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.

Comments

Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[xmas2003]

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?

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[Mushdot]

Interesting to see whether it tails off in the next week or so though. I installed Chrome, had a quick test on a few websites then uninstalled it as I'm happy using Opera. I'll probably try it again a few months down the line when it has been improved/bugfixed etc. How many of that initial percentage will do the same as me I wonder?

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[purpledinoz]

I'm using Chrome right now, and so far, no issues. Actually, I really like it. When plugins are developed for Chrome, I can see myself using this as my primary browser. I did notice that gmail runs faster in Chrome. Also, the comic is quite entertaining for a geek...

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Wow, you found the comic entertaining? I've got some buckets of paint that are going up on walls soon. Want to buy some tickets for the drying? Only $5 for the lawn tickets, $20 for the reserved seating.

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[sapphire wyvern]

What does this part mean?

(KHTML, like Gecko)

Chrome doesn't use KHTML or Gecko, it uses WebKit (which is admittedly based on KHTML). But why are KHTML and Gecko mentioned in the user agent?

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[E IS mC(Square)]

It's a good start.
But in my 10 mins of usage, I have just realized how Firefox has spoiled my browsing habits!

Few points so far (remember - just 10 mins of use):
1. Cursor is going missing in Slashdot reply box if it is at the beginning of the line.
2. There are ads on ./!!
3. Great debugging tools for developers built-in.
4. Unlike Firefox, no option for smooth-scrolling (I find it mandatory for large pages - especially on ./)

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[42forty-two42]

Because some foolish web developers disable functionality if they don't see what they expect in the user-agent. As a result, every web browser in existence lies in their user agent string. IE claims to be "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0b; Windows NT 6.0)", for example

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[wvmarle]

Gmail running faster must be the JavaScript. From test results it seems that is the strongest point of the browser: JavaScript performance. Plus some other interesting features such as each tab it's own process. But JavaScript performance is of course what they are after: then Google Docs will run much much better, making it more attractive for people to start using.

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[Ed Avis]

It all started when idiotic websites started testing for 'Mozilla' in the User-agent string to make their sites break when you weren't using Netscape. So to keep compatibility, Microsoft decided to put 'Mozilla (compatible; blah blah)' in their User-agent string. The mess used by Chrome is the apex of User-agent stupidity, so far. All those strings are in there so that badly configured webservers won't serve the wrong content. The next browser that replaces Chrome will no doubt include this string and add even more words.

I wonder if Microsoft, Mozilla, Google, Opera, Apple and others could get together to declare a User-agent flag day when, on the first of January 2009, all User-agent strings would remove the historic cruft and just tell you the browser and version. Sadly this has no chance of happening.

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[Creepy]

yeah - I just tested it with a javascript heavy app and it seems very snappy. The same app doesn't even run correctly on Firefox 3 (it does on IE and Firefox 2, and I believe we filed a FF3 bug).

I have not done extensive testing (heck, it won't be supported, so there is no reason to), but it seems a good effort so far.

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[dc29A]

I got no issues with it as well, however, I will stay with Firefox for a few reasons:

(1) Adblock.
(2) NoScript.
(3) Automatically clear private information on close.

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[__aaxwdb6741]

What's dotslash?

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[AvitarX]

It won't be long, someone will use the code-base and make a less snooping type browser from it, adding it's new name. Perhaps, all shiny or some such.

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[mcvos]

Why can't servers simply return to ignoring browser identities and let browsers figure out for themselves what they can or cannot do?

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[The Great Pretender]

It's the Soviet Russian port of slashdot

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[Anonymous Coward]

What's dotslash?

It's the residual version of slashdot where all the adverts which were blocked from slashdot by adblock go. They have to go somewhere or the tubes would get full up and burst.

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[bunratty]

Mozilla doesn't have any cruft in its user agent string. The user agent string for my Firefox is
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008070208 Firefox/3.0.1
It truly is a Mozilla browser running on Windows using the Gecko layout engine.

