 and up), Opera (> 7) and Safari.
I use it in a function that calls itself every second to scale the elements to the current size of the viewport. Not the most elegant bit of code, but it has worked flawlessly until now.
Free beer is never free as in speech. Free speech is always free as in beer.
you could start using IE8 on Windows!
Sorry but I happen not to have Windows and thus IE8 is completely useless for me (and for all /.ers using Linux).
Most of my friends won't have any use for it either (I seriously doubt that Microsoft will try to post it for Mac OS X).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Buried in those screen shots is a view of the Google Task Manager, showing how much memory and CPU usage each site is using.
I thought a Google browser could be pretty compelling; nice integration with google apps, no doubt, adherence to standards, hopefully a quick response on fixing compatibility issues as they are found.
But that Task Manager alone is likely to sell me. As much as I love Firefox 3, it's performance turns into a complete dog at times. (Not so much memory-wise, but CPU-wise.) With all pages supposedly idle, my CPU usage often goes up and stays there (not the 100% as per one common bug out there, but 20% or so, enough to be annoying).
I can close all tabs, and the CPU usage still stays there, until I restart.
If Google's Task Manager truly shows the source of any such slowdown (or doesn't posses the slowdown to start with), that's a browser-changing feature in my book. (And, generally knowing how much of CPU/mem pig each site can be, is very useful info as well.)
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
How many other people, on Page 8, truly expected one more text bubble, "Flash, I'm looking at *you*..."
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Does that mean that their relationship with Mozilla will be ending?
2. Does it run on Linux?
3. Does it support Plugins?
4. Does it phone home and notify Google of important statistics, like what web pages I view, what ads I click, what products I buy, etc.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
I believe you're confused as to what "404 Not Found" means. It means the page you're looking for isn't there, not that the server is overloaded or can't handle the request. It's not slashdotted.
However, this is not Google's normal 404 page. They've definitely configured www.google.com/chrome differently than the rest of the site, so they're obviously planning to put something there.
True, and, FWIW, for an example of what a "normal" 404, google.com domain web page looks like compare the two following links:
Normal: http://www.google.com/chromed
and the Chome page: http://www.google.com/chrome
As you can see, the Chrome page is quite minimalistic. As an aside, I did check the source code in hopes of finding some kind of hint but no such luck, yet.
I 'm wondering if google are secretly developing an O/S as well. I wont be surprised if they announce something sooner than expected.
Looked on wikipedia. Seems they are munging the addressbar so that it will perform google ( or other search engine ) searches if you don't type in a url. Remember, google makes it's money by selling ads based on your search terms, and those ads will still be on the search results page. They don't give a damn if you actually visit their front page.
I like the idea since it means one less 'bar' taking up real estate at the top of my screen.
Also, I always turn tabbed browsing off since the tabs take up screen real estate and don't provide any use beyond what my window manager does. However making the tabs seperate processes is such a good idea that it may make me put up with them in order to have that. It would be better imo, if there were no tabs, in the browser window, ( in other words I can use the tab feature provided by the window manager at the bottom of the screen ) and everything that would be a tab, opens it's own browser window ( again in it's own process ).
Tabs suck. All widely used window managers ( including windows ) provide tabs already which are shared by all programs. Browsers need to let the window manager ( and os ) do what they do since the user would not have installed their window manager if they did not want to use it.
Multiple windows in a bigger window suck. This is because you have to put all the widgets and crap to deal with there being multiple windows within a window in the window shared by the windows contained in it. Keep this shit up and you end up working on a postage stamp sized work area in the middle of the screen.
The idea of having popups scoped to their containing tab sounds appealing. It would be nice to be able to shut down the mother tab/window of all the crap without shutting the whole browser down and all the open windows it may have.
But I don't like the idea of having all my popups in a window because windows containing other windows are stupid. What is needed is a window manager with security like that. The browser ( or other app ) would request that the window manager open a parentless window. As popups are opened, they would be opened as children of that parent window. There would only be one tab at the bottom of the screen ( the equiv of the start menu ) when you click it, all it's children would pop up. If any of those children had children then you should see an arrow to let you select them from the top level tab.
If you open another browser it should be a parentless window with it's own tab. If you open a spreadsheet it should be parentless too. Maybe menu items that are shared between open windows could be added via a shared mechanism to the window manager's tabs. Maybe a special 'menu' selection.
Alt-tab or equivalent functionality is extremely useful as well and should be preserved. Currently all applications windows are connected in an alt-tab ring structure, alt-tab being used to cycle between them.
