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Google Chrome, Day 2
Seems that almost every story submitted to Slashdot last night in some way involved Google's Chrome that we started talking about yesterday. Dotan Cohen noted that according to Clicky Chrome has hit 3% browser share. Since Google has decided to release Chrome only for Windows, I now share for you 3 reviews written by others: the first comes from alexy2k, the second from mildsiete, and the third from oli4uk. They all seem to feature various opinions, charts, and screenshots demonstrating various exciting points.
I looked at the web logs from a general purpose, non-techy website (Watching Grass Grow) and Chrome accounted for 0.73% of the browser traffic yesterday ... ... and traffic didn't start until after the release at Noon.
The User Agent String is
"Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/525.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/0.2.149.27 Safari/525.13"
For comparison, IE was 53.8%, Firefox was 34.6%,
Safari was 3.5% (non-Chrome) , Opera was 0.7%, and there was even
0.05% of traffic from an iPhone.
;-)
That's an impressive bump for day one (actually, half a day) and if you (unrealistically) extrapolated that rate, Chrome would have 100% of the browser market by year end!
I had to modify the Analog source code to account for the Chrome browser (gotta like open-source) but have have other popular programs (such as Google Analytics) been updated to identify this browser?
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
You can't seem to change the default new page. For example, open up a new tab and you'll see recently closed tabs and most visited pages. If a collegue wants to use a browser on your computer you might not want him to see a screenshot on your most viewed pages.
The other thing that I personally find a bit annoying is that if you don't put http:/// in front of or / after a url that is within one of your search domains, it automatically assumes that you want to search the web for that, lets say there's a server on your network that you haven't visited before called server1.domain.com and you have domain.com among your search domains, it will go off to google.com and search for server1 if you only type in server1 in the address bar. But then again, maybe that's just me.
-
Posted with Google Chrome
According to NetApplications, Chrome has around 1% usage share. That's pretty good for a browser still only in beta.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
I tried it out on my XP box yesterday and I was very impressed with it, especially its speed, but a quick look through the options revealed that DNS prefetching is enabled by default.
The show-stopper is(as of now) no NoScript/AdBlock! I've become spoiled with ad-free pages and seeing that first obnoxious flash ad was enough to convince me to keep FF as my browser of choice -- at least until a few plug-ins are made for Chrome.
Really, I still don't see why I'd have to switch from FF3 to this new browser, free or not. I mean, once you get rid of IE's security hole and MS lock-in web technology, a browser's a browser, right?
I understand that Google want to have their own, but the established base of Firefox, with its plugins and extensions beats all for now, from a desktop user perspective.
I'll let the hype pass before I have a look.
-- Home is where you eat your heart out.
Install it and 'Google Update' is silently installed along with it with no apparent way of turning it off besides regedit/msconfig. So much for "Don't be Evil".
Apparently, every installation of Chrome gets an unique id (sorry, German only) and, once you've signed into your Google account ONCE, the unique id gets connected with your account and you'll always be traceable back to your Google account, even if you're not logged in.
That's a showstopper. But I'm hoping for a spy-free version to be out soon, the beauty of open source!
Google *really* needs to change their user agent string.
Right now it says the words "Safari" in it. That's very annoying for me to be able to identify a given browser on my websites.
MABASPLOOM!
Opera is currently sitting at 1.42%.
By the way, any way to Adblock in Chrome? Didn't realize /. had so many ads.
In my office, there are several windows developers who were excited to try Chrome yesterday - one enthusiastically declaring that he was going to uninstall his other browser as soon as he got home. What struck me about this is that these are people who would never, in a million years, lift a finger to try Safari/Windows - yet here they are drooling over how snappy a WebKit-based browser is. The prospect of increased WebKit adoption makes me happy.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
I'll start using Chrome the instant they have a plugin that blocks annoying flashing multi-colour favicons.
[for those who haven't read the links, just go to the second so-called 'review' link, which is really a review of reviews...]
Another browser? Again wasting time finding all the options to turn off all the new "exciting" "bells and whistles"??
I'd say rather "NO." FireFox 3 is already dumb down enough and mimics IE in many aspects. Third "user-friendly" browser, which brings about ZERO value to browsing, is bit too much for me to swallow.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Just downloaded and installed it. First things first: Need AdBlock Plus. I will never switch away from Firefox 3 unless the alternative has an ad blocker.
Also, the scroll wheel function doesn't appear to function properly. When scrolling down, it moves a page length at a time. Scrolling up doesn't work at all.
Other than that, appears to be good so far...
What exactly is the need to review a program which you can download and try free of charge? Only if there were some special insight the reviewer could provide that you wouldn't notice with a casual test drive: for example, some notes about security. But that is sadly not the case here.
Indeed, the middle 'reviewer' hasn't even tried running the browser!
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Google Chrome: Day 2, article number four. :)
According to alexy2k, Error establishing a database connection
The inspect element tool is awesome, lets you see the tree and go to any element you can right click on.
Killable tabs, I open tons of new tabs/windows in any browser I use and I hate it when one crashes and takes out a dozen pages I had open earlier to read later and then have to grep and guess through my history. This makes my day
When you search, it puts little marks on the scroll bar where results are. That's neat.
The tweaked tab system is great. Create new windows from tabs, drag tabs between windows, consolidate windows into tabs.
On the other hand
I really miss scroll-click and smooth scrolling. But it isn't the end of the world.
While I like having tabs on top, having the File/options/etc WIMP standards under that little button to the right of the address bar is kinda weird.
It's beta. It's very beta. Somewhere above "everybody else's beta" and but slightly below the usual "Google beta" quality.
I turned the awesome bar off.
But I still want it to do math for me.
The UI is intuitive, minimal, and eye-pleasing. It rendered almost all of my favorite web-sites perfectly (including some with CSS that previously only rendered in Firefox).
Not switching, though. AdBlock Plus is a must-have.
One reviewer hadn't even installed the browser yet. Seriously.
I installed Google's browser. It sucked. Didn't ask where I wanted to install it. No adblocker (and probably never will be). Very limited configuration options. Couldn't handle my font colors. Set GoogleUpdate.exe to run every time my computer starts. Took me to a "why are you uninstalling it" web form when I went to uninstall it, and the web form didn't work. Ass sucking from start to finish. Classic Google.
"Choosing to refrain from producing another person demonstrates a profound love for all life" [vhemt.org]
This is why I'm staying with firefox for now. But faster page load and isolated threads for JAVA/javascript content really would be nice to have.
When Adblock is released for chrome, I will use it. It's funny how a 3rd party extension has become the killer app for browsing.
Does it matter how good or bad it is, when you type in:
about:plugins
and the first thing you see is:
ActiveX Plug-in
File name: activex-shim
ActiveX Plug-in provides a shim to support ActiveX controls
What makes me wonder is how Google manages to put out a browser, that's seemingly so complete. It's not an easy job: Firefox has been in development for about a decade now, after the open-sourcing of Netscape.
Did they use large chunks of other open-source browsers? If so, which ones? And considering page rendering speed, it is highly optimised. Or lots of features other browsers have are missing.
And how do they manage to get JavaScript work so lightning fast? Looking at the graphs, FF is two, three times as fast as IE, but both are nothing compared to Chrome. Did they write it from scratch, or highly optimised an existing JavaScript implementation? Both options sound pretty impressive to me. It can't be easy to get so quick JavaScript execution - why else can't FF and IE not get anything near this speed.
I can't test the browser myself unfortunately; my desktops run Linux and this laptop is OS/X. It sounds like a pretty impressive job what they did.
Anyone has any ACID/2/3 test results in Chrome? That would be really interesting.
I will shamelessly copy&paste my comment from the other Chrome news today:
I suggest you use the OpenSource version of Chrome , which is BSD licensed and has no EULA you need to agree to.
Builds:
http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/
Info:
http://www.chromium.org
It's time to start hacking away at this ;-)
Come on, web browsers are among the biggest pieces of software going, and Google is a major player. This is big news. There've been three browsers (and Opera!) for a long time now.
This is news.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
I'm using Chrome right now and I find it to be easily the fastest browser I've ever used. Slashdot's Javascript is slow on my machine but that compiler Chrome has seems to make even this plodding page load up almost instantly.
Suddenly, the thought of Google challenging MS-Office with JavaScript makes a great deal of sense.
This is my sig.
Well, I'm using it now to test it out. So far, Slashdot works.
That's pretty disappointing, but I guess I'll still give it another chance.
Is it just me, or does the second review at http://www.monacome.com/2008/08/download-google-chrome-browser-review.html have a ridiculously annoying animated favicon? I'm searching Google now for a way to disable this distracting device. I am definitely not going to read the article with such an annoyance about.
I thought it might be nice to check it out, but I wasn't expecting very much from a beta browser. Unfortunately, after several reboots/reinstalls, I have yet to get it working. After two Application Errors on startup, I get a sad folder that says:
"Aw, Snap! Something went wrong while displaying this webpage. To continue, press Reload or go to another page."
Thanks for the effort, but let me know when they release a browser that actually will install. I think I'll stick with Firefox 3, thank you very much.
I started using it today, it's excellent.. good background info at http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/ I use triple monitors and ability to drag a tab out is something I have wanted a long time. Also, using separate processes for different tabs is so obviously the correct approach, if FF codebase wasnt such a pig to work with someone would have made this change already.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
The Google EULA that I clicked through was the Google services EULA (at least I think so) -- and as such not really acceptable.
Apparently Google published some clarifications, but still there are open questions:
So, in summary: It's a good browser to use Google applications; but for the moment not apt to access anything outside the Google universum.
It's not malicious or anything, it's just very, very poor writing and will make you angry.
Your brain is not a computer.
Google's new browser will give you their web and email services, photo processing, mapping, office applications that will run in said browser and will make you a cup of tea. This is all paid for by personally-directed text ads in your tea leaves, based on analysing a DNA sample taken when you sip the tea and sending your genetic code back to Google for future targeting.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Google's marketing on this has been absolutely great.