I think Opera also doesn't have any cruft by default. However, it's easy to add the cruft by selecting Identify As... or Mask As... It's possible to add the cruft in Mozilla browsers, but you need to manually configure the cruft in about:config or install an extension.

I think it's up to Microsoft and Apple to take the steps to remove their cruft. I'm not sure if lesser used browsers will ever be able to remove their cruft completely, as they are often blocked or not properly recognized without it.

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[WK2]

Eventually, User Agent strings will be so convoluted that it will be impractically difficult to identify a browser by the User Agent string. Then webmasters won't bother with the discriminating code. And then browsers can have less convoluted User Agent strings. And then the cycle starts over.

Or maybe people will just stop writing the discrimination code on their own. It is certainly much less than it used to be. Custom solutions are less common than open source professional solutions.

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[teh kurisu]

You obviously missed Chrome's, which never writes that private information to your hard drive in the first place. Much more secure. Safari also does this, has done for a while.

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[teh kurisu]

Add 'Incognito feature' to that post.

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[rsclient]

Actually, no, it started much earlier than that :-)

Once upon a time, they made "web browsers". Well, actually, no, what they made was hardware: a hunk of electronics, a keyboard, and a CRT (like a monitor from the days before LCDs). And they called them "terminals", and wired them to the computers. And the software on the computer would sniff the terminal to figure out what type it was so that the correct HTML (I mean, "escape sequences") could be sent. Esc [ 4 m, for example, was "bold". Esc [ 0 m meant make it plain again.

Only it turns out there was one popular terminal, the VT100 from the ever-present Digital Equipment Corporation ("DEC". Later they called themselves "Digital"). (Only it wasn't actually popular; the actual popular version was the VT102). So every minor terminal maker -- and there were hundreds -- would lie, and claim to be a VT100.

How do I know this? Because I worked on RS/1, an interactive statistical package and had to support those hundreds of terminals. And what a pain it was.

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[FredFredrickson]

Mouse gestures and Transfer manager (not firefox's annoying popup box, and chrome's annoying dissapearing auto download to who-knows-where) will keep me with opera. it's all so built in, no reason to use anything else.

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[Varun Soundararajan]

you are a spoilt unix user its /. and not ./

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[Rob Kaper]

You obviously missed Chrome's, which never writes that private information to your hard drive in the first place.

Maybe not to my own..

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[antic]

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!?

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[Fumus]

I find firefox's plugin download statusbar better than opera's seperate tab.
And I was baffled at the opera mouse gestures since you can't customise them. Add-ons aren't that bad or troublesome, really.

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[g0dsp33d]

2. There are ads on ./!!

There are adds on run last command?

Or is this a clever way of buffer overrun for /.ers reading off of lynx?

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[dash2]

Right. And that's why they have a 3% market share after one day. If only they had released it for Linux, then they could have had a 50% market share... of the 3% of desktops that run Linux.

You fail, Google! Put parent poster in charge of all your marketing at once.

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[nigels]

Two significant gaps for me:
- No AdBlock!
- No cookie and/or blocking.

Uh oh.

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[Sentry21]

Well, in chronological order...

IE pretends to be Mozilla, Gecko pretends to be Mozilla, KHTML pretends to be Gecko and Mozilla, AppleWebKit pretends to be KHTML, Gecko, and Mozilla, Safari pretends to be AppleWebKit, KHTML, Gecko and Mozilla, and Chrome pretends to be Safari, AppleWebKit, KHTML, Gecko, and Mozilla.

Of course everything from WebKit on is pretty much accurate, since they all use the same rendering engine.

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[Sentry21]

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.

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[dintech]

This is Google so think of their business model. Why would they want to block ads?

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[memco]

Seriously consider a newer technique.

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[IntlHarvester]

As a result, every web browser in existence lies in their user agent string.

Opera doesn't.

... any more. For years Opera claimed to be MSIE

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[mcvos]

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.

I'd definitely use it.

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[Nurgled]

The OS can be used to provide a download specific to your OS.

Or, in the case of Google Chrome, it can be used to make it far more difficult to download the Windows version when you're not on a Windows system.