With lotssa windows there can get to be too many for a ring to work well. Multiple desktops can mitigate this to some extent if each desktop has it's own ring.
Window managers need to be built with security in mind and they must be generically useful so as to prevent applications from thinking they have to create their own windows with their own window managers inside them.
The nice thing about a ring is that it is built automatically. But it can get unwieldy when the ring contains too many items. Rings should be like folders to keep the size of them down. The current level ring would be cycled though using alt-tab, but once the tab navigation interface window appears, other keys could be used to 'cd' into lower level tabs, or cd into upper level tabs, alt-tab being used to cycle through the 'directories' of tabs. Just pressing alt-tab should still take you to the previous window, that's so damn useful it's like 'cd -' some special alt-tab combo should also be equivalent to cd without parameters taking you home.
This brings back the multiple desktop thing. It
...
How about this scenario: ...
1. Google rolls out browser, people start using it
2. Google rolls out web apps, that only run their browser. People love the apps.
3. Everyone gets addicted to Google's browser.
4.
5. PROFIT!
And step 4 would be: once you're forced to run their browser, they'll start "upgrading" it with all sort of features, that monitors your browsing, push more ads, searches your local files. All in the best interest of the customer, of course.
Is the address "www.google.com/chrome" correct? The reason I ask is that I'm seeing this on a google search for "google chrome" right now:
Google Chrome - Download a new browser
Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier.
gears.google.com/chrome/?hl=en - 7k - 17 hours ago - Cached - Similar pages
Clicking on the link redirects back to google's main page, and the cached copy seems to have been purged, but they're certainly up to something with that address.
For those who are interested... Google is streaming a live feed of their Chrome beta release conference here: http://google.client.shareholder.com/Visitors/event/build2/MediaPresentation.cfm?MediaID=33101&Player=2# Also a tech reporter named Rafe (forget which site he came from) is live-blogging from the conference and you can see what he's typing or ask him to ask a question on the chat applet here; http://www.coveritlive.com/index.php?option=com_altcaster&task=siteviewaltcast&altcast_code=d9687919a4 So far they say they're releasing it at 12 noon Pacific time. From what I understand it should be available from http://google.com/chrome -- they also said they'd post a link on the googleblog ( http://googleblog.blogspot.com/ )
But I believe their main intent is the same as Netscape's was some years ago: to make Windows unnecessary.
See, at first the browser will only run on Windows, sure. If the project doesn't take off, it may only ever run on windows. But just imagine if it does take off: You've got all your webapps (most of which are provided for you by Google) running in the cloud. Your browser is now just a small layer of chrome that allows you to be productive with your webapps.
It's possible/likely that Gears will provide you with cacheing of your current app state should you temporarily lose your Internet connection so that makes things more robust/stable too.
And so, before you know it, you spend all your time in just the web browser, storing all your files online. You look at your computer with its flawed (because all OSes/every single program has flaws) MS Windows, and you ask yourself, "does it really matter what OS I run anymore?"
If Google has its way, I believe the answer to that question will be: "No."
I leave it to each individual to decide for themselves whether or not a Google dominated Internet is a Good or an Evil. All I know for sure is that if I had to choose between Dark Overlords, I'd choose Google over Microsoft in an attosecond.
I welcome our New Google Overlords!
--
Furry cows moo and decompress.
Furry cows moo and decompress.
"We are so, so happy with Google Chrome," mumbled Mozilla CEO John Lilly through gritted teeth.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Is so far, I like it!
"I imagine the first question on everyone's mind will be, "Why do we need a new web browser?" "
My first question is: Why do they prevent us from downloading the browser, but instead force another program on us - the google updater, which installs a service on your machine (even if you click cancel)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Mac has no concept of tabs in its window manager. Also, your chief point about multi-level tabbing exists to some point already. Alt-tab (or Cmd-tab) between applications, and Control-tab between windows of an app. If there's ever an OS with a deeper "tree-like" window manager, you'll find me far far away from it. Windows are not Files, and managing them as if they are just breaks the GUI paradigm.
Just another "DOJ fascist authoritarian totalitarian bootlicker" -- Zeio
Well I downloaded it, and I have to say it's fast and simple... pretty much all they said it would be... I like it, might have to "Sidegrade" from FF3.01 to this...
Anyways, I suggest giving it a go if you're running Windows... I found it quite slick.
The tabs at top and omni bar seem really intuitive, ripping tabs off to make new windows works smoothly, you can crash a plugin and not bring down the page...