First they got my attention and made me aware that they're working on something. This worked because they're Google and I'm already paying attention to them because of their prominence and track record.
Then they provided me with an engaging explanation for the rationale behind developing yet another web browser. I didn't care at first, because I'm pretty sold on Mozilla. But I was curious to know why Google felt like a new browser was worth the effort to develop, so I read the comic, and the more I read about what they're doing with Chrome, the more I saw the good in the project.
For the moment, I'm still using Mozilla for my primary browser, and until Chrome becomes a little more feature-complete I'll continue to do so. Once Chrome implements support for Browser extensions similar to what Mozilla has, and a few of the essential Moz add-ons have been ported, I'm pretty much sold. At the moment, Mozilla's configurability and customizations are what wins with me. But for as immature as Chrome is, it's already very impressive, and I understand (and like) where Google's going with it.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Will google ever actively support noscript/adblock for *their* browser?
Personally, I like the interface and it has alot going for it. Too bad I can't use it the way I want to, with whitelist-only scripts and no ads. Not holding my breath for that functionality, either.
Also, we already have tons of extensions for firefox. I wouldn't imagine myself surfin the web without "customizegoogle" since I hate ads in gmail and in my google searches. :(
"We are so, so happy with Google Chrome," mumbled Mozilla CEO John Lilly through gritted teeth. "That most of our income is from Google has no bearing on me making this statement."
http://rocknerd.co.uk
right.. because we know the mojority is usually right.. NOT In fact, it's usually the opposite.
I'm sure that if Google decide to release chrome for Linux they will see a HUGE browser share increase...of at least 0.001% :-)
They dropped that whole 'Dont be Evil' thing long ago. They're just as bad as most other large companies, worse in a lot of ways.
They have no respect for people's privacy. They act nice and try to look good but when theres a profit to be made they'll happily screw everyone for another big company or government.
A company starts out with ideals. They may want to change the World or give consumers an option. And in the beginning, they may be really really successful. But then as time goes on and they get bigger, they're no longer able to continue at their old growth rates - it's just not possible. The stakeholders ( usually Wall Street and the VCs) still want the huge growth that they or the previous shareholders saw when the company was young. So, little by little, the company starts to compromise its founding ideals. They may even get new management in to aid in that transition.
In a buttshell, a publicly owned corporation has no choice to become evil.
I would just like to point out that Google didn't "[decide] to release Chrome only for Windows," but just released it on Windows first. Just like every other application they've ever put out.
Try BFfilter.
From the page:
BFilter is a filtering web proxy. It was originally intended for removing banner ads only, but since then its capabilities have been greatly extended. Unlike most of the similar tools, it doesn't rely on blacklists (although it does support them). The problem with blacklists is that advertisers are always one step ahead. You see an ad slip through, you update your blacklist, and in case it didn't help, you add a new entry yourself. Once I got tired of that, I decided to write a proxy that would detect ads heuristically, much like modern anti-virus software manages to detect many viruses unknown to it.
It works well on most sites, but it can fuck up some sites, and some require custom tweaks. All in all, a decent alternative to browser adblock plugins.
It's The Golden Rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules."
I dare say that neither 3% or even 1% gives a realistic picture of how many people are using Chrome as their main browser. The recent surge of Chrome traffic is obviously just an effect of lots of people excitedly downloading the browser and surfing around with it for a while to try it out during the first few days after release. Enough geeks playing test driving a new toy is apparently enough to skew the statistic like this.
Two days is a terribly small sample for use in any web usage statistic. Give it two months or so and Google is luckly if Chrome has 0.5% of web traffic.
what? have you ever tried putting quotes around what you want to "exactly" search for? cuz i'm pretty sure that works.
As for why you should look at it, it's a multi-processed browser, so when one web page causes a crash, the rest of your tabs are unaffected. Also, it uses Apple's WebKit, making for possibly the fastest browser in existence for Windows.
The Goodle update service program is installed without the choice to avoid running it.
It is a regular background process started from HKCU\\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run.
The files are installed to %HOMEPATH%\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Update.
By any sensible definition, applications that "phone home" are spyware when they cannot be opted out upon installation.
Google Earth's downloader asks you if you want to install it, but Chrome's downloader just goes ahead and sideloads it without asking. Worse, it's not easy to remove, since you have to edit your registry or use a registry "autorun" hacking tool to remove this "phone home" application.
I don't understand Google's motivation for installing this without prompting the user or providing a removal option.
Kriston
OK, I went to install Google Chrome, and the "download and install" button started running an external application without any prompts. Needless to say I immediately cancelled it and started digging through the source to see what the fox is going on.
I am sure that some Google software that I installed in the past has given google this capability, rather than this being some kind of trust relationship between Mozilla and Google. I'm even sure that at some point I clicked "OK" to some question that said it was OK for them to do X, Y, and Z, and that included this capability.
Regardless...
I don't think this kind of backdoor is even vaguely sane, no matter how "non evil" Google may be. If this capability exists, then the possibility exists for other folks who aren't so "non evil".
This is something I'd expect from Microsoft.
And if they could slip something like that past a fellow as paranoid as me, they sure didn't provide nearly enough disclosure.
So...
What's going on. Is this something in Google Gears? In some other Google tool? I guess I'll have to start dissecting my browser and figure out exactly what the hell they're doing.
Google Chrome is so good, it may actually make me delete my Linux partition to load up Vista. If the standard notion of a client u/i was alive before, it is surely dead now. Chrome is a game changer and this release of a web browser may well exceed the impact of the original Netscape...
It's remarkable, how fast it is.
This is my sig.
Privoxy is your friend. It allows you to block ads using a local proxy, so it'll work with any browser. It isn't as easy to setup as Adblock, but it still works effectively.
I've been using chrome for a day now, and I must say I'm very impressed, particularly with the ability to see the resource usage. This was immediately useful for me, as cpu-hogging flash applets have always been a pain to find and kill.
The one thing that's bugging me is that the rendering speed seems too be quite a bit worse than FF3. I can see this on sites like espn.com with their drop-down menus -- the menu item highlighting lags a little bit behind the mouse. It's kind of annoying, especially under heavy cpu load or laptop cpu-throttling mode. Has anyone else seen this?
The javascript performance appears to be great, but blasting bitmaps to the screen quickly is important, too.
Really, who is shocked that people decided to try it after so many hype?, I'd say that the first week's stats are not going to be really that relevant, launch day really is just that...
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
I had a couple of tabs open. One website in particular had some stuff that google thought was malicious, so it would keep asking me to go to the previous page which i would, then i would navigate to some other pages and it would happen again. after a couple of times, it took the whole browser down and gave me a popup that made it sound really surprised that it crashed. also. the acrobat reader plugin made it hang the entire browser.
The user interface is limitted and the options available for customization are practically nonexistent based on a somewhat single-sided view from Goodger that browsers should not be customizable.
The real value of Chrome is V8, the JavaScript engine, and the smart, asynchronous management of native-code JavaScript objects on the client (without re-parsing them over and over).
V8 will be released to the open source community and hopefully will be the standard JavaScript engine for Firefox which actually has a useful user interface.
I can't really speak of Gears, though, but I think the real value of this release is V8.
Kriston
...the first review already are.
There've been three browsers (and Opera!) for a long time now.
;-)
Let me see, that must be Firefox, Safari, Opera, and what? Oh, Konqueror, of course!
You don't sound like a fanboi, you sound like someone without an open mind.
"FF is perfect, nothing could be better therefore I won't try it."
Give it a try, it doesn't have cooties. At worst you don't like it and you close it right after opening it, having wasted less time than you did by writing the above insightful commentary.
FF will still be there sitting right next to it on the start bar (or in your VM).
"You worthless post!"
-Shakespeare, 2 Gentlemen of Verona, 1. 1. 147
Needs Adblock Plus. But I feel Google won't add that on there own since it would either cut there revenue stream or block all competitor ads. It's a smooth and often fast ride that takes browsing back to the basics. It will be interesting to see how long it takes before it works with all the self branded plugins that are annoying (yes I'm looking at you CNN).
12:32 am - Google Chrome Impressions
- Feels very very clean.
- Does not import successfully from Firefox 3, epic fail
- Does not import from Netscape formatted HTML bookmark file -- failsafe from above.
- Does not support ctrl-S to save, wtf.
- Does not support middle-click-auto-scroll -- I don't use it but Sarksus in the PA forum IRC room was unhappy about it.
It's nice but it needs to be able to properly import from Firefox 3, HTML files, and support standard-ish key commands. I am not sure I could drop Firefox for it (although I get the impression it's based on firefox's codebase, I donno why) but it's definately worth looking at. With Google backing it it could dent IE's marketbase.
The new tab thing that shows thumbnails of your most visited sites is very nice. The Incognito feature is brilliant.
Giving that it is targetting security with the architecture, we will ever see extensions for it, a la firefox?
Some extensions could be just cosmetic, or have no sense in this new browser, or not having them could be a minor annoyances. Some could be made into the core distribution somewhat (greasemonkey?) if is essential enough, but the model of free development of addons could be the difference between success or not.
What? What is "exact search funtionality", why would you need it, and who does offer it?
Bash Google by all means but try and make sense.
(Also try "quoting" your Google query.)
No, seriously.
Go re-examine the definition of beta software, and never try one again if you only want polished apps.
I'll be over here cutting myself on the bleeding edge as usual.
"You worthless post!"
-Shakespeare, 2 Gentlemen of Verona, 1. 1. 147
Running it on my cracked version of XP, everything is in thai... I'd use it if i knew wtf I was trying to do!
I kind of like the usability features of Chrome. No menubar, tabs on top -- all OK. The omnibox = OK to me. It crashed once. It's definitely not stable, but god knows I don't think google has a world-killer here. It's just a freaking browser :-)
*yawn* Another post on slashdot. What special insight does he have that we can't live without? Or to say that another way. Why should I bother reading it?
