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Chrome On the Way For Mac and Linux
TornCityVenz writes "I've seen many complaints in the feedback on Slashdot every time an article on Google's Chrome browser hits; the calls for true cross platform availability have struck me as a valid complaint. So now it seems Google is answering your calls, promising in this article on CNET a deadline for Mac and Linux support." I'd really like to not care about the name of the browser I'm using, but the mental cost of switching could be high for someone used to particular Firefox extensions, unless or until they can all be expected to work seamlessly with Chrome.
Having been checking out the incredibly high quality Google Chrome code and what it is doing it is understandable that there was going to be a delay for other platforms.
The reason Chrome is so much faster than other browsers - especially even after days of constant webbrowsing is all the platform specific work with memory protection and threading.
I've honestly been using the Chrome source code as a tremendous learning tool to get up to speed on how to write modern threaded application code.
The delay will be worth it when you get your hands on it. Switching to Chrome had that feeling of running your old apps on a new and faster computer. It just feels so smooth no matter how many tab or windows are open or how much Javascript is running in the background.
Google "hopes to release versions for Mac OS X and Linux by the first half of the year". That's the closest thing TFA gives to a date, and Google hardly promises anything. The summary is somewhat misleading.
See it there, a white plume over the battle - A diamond in the ash of the ultimate combustion - My panache. --Cyrano
They wrote a Windows wrapper around cross platform libraries. Then they had the nerve to deny it, even when anybody who looked at the source code immediately after initial release could see the truth of the matter.
A lot of the core components were basically Windows-specific. They had to either wrap them, or rewrite the UI, which is what is taking the time.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
The browser shell is raw win32. No abstraction or other platform considerations.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
It's open source.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
SRWare Iron (A modified version of Chrome) has built in adblocking, but it's nowhere near as good as what Adblock provides.
Via an older article on Cnet I found the Chrome extensions document, spotlighted on November 29th by Google programmer Aaron Boodman. From the document:
Use Cases
The following lists some types of extensions that we'd like to eventually support:
This list is non-exhaustive, and we expect it to grow as the community expresses interest in further extension types.
Emphasis mine.
Most people install FilterSet-G with AdBlock. It blocks Google text ads by default
The Anti-Blog
Except that StarOffice is a paid version of OpenOffice, while Chrome doesn't use many (if any) code from Firefox, not even the rendering engine. Besides, Mozilla isn't "owned" by Google, they receive funds in exchange of providing Google as the default search engine.
Dilbert RSS feed
Funny you should mention that, Opera has all those out of the box.
-AdBlock ("content blocker")
-Foxmarks (Opera Link)
-Greasemonkey (User JS)
-Firebug (Dragonfly)
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
Have advertisers sued VCR manufacturers, Tivo, etc?
Yes.
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2001/11/48065
Chrome codebase is not "cross platform", in that you can't just go ahead and compile it for Linux. They are still implementing a Gtk ui - see
Or, to put it another way, Google's entire contribution to the Chrome browser was a non-crossplatform, non-portable UI. V8 and WebKit were done by others and are cross-platform. Google knows their browser is just polish on other people's success with WebKit and V8 which is why they stole the name "chrome" from Mozilla.
There's basically one thing that makes Chrome special and that's running tabs in a separate process (for plugins, nspluginwrapper already does this).
Google gets a lot more credit for Chrome than they deserve. If it wasn't done by Google it would be hardly even notable.
Bad idea. Qt apps just don't feel right on the Mac. Case in point: Google Earth.
Free Manning, jail Obama.
{Free,Net}BSD has linux binary compatibility I think. A linux port should be running on them. Opera flies that way I think.
If I were Google (that is a great sentence) I would base it on QT 4. Fast, customizable, cross-platform, modern and integrated with WebKit.
Qt is nice, but its licensing prevents Google from using it in this way. To use Qt, Google would need to either pay for a license, but it wouldn't be transferable to others, or Chrome would need to be GPLed. Google goes to great effort to license it's code under the Apache/BSD/etc. licenses whenever possible, as it considers this better for it's business (and that's a reasonable position to take).
Until Nokia relicenses Qt to something like the LGPL - many of us would welcome that! - GTK will remain the library of choice in situations like this.
...which is why they stole the name "chrome" from Mozilla.