Now I just need one thing to switch me from FF3... Chrome, Adblock Edition . LOL
http://tapthehive.com/discuss/This_Post_Not_Made_In_Chrome_Google_s_EULA_Sucks
By posting anything (via Chrome) to your blog(s), any forum, video site, myspace, itunes, or any other site that might happen to be supporting you, Google can use your work without paying you a dime. They can go and edit it all they want. Even further, you're claiming that you have the power to grant these rights. So if you work for Wired, TechCrunch, Arstechnica, any of the other big web publishers, or a university where you're posting a research paper, you CANNOT agree to the Chrome ToS because you most likely don't have the right to give a license to your IP that you produce for your company/university.
I've got IE7, FF 3.01 O 9.52 and Chrome side by side on a Vista machine with 4gb of memory.
On startup time alone, Chrome kicks ass.
On load of personalized google homepage, Chrome kicks more ass.
On load of gmail, Chrome kick balls by putting its foot through the ass.
Loads of various pages, with Chrome first giving the others a possible cache advantage - its not even effing close.
WTF, do you download the whole internet when you get Chrome, because it certainly FEELS like the whole internet is directly on your disk drive!
I've been programming and using computers for 25 years and I have never, ever been as blown away as I am now. It just holy mutha fast!
but Gmail runs better in Chrome than Outlook does in Windows!
? syntax error
Page 26 makes a big deal about processes not having hard drive access. Yet, in the diagram on page 38, Google Gears get access to "write files to your hard drive or read files from sensitive areas like your documents or desktop."
with firefox(and maybe Chrome?) you can give your bookmarks tags like this so that a few characters in the address bar always go to the specified site.
I used to open a handful of tabs with 2-3 letter acronyms and a ctrl+t in between.
[20:36] wwwdot/.dotorg
When more browsers start to appear, it is only inevitable that web developers (like myself) face greater nightmares. It takes X hours to design and develop a nice website, but it'll another 2X hours to get it to work and display uniformly across 29 browsers.
Trust me, I can't help but to hold my breath each time a new browser is born, typing my very own url into the address bar and hitting ENTER. Pray that everything looks (and works) fine.
Forgive the standards compliance issues amongst the different browsers today, it's ok for us to develop and test vigorously on 3 or 4 major browsers+versions, but imagine the entire browser market divided into 10 browsers of almost equal share. This only means more sleepless nights for us designers. What do you think?
Went to the URL for chrome, saw the "browser for windows" warning. End of interest.
They also claim that their object pointers allow fast GC due to being in known places rather than requiring a search for pointers. That sounds as if the pointers to an onject are kept in a linked list, with the head in the object metadata. But if the garbage collect leaks memory, it is faster but no clearly better than other implementations. And using a process rather than a thread simply moves the GC from the Java environment to the kernel, which doesn't mean it will always be done better, just done elsewhere.
Clearly having each sandbox in a separate process buys some increased security, as does the file access model. And the idea of a private tab which records no history after close certainly has uses, although I would want to check very carefully that the information really isn't saved or sent anywhere.
Tabs at the side would take up even more space than tabs at the top or bottom.
But the space they're taking up is less useful. Increasingly people these days have wide-aspect displays...
And let's not forget that even the "old" aspect ratio displays still had more horizontal pixels than vertical. So even at 640x480, vertical space (top and bottom edges) is at a premium over horizontal space (left and right edges). I've always put my FVMW buttons module along the left size of the screen for that very reason.
With Firefox on my 20" 16:9 display, if I were to resize the window to take up the entire screen, I'd loose out. Most web pages are crafted with a 800x600 resolution in mind, and leave blank vertical strips along the left/right edges if the browser canvas is larger. (Sure, that is bad web design, but if you think that's a viable objection, perhaps you haven't seen the Internet before.) Even pages which resize (like Slashdot) tend to make the lines of text so wide as to make them harder to read. (Text is easier to read in narrower columns; there's a reason newspapers lay things out the way they do.)
But thanks to Tree Style Tabs, I have the option of putting all my tabs in a box on the left. It also puts the tabs in a hierarchy, with collapsible sub-trees, which fits my browsing and thinking habits perfectly. I middle-click (new tab) for practically everything. I can drag-and-drop to restructure. This lets me structure and compartmentalize my thinking. I frequently find I have 50+ tabs open, with several collapsed, reflecting what I'm working on and what I've backgrounded.
Long titles are rarely a problem (I've got 25+ characters visible in my tabs), and tooltips work for the few times I need more.