This guy didn't even read about the features the browser has. He has no clue. Let me repeat that. He has no clue.
His post peaked 2 minutes ago. In another 7 or so it'll be modded down just like any other uninformed knee-jerk reaction.
I've now tried on two separate windows boxes, innumerable different ways, and in both cases the installer simply dies and does nothing. Anybody else had this experience? Any suggestions?
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
We are trying to install it at our school, but it seems like the setup file keeps crashing. I'm betting that setup is trying to pull from a site that is blocked by our school's A-site. Is it possible to get a full package download yet, or do you have to use their setup file? Of course, we these just might be early problems that will get worked out. If not, how can you expect educational institutions to push this browser out in our labs?
Well since I assume all my browsing would go into some database I have been running it for some dumb stuff. Checked all my web-pages I run and then I checked out some common google apps like gmail and gmaps. I found it worked very streamlined. Then I navigated to Pandora... I was wow'ed that the flash worked native, but maybe because I have so much Adobe/Macromedia installed on this XPsp3 box it just found it on intall. Well after several hours of listening to music on pandora I hunted Chrome down in the background and right clicked on the tab and.... CRASH. So I guess it is not 100% bug free. 100% not ad free, unless they make it so Mozilla Extensions are compatible, or open extension dev/sdk I don't think enough of us techies will endorse it. I endorse FF because I can install adblockers on all my work/family browsers. I now install FF3 because everyone I know doesn't like how slow IE7 is, I hear IE8 is worse so why should I install IE7 or IE8b2 on my wife's 4 year old lappy? Never going to happen, but FF3 is smaller better faster on her lappy. Chrome might be worth recommending to her if the TOS says that Google doesn't own your URL history.
As usual the Ars Technica review shines compared to the others.
This may have been posted already, but I can't find it. There's a feedback form if anyone wants to point out how wrong their EULA is: http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/request.py?contact_type=feedback Go and give them a good kicking.
See http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en-US/privacy.html
Incognito mode just ensures the history of that particular browse isn't stored on your computer. Google still has your browsing history nicely tracked, stored on their computer, available for subpoena etc.
Since Google's business is traffic analysis, and since browsing history provides far more detailed an insight into a person than search history alone, then of course Google will keep it. Consequence 1 will be that Google gets a large ramp up in subpoeanas for individuals' tracked data than before, because Consequence 2 is that many people think that their Incognito surfing is volatile. I doubt that much that has ever passed through Google or that ever will is volatile...
I don't know if anyone noticed this, but I found something weird yesterday while trying the browser. I was using it and found it weird that my eyes were getting too tired. I had a suspicion, so I popped up explorer right next to it and found the issue... The other browsers purposely dim the white to protect the eyes when reading black on white, but chrome does not.
Just found it interesting.
Are any of these browsers going to be taken up by corporations?
Firefox already is. Chrome probably needs some time.
Is this all happening because some folks can't quite accept that MS won this war 10 years ago?
You mean in the sense that Germany had won WW2 in 1941? MS has a big share, but that doesn't mean all progress suddenly stops.
Well, progress did stop for MS, but fortunately Firefox gaining market share got MS to finally update their browser to something better than that piece of crap that IE6 was.
The mildseite site, http://www.monacome.com/2008/08/download-google-chrome-browser-review.html (which I'm intentionally not hyperlinking), is the most god-awful thing I've seen since MySpace.
To spare you the experience, I'll just say that the tab icon is an animated GIF that does nothing but blink through the colours of the rainbow. Oh, and "My SideBar: Ads, Search Bar and Widgets" takes up half the screen and contains more animated GIFs. The BLINK tag seems to have been used as well (unless that's another animated GIF).
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
The review by mildsiete said they hadn't even downloaded it yet and were going to wait and see. How can that be a review, if they haven't used it yet?
I! Tego Arcana Dei.
In the past 24 hours since Chrome launched, the thing that I've found most interesting has been the range of reaction from people around the Web. In a nutshell the reaction can be pretty evenly divided between people who "get it" and people who don't. If you think that Google's purpose for Chrome has anything to do with improving UI or grabbing browser market share then you're in the camp that doesn't get it.
Chrome is more or less a reference design for other browser developers, hence the reason Google is putting so much emphasis on it being open source. There's no money in it for Google to be giving out browsers. What Google is interested in is increasing the capability of the average browser in order to allow them to serve up more robust web-based content for more revenue.
This is the User-Agent String for Chrome.
Nice browser, fast, but no java, I'm already on chrome.
slashdot rocks
Overall, very impressive. I'm no Google fanboy, and I disliked their desktop apps previously, but this one looks like it was designed by good UI usability experts. The overall philosophy seems to be close to GNOME in that few things are configurable, but the rest tends to seamlessly work "the right way" (and that coming from a user of Opera, which has hundreds of configuration options, is saying something). Toolbar icon theme is instant classic - very clear and without flashy colors, looking much better than either IE, Firefox or Opera. Some inconspicuous animation effects when opening/closing/dragging around tabs make it very clear what's going on. By the way, have you noticed that the loading indicator on the tab turns counter-clockwise when HTTP request is being sent, and clockwise when HTTP reply is being received, and that its rotation speed indicates up/download speed? Also note the tooltip-like popup at the bottom of the window with full URL when you hover mouse over a link.
Some stuff is less obvious. For example, there are tab groups, even though they're not color-coded as in IE8. To observe them, open 4 tabs from 2 different domains - say, first 2 for kernel.org, the other 2 for slashdot.org. Then try middle-clicking links in the 1st and the 3rd tabs. You'll see that newly created tabs go at the end of the respective tab groups (and not at the end of the tab bar, or immediately after the current tab). This seems to be based on the full domain name of the site though, and not on user interaction like in IE8 (which groups together all tabs opened from within the same "parent" tab), which is mildly annoying on /. which varies domains - so tech.slashdot.org won't group with games.slashdot.org, for example.
Interstingly enough, UI looks better on Vista rather than XP. On Vista Aero, the tab bar itself is glass-translucent underneath (like IE7's tool/address bar), and when maximized, the tabs are interposed right on top of the window title bar, saving screen space. On XP, it emulates Vista's large window decorations to achieve the same effect, but obviously no translucency, which rather spoils the effect. Overall, it looks somewhat out of place on an XP desktop (particularly if you have Windows theme set to Classic, or indeed anything other than the bluish Luna), but fits right in on Vista.
Speed: very impressive. Rendering is very fast. No UI slowdown I can notice under any circumstances. I guess we'll see JS benchmarks soon enough.
That said, it's not without issues. For starters, where's my smooth scrolling? And why is scroll-on-middle-click, which has been available in every single browser since at least IE4 (maybe earlier, I just can't remember now), is gone?
Is anyone else annoyed that the name "Chrome" is the same word as the internal urls used in Firefox?
chrome://browser/content/places/places.xul
chrome://mozapps/content/extensions/extensions.xul
etc. (obviously, these only work in Firefox)
It would be forgivable for tech people to not know this, but it's not forgivable for browser people to not know this. I'm sure that they knew it and just went ahead and did it anyway. I also hate that the find behavior is more like Safari than Firefox or Opera, but that's personal taste.
I have to believe that there's just a bit of arrogance in the naming. Hanlon's razor can only go so far...
Collective mind, please help me: I can't keep up!! Do we like Google or hate them today!?!? Must ... maintain... perspective... Ggggaaaahhhhhh!!!!!!!
How does it handle infoslash and GNAA last measure? Is anyone here brave enough to visit them with Chrome and share the experience?
Things about Chrome that rock:
- Blinding speed! WHOA NELLY!
- Tab drag n' drop
- Task manager, memory usage page
- Download manager page
- Incognito windows
Things about Chrome that suck:
- No tab select dropdown button! MAJOR FAILURE!
- Text boxes are kind of buggy
- No way to disable java(script) or image loading
- No customization whatsoever over the Omnibar or New Tab Page.
- No separate settings for Incognito windows (such as disabling auto image loading for them)
Also it's a bit of a memory hog, but I could forgive this for the advantages in stability and security...except I tried to access an FTP site (the UI for this is very primitive, similar to IE) and THE WHOLE THING CRASHED. How's that for process separation.
Looks like it has a lot of potential but it needs more time in the oven. I'm back to Firefox 3 for now.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Chrome looks nothing like any other Windows app. All the familiar metaphors and mechanisms people are used to using in their other applications are missing in action, which makes interacting with Chrome a very unintuitive process.
The "menu bar" is still there, it's just inexplicably found in a "drop-down icon" in the upper right corner.
There's no application icon in the upper left corner. Since I usually close my applications by double clicking this icon, I find it's absence really annoying.
The first thing I had to do in Chrome was fix up my proxy settings. So, "Tools->Options".... uuhh... Where's the menu bar? Oh, there's a little wrench icon in the upper right? Maybe there? Here we go. "Options". Now proxy settings will likely be "Under the Hood". There's a button marked "Change Proxy Settings". When I click on it, I get taken to the Windows "Internet Properties/Connections" page... What does this have to do with proxy settings? Obviously I don't want the "Setup an internet connection" button. The "Dial-up and VPN" window is probably not useful. Try "LAN Settings..." Ok, this is starting to look like proxy stuff. Seems my "Proxy Server" is set incorrectly (I didn't even know Windows had this page. All the windows apps I use have proxy settings configured manually.)
Now, I'm a professional software developer, so navigating my way down through that wasn't too bad. I was left feeling a little lost for a few moments, but I got there in the end. Imagine someone less familiar with computers trying to pull this off.
Ok, task 2. I want to bookmark a site. Bookmarks->Add Bookmark? No... There's a little "star" icon next to the URL bar. They introduced a star in Firefox, so lets try that. Ok, I've bookmarked my page. Now I go to another page... Lala... Now I want to go back to my bookmark... Ok... Let's try the little "Page" icon in the upper right... No, nothing about bookmarks. New tab shows me a bookmarks bar across the top, but what if I want to get to a bookmark from another page? I'm not going to open a tab every time I want a bookmark. Little wrench? Ahh... "Always show bookmarks bar".