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[fbjon]

You can customize the gestures, actually, it's in the shortcuts section of the preferences.

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[Machtyn]

It was a meta-review.

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[COMON$]

Ditto! Wow you actually do find useful stuff on /. Only too me 6 years to find that out.... :)

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[Yvan256]

Won't somebody think of the ads!

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[Macka]

Take Apple's new MobileMe web site for example. Try browsing it from Firefox 3 on Linux and it redirects you to an "unsupported browser" page, where you're politely informed that you need to use a supported browser: Safari 3 or "Firefox 2 or greater (Mac / PC)".

Well sometimes I use Firefox 3 on a bloody PC, what's unsupported about that. Ok it's Linux (various flavours) and not Windows, but does Firefox on Windows implement JavaScript differently to Firefox on Linux? I'm pretty sure it doesn't.

This sux, and Apple should know better!

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[acvh]

"When you hit Ctrl+N the window that pops up is a blank window. In IE it's a clone of the current window, which is far more useful."

funny, but when forced to use IE, I HATE when it does that. Why would I want another window with the same page in it? I want a NEW window, that I will cause to be populated with a url of my choice.

"That and the downloads get cancelled if you close the browser - in IE they are seperate processes which live past the browser being closed."

funny, again. When I close an application I want it to close; go ahead and ask me to confirm, but don't pretend to close and keep doing stuff.

and, NO, I never feel guilty blocking ads, just as I don't feel guilty skipping commercials on my DVR, or not reading ads in newspapers, or throwing out those little cards in magazines. advertising is, by its nature, hit or miss. consider me a "miss".

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[antic]

I know that's a standard joke here (my UID is lowish after all), but no matter how many dupes, bad summaries and shoddy Idle stories I see, it doesn't mean that I don't hope for better going forward.

Someone else sells the ad space, right? Users submit the content. Others work on the codebase. How hard is it for the editors to check over what they're putting their name/alias to?

I faithfully went to see each review hoping for something insightful, and one was down (hard to avoid), one was benchmarks and not too interesting other than that, and the third was simply embarrassing Made For AdSense junk from someone who, as I said, hadn't even spent a couple of minutes to download the product itself.

Chrome Day II: Shitter than the first day.

A couple of annoying things I've found so far

[rallymatte]

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

Re:A couple of annoying things I've found so far

[RulerOf]

No, it's not just you. Crossing DNS and HTTP is historically a very, very bad idea. Unfortunately though, it does improve ease of use for Joe "PEBKAC" Sixpack. Therefore, it'll probably end up being the more popularly desired behavior...

That said though, when I'm creating static links for use in a shortcut, document, nslookup or whatnot, I tend to use FQDN's myself. It's pretty much only in the browser that I cheat like that.

I speculate, however, that this conflict of interests is simply a result of the underlying technologies (dns/http) simply being used today for purposes beyond the scope of their original design.

NetApplications shows 1% share

[bunratty]

According to NetApplications, Chrome has around 1% usage share. That's pretty good for a browser still only in beta.

Chrome Eval

[Ethanol-fueled]

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.

Re:Chrome Eval

[heptapod]

http://tech.slashdot.org/help

Click "Sections"

Find "Idle" and tick the radio tab under the 'no' sign.

???

No more idle.slashdot.org on the front page!!!

Re:Chrome Eval

[NatasRevol]

And only for Windows....

Re:Chrome Eval

[arevos]

That day would also spell the end of the web. Most sites exist because of ad revenue, you know.

Adblock does not, by default block Google text ads that appear alongside search results. Nor do I have any desire to block them, because they are often useful and relevant.

The problem isn't with ads. The problem is the low signal-to-noise ratio for most online ads.

I'll stick with Firefox

[Massacrifice]

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.

Re:I'll stick with Firefox

[Tribbin]

1. The memory tool that displays per-tab mem usage.
2. Sensible memory management.
3. Fast?
4. Sandboxed tabs.

Re:I'll stick with Firefox

[Merlin42]

Honestly how often do you actually use the home button?