I find myself wishing for a window/desktop manager that could organize windows this way. It's like the power of virtual desktops on steroids. There's an arbitrary number of groupings and levels of groupings, while virtual desktops are typically limited (in practical terms) to one or two levels, and two to six groupings at each level.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Windows are the most natural thing a user of a gui can identify with the concept of a process. Closing a window should be like 'killing that process'.
Most of the processes users start are not windowless daemons. Except for those, the window manager IS and should be the user's task manager of choice. Window managers should provide a way to register your window as a child of some other window so that when that window gets a close event, your window gets a special close message. There needs to be a way for the user by answering ONE dialog message to make it a close-goddammit message that the app should interpret to mean close, and don't do anymore prompting.
I identified multiple desktops with multiple $HOMEs in my earlier post but maybe they would be more like multiple $PWDs Maybe even windowless daemons would be accessible by cd..ing out fromthe top level... Then there would be no need for a seperate task manager at all.... Windowless daemons could be provided with a window that provides some status info a close box, and maybe the option to send them some signals.
As far as macos, I have to back down from all widely used window managers have tabs. I have not used a mac since os 8 days. However, maybe MacOSx should have something like that too.
...
and nobody calls them on it.
OK, so maybe the guy/team doing the cutesy web comic are just too young or ignorant of things that occurred before their time, but the statement:
"People are watching and uploading videos, chatting with each other, playing web-based games⦠All these things didnâ(TM)t exist when the first browsers were created."
is either pure BS or just plain ignorance.
It's sort of obvious that they don't know anything about Usenet and the (in)famous alt.binary.* groups where pictures, music, programs, etc. were uploaded years before there were web browsers.
There were also several ways to chat via the Internet that existed prior to web browsers (Usenet groups, bulletin boards, services like AOL, GEnieNet, CompuServe, etc.).
It's sort of overstating the obvious that you couldn't play web-based games before there were web browsers (duh), but to imply that people weren't playing games over the internet before web browsers either indicates complete ignorance by confusing the Internet with the Web (which seems to be a common trend these days) or just plain, outright dishonesty.
Maybe Google needs to have its employees learn how to do the basic research associated with due diligence before it allows its employees to embarrass it with this sort of outright fabrication. But then again, it's all about the spin.......
As pointed out in this New benchmark Chrome doesn't perform so well when using an independent benchmark. One of the most popular and commonly used test suite is SunSpider. It is worth noting that this is developed by the WebKit team (WebKit being the rendering engine in Safari and now, Google Chrome). So the benchmark being used was created by the developers of the JS engine. So it is hardly surprising that they do well in their own benchmark.
(You'd almost think George Bush moderates this place these days! What is it with people and their disgust of different opinions - stop abusing your moderation powers you damn nazis!)
"and put the tabs above the address bar (not below), "
Why the hell that? It's a totally stupid idea - i some times have 30 or more tabs opened, the tab bar grows downward, if there was supposed to be an address bar below that it would be moving all over the screen as i open and close tabs - unless of course they have just a single tab line where people have to scroll left and right, which is user hostile in the extreme.
They are just forcing some different idea on people for the sake of being different (much like Microsoft), its like that damn GMail where they refuse to give us folders - the Firefox people got it right in Firefox3 where they added tags to bookmarks, but still allow you to use folders for them - both are needed because its two different kind of conceptional data manipulation metaphors.
Google you might have been a friend once, but the day you made it impossible to get in contact with humans at your site about any of your offers is the day you crossed over.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I find this a smart move from Google. Imagine what the default homepage is when you launch Firefox (unless you customized it). Even with other browsers, most often people turn to Google to search anything on the web. Google did a smart thing by including search in the address bar. So no more going to Google home page and then somewhere. I also like the idea of each tab running individually as separate process. minimum clutter, large viewing area.
... I am sure there will be more to add to the list to improve this browser. (as long as it lives up to my expectation of being simple no-nonsense browser) :)
Some of the things that can make it better:
- Plugin's ( I miss Piclens here)
- Integration with other Google services (Picasa, Bookmarks, Notes, Calender, Earth...)
- When you open multiple tabs and you close the main window, there is no warning that says all tabs will be closed.
- Skins
While using Chrome I found that a lot of sites sites don't work, due to missing plugins for the new platform. Sometimes just quitting the site is not an option so I created an easy way to open the page in your "old" browser. Just drag and drop the URL from the Chrome URL bar into the Mirror form and you can continue your Chrome browsing. Download: http://www.zonator.com/mirror.zip