Again, confusion and hunting to make it do what I want it to do. These are not the hallmarks of good usability.
Pretty and unique interfaces are cool, but they are almost always a bad idea, from a usability perspective. (And, usually from an accessibility perspective too).
SUMMARY
An issue exists in how chrome behaves with undefined-handlers in chrome.dll version 0.2.149.27. A crash can result without user interaction. When a user is made to visit a malicious link, which has an undefined handler followed by a 'special' character, the chrome crashes with a Google Chrome message window "Whoa! Google Chrome has crashed. Restart now?". It crashes on "int 3" at 0x01002FF3 as an exception/trap, followed by "POP EBP" instruction when pointed out by the EIP register at 0x01002FF4.
DETAILS
Vulnerable Systems: * Google Chrome Browser version 0.2.149.27
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION The information has been provided by Rishi Narang. The original article can be found at: http://evilfingers.com/advisory/google_chrome_poc.php
The first thing I did with chrome was to open it and FF and tell windows to tile vertically.
Guess What. Chrome doesn't tile. It's presence doesn't even seem to be recognized.
I use Opera, and after trying Chrome I can say that in general I like it a lot, but I really really miss
mouse gestures
bit torrent integration
I would make the switch if chrome had those
You just have to enable it... It's under Options > Basic Tab > Home Page > Check show home page on toolbar option.
what? have you ever tried putting quotes around what you want to "exactly" search for? cuz i'm pretty sure that works.
You are wrong. Quotes ignores special characters and case. I want exact not close to exact.
I find being offended by me offensive.
The reason Chrome has hit 3% browser share is probably because of their automated testing efforts. From the comic at http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/
"Google Chrome is a massive, complicated product that will need to load billions of different web pages, so TESTING is critical. Fortunately, here at Google we have an equally massive infrastructure for crawling web pages. within 20-30 minutes of each new browser build, we can test it on tens of thousands of different web pages. Each week, "Chrome bot" tests millions of pages, giving our developers early results they'd otherwise have to wait until external beta for."
They probably are not using a unique user-agent string when testing which results in this seemingly high adoption rate.
There is a Home button, though.
Check under General Settings, select 'show home button.'
(Your beta might be another version than mine, though.)
A horse can't be sick, you know, even if he wants to.
Anyway, I don't know anything about Chrome. Apparently, whatever it is, there isn't a version for my platform, so I'm not going to download it. I know that's just a fact about me, but you all need to hear it. I'm not going to download it, I say. And because the whole universe is based on my experience I can categorically say that this means that Chrome has lost the browser war. So obviously Google have screwed up their strategy royally because if I don't want to download Chrome, why would anyone else?
Apparently it doesn't have adblock. I don't know what adblock is, but from reading the other comments it's obviously the most important part of a browser. How could Google leave it out?
Anyway, I've said my piece. Google are a doomed company. In fact, here's a graph to prove it:
You can't argue with statistics!
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Firefox covers all my needs. Is there a reason to try Chrome?
I can't run applications that need Java. For example, LogMeIn.
I can handle missing out on ActiveX, but come on now...my 3 year old phone runs Java apps!
Here's a list of them:
Safari ua strings.
A horse can't be sick, you know, even if he wants to.
I'm not a Windows fan but I have tons of apps I need to work with that require Windows so I can't test it myself. Has anyone tried to see if it works on Linux under WINE? I see everybody bitching about it but I don't see any posts regarding this.
Google really seems to score with their new browser. I like it a lot, it's so fast and doesn't seem to crash so far unlike explorer. Found some more info on http://www.google-chrome.com/
So far I'm not impressed and I haven't even installed it. I clicked on the download and saved the installer. However, the installer simply goes out to download the actual browser. This process slammed my CPU so I assume this must be a pretty big package? If the price of speed is bloat I'm not sure I want it.
By todays standards, Chrome just can't compete as a browser. It lacks configuration ability,features, add-ons.
The two nice things I see in the tech demo are:
V8 - the fast javascript engine, and per process tabs. That is all.
I place my bet on seeing those in real browsers, before seeing this beta fleshed out to become a real workable browser.
I did my own testing and instead of running javascript benchmarks. I just visited the same set of my web favorites with Chrome/Opera/FF.
Once or twice I might have noticed the tiniest speed difference. I am talking perhaps 1/10th of a second. Where are people seeing the big speedups? Are they just running benchmarks? BTW Chrome always used the most memory.
I don't get the hype over an infinitesimal real world speed increase on a feature-less browser.
The two nice features might be a big deal if I felt FF was slow or unstable. Neither of which is true. I use it at home (Kubuntu/winXP) and at work (some old red hat release). It is rock stable at home, flaky at work, but I don't blame the browser, I blame our useless IT department for the crappy RedHat release from years ago. I'll take those features when they are free, but I am not giving up any functionality for it.
As far as usage stats. Wait a month until eveyone is done trying it. I know mine is getting deleted later today. Tech demos peak fast when the novelty wears off.
and google staff
Google's EULA for Chrome takes away all your rights for any content you post with the browser. Here are the relevant sections from the EULA:
11. Content license from you
11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.
11.2 You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.
11.3 You understand that Google, in performing the required technical steps to provide the Services to our users, may (a) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media. You agree that this license shall permit Google to take these actions.
11.4 You confirm and warrant to Google that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the above license.
- midtoad
Umwelt schützen, Fahrrad benützen
What happened to the dozen or so +5 posts on Chrome's spyware(gathering usage information and sending it to a google server)?
So, it should refuse to support that at all?
Are you using Firefox? It has some support as well.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
He has no reason to be worried. Chrome is gunning for the anti-standards browser - the one that was designed to prevent the web from becoming a development platform independent of the user agent's host operating system. Most people who develop for the web use "IE" as a curse word, but businesses like Google are reliant upon that browser to deliver their services, making IE a weak point in their business model. Microsoft has good reasons to break standards as long as they control most of the market for user agents. The more Microsoft's browser sinks in market share, the more they have to adopt standards.
Mozilla isn't like that: Firefox is pretty much in step with Chrome on where the future of the web lies. Both browsers are trying to push a network development platform like the one many foresaw in the mid-90s before IE brought stagnation. Now the whole ecosystem is larger and more diverse, particularly since yesterday's Chrome launch, making IE-only development just slightly more difficult to justify and pushing Microsoft further into the standards hell that terrified Bill Gates and company when they finally grokked it in 1995.
At least until they release a Mac version! It uses WebKit underneath (except perhaps for the javascript engine) and includes "Safari" as part of the user agent. The irony...
Obviously Google could hardly implement ad-blocking as a core feature, as they're in the business of selling ads.
But this thing is open source, so just be patient. It might take a while before we see extensions as such being implemented, but you can be sure someone will come up with a modified version that blocks ads in no time.
(and incidentally, also quit whining about other minor details : it's version 0.2 beta, ffs! I remember using FF 0.8, it was very cool but also had all sorts of weird glitches)
OK, it's using a firefox extension called "Google Update", which is installed by a number of Google applications, and (as demonstrated) it's possible for Google to use it to automatically install software on your computer. Disabling it in Firefox keeps it from running and should hopefully prevent some other Google App from installing it again.
This seems to be the same kind of "trust me" backdoor as the Firefox XPI installer and ActiveX, but unlike ActiveX it's cross-browser (and probably cross-platform), and unlike XPI it DOESN'T require you to explicitly whitelist each site and approve each install. Calling it an updater sort of implies that it is a relatively secure service, like other update services, that only pulls down and updates software that you have explicitly installed. But if it has a mechanism for a web site to explicitly request that a new component be downloaded and installed it's anything but secure.
Googling for it on "site:google.com" has been less than useful. I've got several hits from people in Google's user groups asking what it is and how to remove it, but there doesn't seem to be any documentation on Google's website for its API and security model.
Let me know how long it takes you to get rid of Google Update. When I uninstalled Chrome, it stayed with me. Took me a few minutes to eradicate it.
I ran a sniffer to watch the traffic that chromehad it sent information to google everytime I went to a website.
I don't want to be part of the Chrome "bot" as google puts it
I couldn't figure out why it kept coming up at startup even after I disabled the service and deleted the registry run entry.
I don't think, in all my years of using Windows, that I've ever had an application use the task scheduler before. It's a whole new kind of spyware evil.
http://tapthehive.com/discuss/This_Post_Not_Made_In_Chrome_Google_s_EULA_Sucks
This is the one reason I uninstalled Chrome. Slick browser but I don't like anyone trying to gain a Perpetual and irrevocable royalty-free ownership of any content I submit, post or view through Chrome.
The current Firefox 3 Javascript engine is Spidermonkey. There is already work happening apace to use the Adobe donated Tamarin Actionscript VM within the next Firefox Javascript engine which will bring features like JIT compilation to the table.
I'm afraid this proliferation of Javascript engines is going to continue unless one becomes available with no strings attached that bests all others in all areas on all platforms. Perhaps that is Google's ultimate goal (if they force such an engine into existence everything else will have to think hard about not adopting it)?
In pokebal vs. chrome fight, chrome nevar win, cause it catch only nerds
This is all a side issue. Google has promised to back FireFox until 2011. Google Chrome isn't a browser, but a template on how FireFox, Safari, and other browsers should behave. What Google wants:
* More multi-threading in the browser. Browsers shouldn't freeze up.
* More multi-process tasking. Browsers shouldn't crash because of a bad webpage
* Faster JavaScript: How much do you want to bet that V8 will quickly become part of WebKit.
* Standardized Rendering Engine: This will put pressure on FireFox and Opera to switch to the WebKit engine, or at least make sure their browsers are 100% compatible. Thus, standardizing desktop and mobile device browsers on WebKit.