I can't remember the last time I clicked it.

Re:I'll stick with Firefox

[creepynut]

It's not on by default, but check out the options. On the Basics tab "Show home button on toolbar"

Re:I'll stick with Firefox

[R2.0]

"No "home" button.

Seriously. How the fuck can you release a browser without a base functionality that is expected by every person who has used one to date."

Funny - not only do I set "Home" as a blank page, I remove the home button from the toolbar. All it is is another bookmark. I could see the point where a person would want to return to the same site periodically throughout the day, but with tabbed browsing it's irrelevant - I just leave a tab open.

My guess is that user research showed that very FEW people use the Home button on a regular basis, and so Google didn't turn it on by default.

Re:I'll stick with Firefox

[Tumbleweed]

1. The memory tool that displays per-tab mem usage.
2. Sensible memory management.
3. Fast?
4. Sandboxed tabs.

As far as I'm concerned, point 4 is the killer feature for me of Chrome. I won't use it as my default browser until several of my must-have extensions are availble for it (via Google Gears, I assume), but that's the kind of infrastructure planning that's hurting Firefox in a big way. Adobe's buggy Flash player shouldn't be ABLE to crash the browser, or even temporarily lock it up! The Flash specs are all open now, so hopefully one of the open source projects will soon be able to update everything they couldn't reverse engineer and get something decent out the door, but if not, Chrome will surely mature within a few months to have most of the functionality I need on a MUCH better thought-out platform than FF.

Re:I'll stick with Firefox

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

Worst "profit" joke ever.

Chrome is spyware!

[Anonymous Coward]

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".

Re:Chrome is spyware!

[stickytar]

Goto "Under the Hood" in options and uncheck the anonymous statistics submission. Alternatively you can go to your Services and set the Google Updater Service to Disabled. Easy enough.

Re:Chrome is spyware!

[aardwolf64]

Ok, how about this one? I uninstalled Chrome, and GoogleUpdate is still running... Time to kill it, delete it, and remove it from the registry. It's at:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\GoogleUpdate

Re:Chrome is spyware!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget to delete the scheduled task. Installer adds an administrator task which starts GoogleUpdate whenever the machine is idle.

May not be evil, but it's certainly lame.

Google spying on you

[edelholz]

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!

Re:Google spying on you

[flynns]

So, uh, what happens if someone else logs into their google account, then?

Re:Google spying on you

[Sobrique]

Well, I guess this'll make getting a job at Google interesting...

Re:Google spying on you

[spyrochaete]

Matt Cutts denies that Google spies on your browsing and form submissions in this post on his blog.

Re:Google spying on you

[edelholz]

Read further on Google's privacy policy for Chrome.

# When you type URLs or queries in the address bar, the letters you type are sent to Google so the Suggest feature can automatically recommend terms or URLs you may be looking for. If you choose to share usage statistics with Google and you accept a suggested query or URL, Google Chrome will send that information to Google as well. You can disable this feature as explained here.
# If you navigate to a URL that does not exist, Google Chrome may send the URL to Google so we can help you find the URL you were looking for. You can disable this feature as explained here.
# Google Chrome's SafeBrowsing feature periodically contacts Google's servers to download the most recent list of known phishing and malware sites. In addition, when you visit a site that we think could be a phishing or malware site, your browser will send Google a hashed, partial copy of the site's URL so that we can send more information about the risky URL. Google cannot determine the real URL you are visiting from this information. More information about how this works is here.
# Your copy of Google Chrome includes one or more unique application numbers. These numbers and information about your installation of the browser (e.g., version number, language) will be sent to Google when you first install and use it and when Google Chrome automatically checks for updates. If you choose to send usage statistics and crash reports to Google, the browser will send us this information along with a unique application number as well. Crash reports can contain information from files, applications and services that were running at the time of a malfunction. We use crash reports to diagnose and try to fix any problems with the browser.

So they send them the URLs I visit and there's an unique id. And I'm still to lazy to check out the source about how it's used...

