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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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Google is a customer / partner of Mozilla. Mozilla offers a service (default search engine) and Google pays a fee for that service.
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.
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.