It's not so much that Chrome is Google's candidate in the browser wars as much as a template other browsers should strive for. I love the fast JavaScript engine and the multi-processing approach to webpage rendering. You'll start seeing that adapted by the other browsers in the next year. I also like some of the security features like the complete sandbox approach. Google's idea is that your browser will become infected, and the browser should prevent the infection from spreading.
What is it about software companies and lawyers? How can anyone think that a license agreement like this is going to be acceptable? The Register has an article about it.
Akvo.org - the open source for water and sanitation
I can't even download the stupid thing - error on page with their javascript.
The share Chrome has achieved in such a short time is remarkable but it's largely the curiosity factor. People are downloading and trying it, the real question is how many chumps will be convinced that all Google's data mining and ad serving is a worthwhile trade off and switch to Chrome as their main browser. Personally it won't get within a million miles of my PC as a Google product, I'll wait for an open source fork with all the crap cut out before I try it; even then I'm perfectly happy with Firefox and it's extensions that it'll likely be just the curiosity factor.
People who know of the data mining and have gotten used to mostly advert free surfing won't touch Chrome as a main browser, even if they are playing with it right now.
I'm wondering now if this is Google's equivalent of an official OS. Many assumed they'd do their own Linux distro but that's possibly more wishful thinking than anything else. All of their services are web based, so making a single piece of software people can run on their own (Windows) platform with all their services tied in and designed for it is sorta like a virtual OS, in the form of a browser. If they can get people convinced that the only piece of software they need to use is Chrome they win.
Dunno what to make of Google when it comes to Linux. Their server farms are all Linux, without Linux they'd never be where they are now. They do summer of code projects to help Linux and FOSS software projects, yet at times where it could really help add authenticity in the minds of Joe Shmoe they don't do a proper Linux client for their software and rely on a half ass'd Wine ported Windows version.
Reading /., I don't even notice I'm using a different browser except for the slightly different look at the top. It has a few annoying quirks, like suggesting search terms when I type a URL instead of just suggesting previous URLs. It appears to have a nice little spell-checker enabled by default as I type this. I was going to say that it makes no difference and isn't worth the space on my drive, but now I might decide to keep it just for that little built-in spell check feature.
As for ad-block, I went with the "nuclear option" a while ago: I use a HOSTS file. It kills a lot of the non-annoying ads that don't pop up, pop under, or make noise. This is unfortunate, because I really hate to hurt legit advertisers who are placing non-intrusive ads. The other guys drove me to it though, and I don't shed any tears over the collateral damage.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
But it gets a solid pass for the rest of my browsing. Why? No ad blocker pro. No flash blocker. Until those happen, Chrome has dancy happy shit running all over my screen, automatically playing flash movies, and all the shit that I don't like.
Hi, i have started to experiment with runnning chrome under FreeBSD using wine (So this applies to linux to) and have got quite far. Now viewing www.slashdot.org in chrome under FreeBSD survives the first redirect and starts to render. But then it crashes. I'm going to dig a bit further, but for now you can see a screenshot of slashdot rendered in chrome on FreeBSD here: http://www.arnold.se/chris/
Uninstall from the Start Menu
Click the Start menu on your computer taskbar.
Select Programs
Select Google Updater.
Select Uninstall Google Updater.
Restart your computer after you uninstall.
Uninstall from the Control Panel
Click the Start menu on your computer taskbar.
Select Control Panel.
Double-click Add or Remove Programs (on XP) or Programs and Features (on Vista).
Select Google Updater in the list of programs.
Click Remove.
Restart your computer after you uninstall.
Uninstall from the command line
Click the Start menu on your computer taskbar.
Select Run.
Enter cmd to open a command prompt.
Type cd C:\Program Files\Google\Google Updater to change directories.
Type GoogleUpdater.exe -uninstall to uninstall.
Restart your computer after you uninstall.
Note: I haven't tried this as I haven't installed anything from Google.
http://www.milw0rm.com/exploits/6355 Google's new Web browser (Chrome) allows files (e.g., executables) to be automatically downloaded to the user's computer without any user prompt.
Chrome has crashed several time on Windows 2003 x64 already. Just clicking on Options crashes the browser. Watched the videos on the Chrome site and tried the new features. When I tried to Bookmark the page, the browser crashed again. Having individual threads per tab does not help since the process crashes so all tabs and windows go.
The speed is decent but it's a long ways from a reliable everyday browser.
Am I the only one who is put off by this whole chrome hype? Would we have the same hype if Microsoft, Mozilla, Apple, etc had released the same browser? I admit, I downloaded it. I opened it once to look at the comic explaining the technology. Neat stuff, but this incomplete product is hardly a replacement for FF3. I am much more interested in Mozilla looking into the sandboxing/process spawning for each tab (even though with 20-40 tabs open regularly, I wonder how much overhead that would create). And in terms of this browser potentially being faster? By the time they have implemented all the standard features of a modern browser, it'll be even. Why is everyone so eager to *switch* to this browser even though it's just one more of Google's unfinished, perpetual beta products?
As a developer, the one thing Microsoft seems to have done right in the past when it comes to their office and web software was to develop those applications from the ground up to be automated. When I say automated I mean that I can embed Word, Excel or IE in my C++, VB or C# application to enhance it.
This is no small feature, because I've seen tons of software out there that rely on embedding or controlling a web browser. This is something Firefox and all the other browser makers didn't think about when they created their software. If Google is smart they will make their browser automation friendly, whether that means ActiveX, .Net or some other API with which to control their browser.
Most Linux users use Firefox, as it's a non GTK+ / QT native. Most of these Firefox users are power users who will tweak their Firefox to what they want. Most of them will have AdBlock Plus and NoScripts at the very least.
In other words, Linux users tend to be wise to Google's model and block out their grubby fingers. Why would Google put any time and effort into releasing a Linux native client when most wouldn't use it without it being modified to give these same functions anyway?
Like everything else Google do, it's all about data mining; if it's going to be blocked by most, why bother?
I hate running XP in the first place, and running as administrator for a web browser seems the height of silly.
Maybe I'm in a minority here, but I hope there are some installer improvements to follow.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I installed it on my Vista machine at home yesterday. Chrome managed to annoy me in nearly everything it did, from the very beginning, where it didn't ask me where I wanted to install it, and silently installed some Google update garbage I didn't want -- something a less knowledgable user would probably not even notice.
So I fire it up. First thing I notice is I can't set a homepage. Instead, it brings me to this rancid "Most Visited Pages" crapfest. Guys, I don't want that. I see no obvious way of turning it off. And I really don't want that every time I pop open a new tab. I'm quite capable of deciding for myself why I opened a new tab, thankyouverymuch -- I don't need the bloody suggestions.
As for that, I don't necessarily want anyone who uses my computer to see my Most Visited Pages every time they use the browser. I have nothing to hide, really, but that doesn't mean it's anyone else's business. This should not be default behavior.
The "Omnibar" is as miserable a failure as Firefox's Asswipe Bar or whatever they're calling it. Again, software that tries to suggest, correct, or assume anything about what I'm doing is just plain wrong. I understand that some people might want "features" like that, and that's fine -- let them turn it on. I shouldn't have to turn off little annoying bells and whistles. They should be off by default.
Specifically, what I find so horrible about the Omnicrap is how mind-bogglingly useless it is, while being extremely distracting. I typed the letter "S". The only site I'd visited up until that point was slashdot, so Chrome brought up Slashdot as a suggestion. It also brought up Southwest Airlines, and offered to run a Google search for "Sears". Yes, you idiots, those are clearly what I want to do since I typed the letter "S". It did something equally asinine when I typed "w", perhaps the most common letter in URL history -- brought up a bunch of meaningless suggestions for pages I'd never even heard of, much less visited, none of which had anything to do with anything. One was some resort hotel website in Arizona, and the others were also out of left field.
Software that tries to assume what I'm going to do before I've done it is, in my view, fundamentally broken.
I don't care that I can turn it off. I don't care if it "learns" over time. It breaks the conventional way browsers have behaved since antiquity, and while there's a time to break convention, there are also times when doing so makes things stupid and annoying. This is the latter.
Next I went to click a link. On hovering, Chrome animates this retarded, distracting little text box at the bottom of the app, showing the URL to the link. Whoever came up with that bit of idiocy needs to boil in an acid vat. Nothing should ever blink, pop up, or otherwise animate to distract me. The way every other browser behaves is to have a dedicated status bar at the bottom, and put information there, which is fine. Since it's always there it's easy to ignore, much like the sensation your shoes make against your feet, which you don't notice. But you'd start to notice if every time you took a step, your shoes emitted a loud beep. And you'd get annoyed very quickly.
Besides all that, it's hideously ugly, and looks more at home on Windows 95 than XP or Vista.
I don't really care about process-per-tab or faster Javascript. None of that matters when the browser as a whole is an irritating pile of dung. I will uninstall it when I get home tonight, and never use it again. Firefox works fine, and I see no reason to bother test-driving a rusted-out station wagon because some people say it might one day be sort of as good as the Lambourghini I'm currently driving.
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
Firefox vs. Chrome comparison The article is a wiki so it will improve over time, but it's in decent shape right now. ~Posted with Firefox
2+2=5 for very large values of 2.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Speaking as a web developer, nowadays it is actually the other way around. You usually have to code hacks for IE6 and IE7 and let all other standards-based browsers figure themselves out.
There are, however, specific things that Webkit does different, and testing for "KHTML" in the UA string is pretty much the only way to fix them.
Don't complan to the web developers, complain to the W3C and the browser makers, who won't finalize standards to implement things like "opacity" in a standard format (in Mozilla it is "-moz-opacity", in KHTML/webkit it is "-khtml-opacity", in W3C CSS3 it is "opacity", in IE you have to do a DX transformation - see http://css-tricks.com/css-transparency-settings-for-all-broswers/ for an example of the retardedness).
In CSS you can just apply all the classes but if you have to dynamically manipulate the stuff in Javascript you have to know it's correct name to modify it properly.