Re:Google spying on you

[Simon (S2)]

I posted this earlier today, but I feel I have to post this again, as it is really important people know what they get in to using this browser:

In metrics_service.cc [chromium.org]
it sends everything you do in the toolbar to
static const char kMetricsURL[] =

        "https://toolbarqueries.google.com/firefox/metrics/collect";
It collects everything and sends it to google servers, on startup and on shutdown.

// Ongoing log typically
// contain very detailed records of user activities (ex: opened tab, closed
// tab, fetched URL, maximized window, etc.) In addition, just before an
// ongoing log is closed out, a call is made to gather memory statistics. Those
// memory statistics are deposited into a histogram, and the log finalization
// code is then called. In the finalization, a call to a Histogram server
// acquires a list of all local histograms that have been flagged for upload
// to the UMA server.
//
// When the browser shuts down, there will typically be a fragment of an ongoing
// log that has not yet been transmitted. At shutdown time, that fragment
// is closed (including snapshotting histograms), and converted to text. Note
// that memory stats are not gathered during shutdown, as gathering *might* be
// too time consuming. The textual representation of the fragment of the
// ongoing log is then stored persistently as a string in the PrefServices, for
// potential transmission during a future run of the product.

WHAT THE FUCK. Keep ff ftw.
If your privacy means nothing to you just use Chrome.

Re:Google spying on you

[Sentry21]

'Yeah, we force the Google Updater on you, we give your Chrome install a unique ID, and we associate that with your Google account so that *theoretically* we could track you anywhere you went, logged in or not, but we wouldn't do that! Honest! You'll just have to trust me on this one, and haven't we, at Google, earned your trust? Actually, looking through your recent e-mail conversations, IM conversations, blog posts, slashdot posts, and usenet posts, it seems as though you are becoming disillusioned with Google. We assure you that we will do everything within our power to change that, no matter how much you may resist.

Good evening, and thank you for choosing Google, 'the choice that is no choice'.

local anecdote

[pohl]

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.

Re:local anecdote

[Lendrick]

For me, it's not about WebKit at all. Chrome has two features I've wanted for ages: One, separate tabs are separate processes, which means that alert windows and that kind of crap are all tab-modal instead of application-modal. That way one little alert window can't tie up five tabs. The other thing is the JavaScript execution speed, which is nice.

That said, I'm not 100% sold on it. I like Firefox, and there are big JavaScript improvements coming down the pipe in the near future. Hopefully the tab feature will be picked up by Firefox in the near future as well, but we'll see... it may require a major rewrite.

Re:local anecdote

[Zoidbergo]

I would characterize Chrome as "Safari for Windows done right."

There were massive mistakes Apple made (out of arrogance or incompetence, I'm not sure), when releasing Safari for Windows:

- Apple style Font rendering. Having to switch your eyes between Safari's anti-aliasing and ClearType on a regular basis starts to hurt your eyes, one seems blurry in comparison to the other.
- Safari didn't follow many of the standard windows app behaviors, another snafu. You can't stuff OS X app behaviors down the throats of Windows users, and vice versa.
- It also had an incredibly slow startup time. (Although it would render extremely fast)

Contrast this to Chrome, which renders text using ClearType and windows font rendering, behaves like a windows app, starts up really fast.

It's not even like I'm bashing Apple for a bad port. iTunes for windows was ported really well, it follows (for the most part, except menus) the windows UI conventions and font rendering, so it feels more like a Windows app.

(By the way, I'm primarily a Mac user and use Safari regularly on the Mac)

Yuck

[Bazman]

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...]

Re:just curiousity

[Kagura]

Google Chrome: Day 2, article number four. :)

Things I like, Things I don't

[Zerth]

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.

I was impressed, but not switching

[halivar]

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.

Reviews suck

[Phylarr]

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.

do not pass go. do not collect $200

[the_B0fh]

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

Chrome's source

[Anonymous Coward]

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 ;-)

Noticably the fastest browser.

[tjstork]

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.

Re:Noticably the fastest browser.