Sorry to ruin this with fact, but "chrome" is jargon that has been around for a very long time. I encountered it long before Netscape even had a product.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
Google is a customer / partner of Mozilla. Mozilla offers a service (default search engine) and Google pays a fee for that service.
Well, according to this they used Windows' own HTTP protocol implementation for the first version - they've now written their own.
Which is one of the major reasons I had problems using Chrome as a default browser. Not having something like the "foxyproxy" plugin was bad enough, but dealing with Chrome's hooks into the Windows/IE proxy settings was really annoying.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
No, but they have explicitly stated that they'll have extension support in Chrome, and will do nothing to stop a port of AdBlock.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Google bought Google Earth from Keyhole. I doubt their core teams use QT much.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Qt is nice, but its licensing prevents Google from using it in this way. To use Qt, Google would need to either pay for a license,
This would be no problem. Fact is, Google already does exactly this for other products.
but it wouldn't be transferable to others,
??? What are you talking about? Companies sell, eg transfer, software developed with Qt all the time, it's what is made for after all. Obviously the license allow it.
or Chrome would need to be GPLed. Google goes to great effort to license it's code under the Apache/BSD/etc. licenses whenever possible, as it considers this better for it's business (and that's a reasonable position to take).
No need for GPL, you can freely use Qt with a wide range of open source licenses like Apache/BSD/etc. Please check your facts. http://doc.trolltech.com/4.4/license-gpl-exceptions.html
Uh, V8 was not "done by others." That was all Google.
If you'd like to get a preview of the Mac release, there are up-to-date builds available here so you don't have to compile it yourself.
You'd have better luck porting the Linux version. The Mac OS X user interface API is very different from anything that runs on BSD.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
Incest.
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
The only reason Pidgin can't do it is that they haven't supported it yet (and probably won't, because the devs are very stuck up).
Ever heard of libjingle? It's the "video and voice" component of Google Talk, which is basically an extension to XMPP.
Any client that supports libjingle (I use Empathy, see screenshot) can do voice calls to Google Talk users.
Companies sell, eg transfer, software developed with Qt all the time, it's what is made for after all. Obviously the license allow it.
Not what I meant by 'transfer'. You can copy the software, but not transfer the license. In other words, you can distribute your product, but others are not free to fork your product and redistribute it. The forkers would need to purchase a license as well.
No need for GPL, you can freely use Qt with a wide range of open source licenses like Apache/BSD/etc Please check your facts. http://doc.trolltech.com/4.4/license-gpl-exceptions.html [trolltech.com]
I am aware of this, but not entirely sure about what it means. After all, you can already link GPL code with BSD code (that's how the BSDs use ext2/3 code, for example). That's because the BSD license is compatible with the GPL, which means BSD can be relicensed to GPL - the overall project is then considered as GPL. The same is true for almost all the licenses in the list there (except perhaps for Apache, last I heard).
In other words, at worst Google would need to GPL the entire app. But even so they could dual-license their own code, under the GPL and the BSD, so they could still say the code was BSD in a sense. And at best, they could just release it under the BSD, as it's compatible anyhow. Yet, in both cases they are releasing a product with a lot of GPL code in it - Qt itself - which means it can't be forked in a non-GPL manner (there are other implications as well). This is something that I believe Google wants to avoid when possible. With the Linux kernel, it isn't avoidable - there is no replacement. But GTK is a respectable replacement for Qt, and isn't GPL (it's LGPL). The same thinking goes on in a lot of other places, leading to high adoption rates for GTK. Again, Nokia can stop this, and I wish they would, simply by relicensing Qt under the LGPL.
Talking about not caring about the name of a browser, I'm still offended that they went for a name directly from Mozilla's codebase, chrome. They read a page from Microsoft it seems.
But... the future refused to change.
I've never experienced any problems with pidgin, and I've been using it since way back when it was still "gaim" and slackware 7. The linux versions had no problems for me at all... maybe you should look into what you're doing with it.
"Some men just want to watch the world burn..."
I'll throw this in before some Firefox fanboy gets in with the usual "but in Opera it's only manual"...
http://www.fanboy.co.nz/adblock/opera/
Works at least as good as AdBlock + any proper list, light (no extension needed after all/uses build-in Opera features) and leaves almost no empty spaces.
One that hath name thou can not otter