This is just one example of many.
I mentioned this in another thread, this is a more relevant one. I'm excited and ready to switch, but...:
Sigh...
I used to use Opera heavily (still do on occasion). When I zoom in/zoom out, it zooms the whole page, including images, as expected. Very handy, and easy to scale pages for appropriate viewing on a given device, browser windows, etc..
That was always a big beef of mine with Firefox, it never did it. But FireFox 3 added image scaling, whoohooo!
Now Chrome comes along. I love the process separation, Task manager, JavaScript speed. I'm ready to convert. But there's no scaling of images, just a lame-ass IE-ish text-size scaling.
Come on, it's 2008, it's not *that* hard to display an image scaled down (or up). In fact, the API calls you're using will likely do that for you. (And even if they didn't, there's probably a couple of thousand of open source libraries to do it for you; and coding image scaling yourself is fairly trivial...) I just don't get why browser manufacturers leave this out so frequently...
Pleeeeaaasse, Google, add this feature, and I'll convert.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
I have not performed extensive troubleshooting, but on my work network I can not see the Google sign in screen. It comes up as a blank page. So, ironically, in order for me to use any Google Apps at work, I have to use Firefox. =/
From what I can tell, Chrome is nothing more than a fork of the Windows Firefox project that picks up WebKit. Wow, how innovative. This is nothing more than another example of Google being late to the party, only this time, they showed up with even less than when they delivered Android... oh wait, I forgot, we are still waiting for an Android platform to be released...
Ads...what ads??? I am using Links and I dont get those. Who says you need plug ins to get only the information you want from a site.
So far the EULA BS is the only thing they've managed to come up with other than a whole lot of blabbering and crying.
Um... no extensions.
Actually, I don't think Chrome is at the level where I'd use it everyday yet, but it will be interesting to see how it evolves.
I also think that Firefox will be able to benefit from the open source Chromium project, so we'll get to see how Firefox evolves as well.
Basically, I think the fear that Firefox is just going to go away is unfounded - although there are plenty of things in Chrome that Firefox doesn't do (yet), there are also things that Firefox does that Chrome doesn't do (yet).
Since I really get the impression that Chrome isn't likely to make it easy to develop and add in extensions anytime soon (I hear a lot about plugins, but those aren't the same, and extensions would muddy up the interface), and I don't think that Firefox is ready for the kinds of separation of processes that Chrome is talking about, I think they'll each have their own niche for quite a while.
We can't live without adblock or noscript, i agree. Oh man, Chrome is opensource. Let's hack an adblock feature into it!
slashwhat?
I've been using Chrome and I'm both happy and disappointed. It's an awesome browser, very fast, very responsive, has great features and the tabs are amazing and work exactly how I wish Firefox did. But why the hell does it have a problem playing flash video? Isn't this one of the first things people would try to do on it? Flash video either freezes a few frames into the video, or if it plays it doesn't play with sound. Even YOUTUBE, a GOOGLE owned company doesn't work with Chrome.
Otherwise, it's been awesome.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
...does it run Linux?
Well, find out here.
ta
da
da ...PENGUIN!
Oh, that worked and your browser isn't Google Chrome? :-)
Guess that means your browser runs Linux, too
The Hacker's Guide To The Kernel: Don't panic()!
Out of every company on the planet today, Google has the worst privacy record.
I think I'll pass on trying any Google browser. Thanks but no thanks.
Tabs (loaded fully):
http://forum.videohelp.com/
slashdot.org
http://io9.com/
cnn.com
Memory Usage:
IE7 with 3 custom toolbar buttons: 79,400k
Firefox 3.0 with a number (10-15) of enhancements: 83,900k
Firefox 3.0 with no enhancements: 65,000k
Chrome: 115,000k
WTF!
Surprising that many are missing the gears connection. I've blogged about the impact of Chrome on the enterprise and web 2.0 here: http://www.byteonic.com/
...Simon, the kid's electronic memory game toy from the 80's, is it not? Of course, there's only three colors, rather than four (perhaps representing the three most used browsers: IE, FF, Safari?), so as to not step on any toes. Perhaps Google is trying to make a statement regarding having other browsers trying to follow their lead?
Error code = 0 x 80072efd
* Nice and fast, especially with Google applications.
* Many links on Facebook do not work at all.
* Requires the latest, greatest bleeding edge Java plugin to work with Java-enabled sites.
* Warnings for https sites without proper certificates are done well. One click to get through to the site, rather than the convoluted 4 step process Firefox 3 forces you through.
Oh wait, wrong browser - sorry.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
so this thing creates a new process for every of the 50+ (images, not age!) pronimage i load in a tab?
1. Where's the download link?
2. Will it run under Linux with WINE?
Since I believe ActiveX to have shitty security, why would I be using that or want to use that?
And yes, it should refuse to support it. After all, it's not going to support it on linux and osx. Why should it cripple itself on windows?
Not sure how they will accomplish that without the kiddies.
"2.3 You may not use the Services and may not accept the Terms if (a) you are not of legal age to form a binding contract with Google, or (b) you are a person barred from receiving the Services under the laws of the United States or other countries including the country in which you are resident or from which you use the Services"
Having to hit Ctrl+F to search. I've come to rely on the vi-like forwardslash behavior that I can't function if it doesn't work!
Most folks are not techies and extremely reluctant to mess around with what works, they would rather just amble along. A bit of laziness, indifference, fear of change or all
Those who are not use Firefox and will definitely be trying chrome, whether chrome wins them over depends on many things, however most will be impressed with what they see. Its a very good effort for a first shot. The minimalist look works and everyone likes fast and efficient.
However like all Firefox users its not the browser itself but the extensions I use that makes an immediate shift difficult. In my case noscript, delicious, Ubiquity - the fantastic new extension for Firefox, and Google notebook.
Google has not bundled everything and that's being savvy because they can easily be accused of anti-competitive behavior so all their serves are separate. However you can get the Google bookmarklet and drag it to your chrome bookmark bar, the delicious bookmarklet works too, so the delicious online bookmarking problems is taken care of. Also because the Omnibar is smart and 'learns' you can duplicate Ubiquity search functionality for specific site search like flckr, youtube, images.google, wikipedia and many other sites. So that's good.
The things is whatever browser you use they win so there is not great need that chrome has to succeed. We all consume Google services.
Guess Marc is working on optimizing Chrome.
I think Google Chrome is a faster than firefox. Just a comment on the logo though. Is that a pokemon or a twisted microsoft logo? http://www.pinaycelebrityonline.com
I really hope Google takes a page from opera's delicious full page, proportional zoom.
Chrome has the same old crappy zooming feature other browsers have and it sucks. People with large monitors/large resolution and people with eyesight problems NEED good zoom like the one available on Opera.
I won't hold my breath though. I suggested to the Gmail team that they allow the user to list more than 100 emails on a page and more than 20 emails when performing a search and I'm still waiting 2 or 3 years later.
... are nice in theory, but typing
about:%
in one browser tab crashes the whole browser. You can restart it, but it doesn't recover the tabs for you.
It also is a pity that there isn't a working Linux or Mac build for the moment, and the developer faqs state "months, not days" to wait for it...
Can Chrome compete with Firefox or IE?
Because web developers are often complete idiots who believe that people using non-IE browsers are edge cases who need to upgrade to 'modern standards' like IE 7, rather than broken, 'non-standards-compliant' browsers like Safari or Firefox.
If there were a way to punch web developers in the face through some kind of browser extension, I think these people would learn a lot faster.
Those people are not web developers, they are IE-developers.
Repeat after me: page file
In a modern operating system with a unified buffer cache, memory is just a cache for disk. The converse also applies: disk is a spillover store for memory.
In a modern operating system, without memory locking, there is no guarantee a given page will not be written to disk.
Memory locking usually requires root privileges; I somehow doubt that Chrome and Safari are running with them.
Great ideas in this browser, and I love the process separation (multi core runs great), stability and speed for Java Script.
But, I'm missing many features from Firefox that make live easier:
* Form memory
* Extensions
* Scriptability of the UI
* AdBlock
* Java Plugin
Busy helping non technical users of OpenOffice.org - http://plan-b-for-openoffice.org/
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Oh, and I forgot to ask - why has Taco linked to a "review" by someone who openly admits to not having even downloaded the product!?
What's wrong with that?
Nothing's more intellectually consistent on Slashdot than an editor posting a link to an article they didn't read for viewers of the site who have no intention of reading it about a product that the reviewer didn't even look at.
The fact that 2 of 3 links are dead and the other hangs up my browswer only puts the cherry on top!
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
The privacy stuff in the posts above in concerning me slightly until I find out more about it.
However, in using it I have found:
hit detection on tabs near close button it pretty weird. If I click to the right it chooses the next tab, even if the hotspot of the pointer is on the tab I want to close.
no right click -> right click for open right click on link menu, in Opera, I can right click a link and then with the right button click the menu that pops up to open in new tab. Can't do this in Chrome. I do this because my laptop has no middle button and dancing left-to-right-to-left-to-right on the buttons to open say a list of links is a PITA.
Resizable form boxes, e.g. ebay ask a seller, and this form right here, Pretty neat, haven't seen it before not sure if it is Chrome/webkit specific.
Why Chrome? If you are only viewing today's web pages then today's browsers are "good enough". But what Google hopes is that in the future you will be runing Google's on-line office suite, Google Maps and Google Mail. With Chrome all of these Google apps will run in their own tab, in their own thread and on one of the four or eight cores in your CPU.
Google knows full well that it takes many years to develope a mature web browser. This is their first step.
Today people don't run three or six different javascript aps all open at once. But Google, with Chrome hopes to change that.
This is related to the reason some people say "I don't need an 8 core machine". Of course that is true because you are running software that does not need 8 cores. But in 10 years your software will do different tasks. Maybe you will control the computer with hanf movments in front of a stereo 3D web cam while another camera watches where your eyes are looking, so as to update that part of the screen first. Same with browsers. Google is thinking ahead five to ten years.