[dannannan]

Not just Office -- it's the whole desktop environment. Chrome is Google's way of telling everyone that the web really is ready for primetime app development. The roadblocks of the past, like poor performance, second class UI, hacky little scripts taping everything together, etc. are not fundamental limitations imposed by the web; they were shortcomings of the legacy web browsers.

Google is trying to get good, self-respecting developers to target the web with their apps, even for traditionally "local" apps.

Look at some of the mainstays of the traditional local app platform. Chrome's approach to tabbed browsing is one step away from replacing the Windows Taskbar. Your app gets listed in the Chrome Task Manager, too. A lot like Windows Task Manager, eh? Except it's more useful. Even the hotkey to open is simpler. SHIFT+ESC instead of CTRL+SHIFT+ESC.

Re:How do they do it?

[pohl]

Did they use large chunks of other open-source browsers? If so, which ones?

Yes, they chose the WebKit rendering engine, which is the same one you find in browsers like Konqueror, Safari, and Google's own Android platform.

blinking favicon?

[ftobin]

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.

DO NOT READ 3rd link

[FiloEleven]

It's not malicious or anything, it's just very, very poor writing and will make you angry.

Re:DO NOT READ 3rd link

[D Ninja]

There was an article?

Re:Firefox Fanboys Are Shitting Themselves

[David Gerard]

"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."

Google update service installed without choice

[kriston]

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.

One click install????

[argent]

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.

function installApp() {
    if (isOneClickEnabled() && _GU_isOneClickAvailable()) {
      installViaOneClick();
    } else if (isClickOnceEnabled() && _GU_isClickOnceAvailable()) {
      installViaClickOnce();
    } else {
      installViaDownload();
    }
}

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.

Use privoxy to block ads...

[iamstuffed]

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.

The jewel in this software is V8

[kriston]

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.

Re:The jewel in this software is V8

[0232793]

Hopefully Firefox will not use V8 given that TraceMonkey in the upcoming Firefox 3.1 is faster - http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roadmap/archives/2008/09/tracemonkey_update.html

People don't get it

[Itchyeyes]

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.

General impressions

[shutdown -p now]

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?

THERE IS A HOME Button

[cyclocommuter]

You just have to enable it... It's under Options > Basic Tab > Home Page > Check show home page on toolbar option.

I have nothing to contribute to this discussion

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

But that's not going to stop me posting to slashdot because I'm part of the *me* generation and I think my opinions need to be heard by everyone.

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!

Re:Incognito mode actually isn't really so...

[E IS mC(Square)]

Google still has your browsing history nicely tracked, stored on their computer, available for subpoena etc.

Do they say that in that link you provided? In fact, the link says something opposite. And they make it pretty clear what is sent to Google, when and how to disable it.

If you want to continue with FUD, that's fine by me, but you can help yourself by not weakening your own arguments.

Re:Incognito mode actually isn't really so...

[thatseattleguy]

I call shenanigans on the parent posting. This is FUD, and mis-informed FUD at that. There's no evidence that Chrome sends anything but the *hash* of the site you type in the address bar, and does not send your browsing history anywhere at all - whether in incognito mode or not.

See Lauren Weinstein's Privacy Forum posting here and here. Quotes:

Yesterday I posted some thoughts on the privacy policy associated with Google's new "Chrome" Web browser, and gave the open-source product -- which has a great deal of potential -- an overall thumbs-up based on current information...

and

I'm afraid that I'm much more concerned about the privacy policy for Microsoft's new "Internet Explorer 8" browser (which of course is not open source). While overall functionality and touted privacy improvements appear to be similar in many ways to Chrome, some of the specific privacy-related decisions in IE8 are very different from Chrome -- and not necessarily in a good way. One in particular is significantly alarming...

This guy does privacy issues and privacy policy for a living. I've been reading his analysis for years, and I give his opinions great weight.

Does Google Want Chrome to Win the Browser Wars?

[qazwart]

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.

not web developers, they are IE-developers

[pbhj]

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.

The perfect Slashdot article.

[Valdrax]

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!