Hey guys, wake up. This is a GOOGLE browser. Chrome is sending every URL that you visit to the Google servers.
http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/privacy.html?hl=en
They say they need the information so they can give you better suggestions for other websites that might interest you. Right. Thank you Google.
And a company that is so big in advertisement surely has an interest in bringing its own browser on the market as this is the window where all the necessary information has to pass through.
Guys. Think a bit before you are getting all excited about this superfast shiny new browser.
Perhaps they, like me, have experienced enough Apple software on Windows to put them off trying.
I've only really used Quicktime and Itunes and while they are functional there's something that makes them clunky on a Windows desktop and I definitely don't want "clunky" on my browser. It tends to be gratuitously different.
Chrome is "different" too, but it seems to be different in a minimalist way, keeping out of the way and letting me browse.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Why does every browser have Mozilla in the User Agent string?
Modded up for trifecta of Informative, 4 digit /. UID *and* use of "flag day" in the USENET Great Renaming context.
I thought /. was read by people using Linux, alas I am wrong(724 times proven wrong - till now). :)
I heart FF
Tested it and uninstalled it. Nothing excited at all.
It is a definitely indicator that Google already stepped into its middle-age stage and lost its vision and passion as pioneer in innovation.
Google is not supposed to waste talent and time to repeat others without any innovation. Those resources should be put into their core business to bring the search engine up to another level.
Google search engine is good but far from perfect. We need semantic search, natural language search, image search, video search and more.
As web developers, we actually hate new browser. It means we need extra work to make our web application compatible with new browser.
Sorry, Google. You are barking up the wrong tree.
Firefox is taken up by Corporations? Haven't seen it at any sites yet (outside of the usual Chairman because-he-was-advised-by-his-son situation) - I always assumed this was because of the lack of Group Policy controls - does FF have those now?
Progress won't stop, but it's the sort of progress that would have been nice when it mattered. I'm not an MS/ Windows fan in any way - you could say I make a living out of it not being perfect - but it's the same situation now as it was then; is it compatible? If you're doing websites that are FF-happy but IE-unfriendly (which there are lots of already), that's going to make you look super-cool at the expense of lost business...but the main problem here is *we're back to the incompatible browser fun*.
IE6 was a piece of crap because IE6 was (and IE7 is) the 'primary target'. You can sidestep a lot of that simply by running IE 64bit. And as for features and design - well, MS do have a rep for stealing all the best bits...
And how about this - if FF is so cool, why are the others (Apple, hell, Chrome) trying so hard to take a market share that's supposedly already won? Why are apple trying to trick me into installing Safari with their Quicktime Updater if it's so cool?
I guess the point I'm making (thanks for the troll points, slashdot)is that Windows (and then IE) unified everything - seperating browsers out again? Hmmm, that'll run smoothly. In three years' time, I'll be having to diagnose the chairmans' laptop because he's got five browsers loaded for different sites...
No Google Chrome. Which is a pity because I get tabs->browser crashing in Firefox fairly often on Javascript heavy sites and it'd be nice to not have my entire browser go pop.
I've been browsing with it tonight. I've multiple tabs opened using various multimedia plugins and I've never had such a smooth experience. On one occasion an instance of flash crashed - it didn't even take town the tab, I just press reload on the page and it recovered.
I did get a Vista BSOD at one point though - not sure if that was related.
I might be recorded as part of that 3% (maybe) but it's irrelevant since I can't get the application to actually run. I'm in WindowsXP and activating the icon makes the mouse cursor change briefly, and then nothing... no errors, no dialogs, no Chrome.
* Faster JavaScript: How much do you want to bet that V8 will quickly become part of WebKit.
SquirrelFish might object.
I could not use http://games.asobrain.com/ because it could not find the plugin. ???? I Think it is just Java. What is up with that?
Slowly waving my hand - "This is not the sig you are looking for."
Google Chrome isn't a browser, but a template on how FireFox, Safari, and other browsers should behave.
I take it you haven't actually used Chrome then. This isn't some proof-of-concept or kite flying exercise. This is a seriously-polished candidate for day-to-day browsing.
As soon as there's an ad blocker and an equivalent to FireBug, I'll be switching. It's that good, on launch day!
It seems to just load up all the plugins from FF and IE that it can. There's one or two obscure ones in my list that are IE only, which suggests its emulating parts of IE somehow.
Chrome does have some pretty good security features but their eula, especially section 10.2 seems to directly contradict their "open source" stance, saying: "You may not (and you may not permit anyone else to) copy, modify, create a derivative work of, reverse engineer, decompile or otherwise attempt to extract the source code of the Software or any part thereof, unless this is expressly permitted or required by law, or unless you have been specifically told that you may do so by Google, in writing"
Sadly this has no chance of happening.
Right, because you have so-called 'web designers' who do all kinds of awful crap to get browsers to render their lame pages to single-pixel accuracy. They try to make HTML behave like PDF, and since that's inherently impossible they throw in browser-specific hacks to get close to it. If your browser doesn't identify their pages are a jumbled mess.
Some of them have dumped the Web entirely and now deliver Flash over HTTP instead. Thank goodness (unless you're looking to buy a car!).
2
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
(1) No progress bar during downloads (2) No bookmarks button, don`t need a whole toolbar
How to uninstall Chrome? I'm not able to uninstall via Control panel or via start menu-> Chrome-> Uninstall!
Yes, several people have noted that it's Google Updater.
Now that we've established that, why does it have an API that allows a web page to request the unattended installation of software on your computer. That's an insane security risk, even if their security model is sound (after all, they are providing even less protection than ActiveX), and we don't know if the security model is good because neither the API nor the security model is documented.
Oh, speaking of ActiveX, apparently Google Chrome includes a shim to allow ActiveX components to execute. That's two really bad ideas for the price of one.
Though it's possible Apple's focus has changed now, when Safari for windows was first released I always got the impression it was there for the purpose of making sure web apps will work on the iPhone/Mac Safari and they didn't expect to get much market share.
(That will explain why it why it's so horribly OSXish on windows. I love mac apps but I hate mac apps on windows).
about:internets
don't clog the tubes!
-- Sex is the antonym of pringles. Once you pop it's time to stop.
Has anyone else noticed that every now and then Google Chrome sits there and churns, reading and writing heaps to the hard drive (not sure what files yet) and using about 20% CPU (AMD 64 3ghz, 4gb of RAM).
This is the only reason I stopped using it.
Once this issue is fixed, I think I'll use it again.
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Numbnutz? ... Oh, numnuh! N-U-M-N-U-H!
http://www.standandcount.com/the-fourth-musketeer/
The above site has in-depth review after one day of use with Google Chrome.
---- The geek shall inherit the Earth.
I love this thing already. It's actually way faster than Firefox. Amazing. I'm sure it's not done yet though.
Since I believe ActiveX to have shitty security, why would I be using that or want to use that?
Since you wouldn't be using it, why do you care that it exists in the browser?
And yes, it should refuse to support it. After all, it's not going to support it on linux and osx. Why should it cripple itself on windows?
Again, this misguided assumption that by supporting something, it's magically crippled. I'd say Flash is far more crippling than ActiveX, for more reasons than one.
But if you feel that strongly, wait a bit, or go fix it yourself -- the source is available.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Honestly how often do you actually use the home button?
I can't remember the last time I clicked it.
Now you mention it, I noticed there is no Home button on my firefox browser. I wonder if I removed it myself or it wasn't there in the first place..
This is very true, and other wise browsers (like iCab on macintosh, the one that invented ad filtering years before Mozilla/Firefox even were born) do this too. Which is among other one reason to believe the announced "browser share" figures are quite uncertain (at least, the number of "actual IE" must be lower)
Herve S.
Since I believe ActiveX to have shitty security, why would I be using that or want to use that?
Since you wouldn't be using it, why do you care that it exists in the browser?
Are you being deliberately thick? If ActiveX is a security problem, having it in your browser makes your browser insecure.
I have one huge issue with Google Chrome: it is this small thing called privacy.
I installed it and immediately turned my firewall to full logging to have a look at the traffic. Very enlightening: with every site you visit, a connection is initiated with Google servers! This thing is ALL THE TIME connected to Google.
If you don't believe me, check your own firewall!
OK, they will probably tell you it is for anti-Phishing and anti-badsites verifications, but the only result is that ALL YOUr NAVIGATION is transmitted to a company whose main revenues come from information gathering.
OK, Goodbye Chrome, already uninstalled
Firefox is taken up by Corporations? Haven't seen it at any sites yet
We have several large customers that want their website to work well in Firefox (which is just as well, because we prefer to test in Firefox), some of them have firefox on their desktop, and many corporate websites make use of the extra features that Firefox offers. My next employer, for example, makes a living building Firefox extensions for eBay, Amazon, and that sort of companies.
There's definitely corporate interest in Firefox (although it's obviously not nearly as big as their interest in IE).
Progress won't stop, but it's the sort of progress that would have been nice when it mattered.
What do you mean? Has progress suddenly ceased to matter? I'm quite happy with the last 10 years of progress in browser technology.
If you're doing websites that are FF-happy but IE-unfriendly (which there are lots of already), that's going to make you look super-cool at the expense of lost business...but the main problem here is *we're back to the incompatible browser fun*.
We've never left the "incompatible browser fun".
IE6 was a piece of crap because IE6 was (and IE7 is) the 'primary target'. You can sidestep a lot of that simply by running IE 64bit.
I have no idea what you're trying to say here, but IE6 was a piece of crap because it was built in the "piece of crap"-age of web browsers, and hasn't been improved since. Other browsers have improved quite a lot in those 10 years, and that's why they're better.
And as for features and design - well, MS do have a rep for stealing all the best bits...
But for 10 years they didn't, and that's why they fell behind. The only reason why IE marketshare remained big is that most people get IE standard with their PC, and aren't even aware of alternatives. Very few people who are aware of other browsers choose IE over those other browsers.
And how about this - if FF is so cool, why are the others (Apple, hell, Chrome) trying so hard to take a market share that's supposedly already won?
Nothing has been won yet. Like I said, progress is continuing. This is the big benefit of competition in an open market. (Well, almost open; MS does have an unfair advantage with oblivious used knowing nothing beyond the blue 'e' on their desktop.)
I guess the point I'm making (thanks for the troll points, slashdot)is that Windows (and then IE) unified everything - seperating browsers out again? Hmmm, that'll run smoothly.
Are you implying that IE6 runs more smoothly than, say, Opera? The only advantage of a browser integrated with the rest of the OS is for malware pushers. For normal users, there's simply no need for that. There's a need for a practical, user friendly, standards-compliant browser that performs well and doesn't crash.
Exact search functionality is the ability to search for an exact term. This is impossible with Google.
Why would I need it? Contrary to what Google thinks, I know what I'm searching for better than they do.
The software I use is called Cache. The error messages are in the format [ERRORMESSAGE]. Searching for Cache with a capital C and the exact formatting of the error message is distinct and useful. Google strips the []s and ignores case. Any result that does not contain the []s is not one I want. I put them in for a reason.
I don't care if you strip them out by default but give me a way to leave them in.
I find being offended by me offensive.
If ActiveX is a security problem, having it in your browser makes your browser insecure.
Is it impossible to disable?
And it seems to me that ActiveX isn't itself a security problem -- it's how it's used, and it's people hitting 'OK' to everything. Do you actually read dialog boxes before reflexively clicking on them?
It's possible I'm missing something...
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Does not seem to be a way to disable currently.
And yes ActiveX *IS* a security problem. There's no sandbox. If it is signed (and any stolen credit card can be used to "sign"/buy a cert - so where's that identity huh?), then any web page you go to can call an installed activex component.
Hence, the activex things that HP/Compaq and so on installed, that later turned out to have buffer overflows - well, guess what, any malicious page can check for, and call those locally installed activex components, and buffer overflow them, and you're owned.
In the past, it used to be that any signed activex will download automatically, unless you're browsing at the highest security level (oh yeah, even IE allows you to NOT let any activex run - why doesn't Chrome do that huh?) but I have no idea what Microsoft has done lately.
www.digicrime.com has some dated, but still useful criticisms of activex and authenticode
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/php/risks/search.php?query=authenticode has Bob Atkinson saying really stupid things about Authenticode, and being slapped silly by anyone with anything more than a cursory interest in security. Microsoft basically said - we don't care about security - a broken screen saver has a higher priority than any security issues. And this is from the guy who is supposed to be in charged of designing a *SECURE SYSTEM*????????
So, JUST SAY NO to ActiveX
We have several large customers that want their website to work well in Firefox (which is just as well, because we prefer to test in Firefox), some of them have firefox on their desktop, and many corporate websites make use of the extra features that Firefox offers. My next employer, for example, makes a living building Firefox extensions for eBay, Amazon, and that sort of companies.
There's definitely corporate interest in Firefox (although it's obviously not nearly as big as their interest in IE).
Yup - and I'll bet that's nearly all for targeting home users. Still, any company will pay developers a bit more to cover that 20% - but how about this - if you had to tell them that for some reason the pages/ site didn't work in either IE or FF on release day, which do you think they'd be most angry about?
Half the issue with IE is that it has to be locked down - it's far too open by default. This is easy on a domain level, but too many users simply don't think that they have to bother. Also - does your company enforce training on the password list within FF? Again, far too many users have installed this and then looked shocked when I show them all their passwords, in English in three clicks (yes you can password-protect the list - I have yet to visit a machine where a user has actually done this).
Progress won't stop, but it's the sort of progress that would have been nice when it mattered.
What do you mean? Has progress suddenly ceased to matter? I'm quite happy with the last 10 years of progress in browser technology.
I mean progress as in some actual competition for MS other than the likes of netscape suddenly deciding that everyone won't mind paying $30.
If you're doing websites that are FF-happy but IE-unfriendly (which there are lots of already), that's going to make you look super-cool at the expense of lost business...but the main problem here is *we're back to the incompatible browser fun*.
We've never left the "incompatible browser fun".
Sure, but you must admit that while IE was the 90% majority share, that was what you developed for. Now whith each browser rival comes a new set of problems, and incompatibility between each.
IE6 was a piece of crap because IE6 was (and IE7 is) the 'primary target'. You can sidestep a lot of that simply by running IE 64bit.
I have no idea what you're trying to say here, but IE6 was a piece of crap because it was built in the "piece of crap"-age of web browsers, and hasn't been improved since. Other browsers have improved quite a lot in those 10 years, and that's why they're better.
I was pointing out that IE was always going to be the highest-risk browser to use because it's the version that nearly all attacks are aimed at. Apple pretended for years that they were more secure - neglecting to mention that having a less than 5% share of the world market puts you on a pretty low risk factor in terms of what OS the nasties are going to attack. The cool part is, the same benefit translates over to IE 64-bit, and that's what the press isn't really cottoning onto yet - if you're browsing in 64-bit on a 64-bit OS, that's a huge amount of nasties you don't have to worry about - because they're almost all 32-bit (or designed to attack 32-bit dll's and the like). This will change as 64-bit becomes the norm, but for now, it's a easy step to take.
And as for features and design - well, MS do have a rep for stealing all the best bits...
But for 10 years they didn't, and that's why they fell behind. The only reason why IE marketshare remained big is that most people get IE standard with their PC, and aren't even aware of alternatives. Very few people who are aware of other browsers choose IE over those other browsers.
Actually that's not true - on a corporate level (as you say elsewhere), and on a home level, you're only really talking about techs - most non-tech home users will stick to IE sim
Chrome sure installs quietly - doesn't require admin rights and didn't even invoke UAC on Vista, and that is for installing an app that will be used for web browsing, not a very good thing in my book. It installs into the user-owned directories with minor registry changes which begs the question - how secure is it against a worm that runs under the same user privileges? There is nothing limiting its potential interaction with the code or config files for Chrome. I am looking for more info on this, feel free to point me to any helpful links.
There's no sandbox.
Not a problem, if it never gets run.
And how do you know? It seems they're trying to provide a sandbox for plugins, so I'd think they could manage something similar for ActiveX.
If it is signed (and any stolen credit card can be used to "sign"/buy a cert - so where's that identity huh?), then any web page you go to can call an installed activex component.
Sorry, but I don't buy it -- even MS-signed activex controls ask me first before they activate.
Hence, the activex things that HP/Compaq and so on installed, that later turned out to have buffer overflows
Which would imply a security hole in them, and not in ActiveX.
oh yeah, even IE allows you to NOT let any activex run - why doesn't Chrome do that huh?
Don't ask me, ask the developers. Better yet, add it yourself.
So, I wouldn't write Chrome off just yet.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Which would imply a security hole in them, and not in ActiveX
You need to educate yourself on Authenticode first before discussing whether ActiveX is insecure by design. I have already posted the links.
Google has certificates of trust, and has "Validated EXE files". Part of YOUR security settings, is to allow a "CLICK" as confirmation to a download.
You can tell your browser not to allow downloading from "Certified" and "Validated"... but than you will not get any updates, or even be prompted for any of those programs that "Expect" that since they paid for the "Certification" and "Validation"... and you select NOT to allow... they assume you don't want it, and never prompt.
First of all, Read The Fine Followups. Because it's not whatever you're talking about up above,it's something called the Google Update Service. And it can, in fact, download and install a program without clicking anything.
Second, no browser should ever do what you described above, ever, and Firefox (at least) doesn't do that, ever. What you're describing sounds like something Microsoft would come up with, yet another part of the toxic swamp that is Active X.
You need to educate yourself on Authenticode first before discussing whether ActiveX is insecure by design. I have already posted the links.
You've posted links to quite a long discussion. Educate me, then -- because I still don't see where I'm at risk if I simply click "no" to every ActiveX prompt.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Good for you. But who's talking about you? If you tell me you never used Outlook in Preview mode, and you never click on any hotlinks in Outlook, and never Preview any attachments, how is Outlook insecure, I'll tell you good for you too. But Outlook is still an insecure piece of crap (well, not so much in 2008).
When I posted the links, I am talking about the actual design itself as being something that cannot be secured. Why do you keep telling me *YOU* don't do X. Do I care about what you do or do not do?
Good for you. But who's talking about you?
So... I'm smart enough to click "no", and you're not?
Fine, I'll rephrase that -- I still don't see where anyone is at risk if they simply click "no" to every ActiveX prompt. And that is what I intended to communicate, using the first person as an example.
When I posted the links, I am talking about the actual design itself as being something that cannot be secured.
Unfortunately, you also posted links to long rants without much substance, and I still don't have a simple explanation of why ActiveX is so unsecurable.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
At first, I thought you were just being the devil's advocate.
But if you call the discussion on the Risks Digest as long rants without substance, then you are obviously a moron. Go enjoy sticking your head in the sand.
Before I terminate this conversation, I will point out one more thing. If you (or anyone reading this thread) ever want to find out more about why authenticode sucks, and why activex sucks (whether you personally click yes or no) from a security point of view, just use Google.
"Google Chrome. Day 2. Lucinda is in the diary room."
Rather sad that this was the phrase that came to mind on reading the title. I hate the show too, so it just proves that you can run, but you can't hide from Big Brother.
"Three eyes are better than one" -- Lieutenant Columbo
I just tried a javascript:alert(...) with a couple of Chrome tabs and I can tell you, the alert definitely locks the whole browser, not just the tab it's coming from. The only thing I can think of to keep annoying alerts from hijacking your browser is NoScript.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10035720-83.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5
Welcome Google to the world of the vulnerable software. I think they will find out how difficult it is to develop a robust software. Novice software developers will now realize that a robust, bug free software is a myth and Google's products are no exception.