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The Future of Google Chrome
TRNick writes "Lars Bak, who heads up development of Google Chrome's cornerstone javascript engine, talks about why Google is so focused on in-browser javascript performance, the role Chrome has played in driving up javascript performance in other browsers, and why it's taking so long to introduce support for third-party extensions. 'The web is becoming an integral part of the computer and the basic distinction between the OS and the browser doesn't matter very much any more,' he says."
Being uninstalled?
As we've seen with Windows and IE.... the distinction between browser and and OS matters quite a bit. That is if you don't want to get accused of being and evil monopoly.
You can't take the sky from me.
is that its future per se doesn't matter.
What Google cares about is that there is a least one standards-compliant browser out there with fast javascript. Sure Google might have a slight preference for people using Chrome over another browser with fast javascript (like, say, Safari), but what really matters to them is that they are able to deliver web apps that are fast enough to be reasonable competitors to traditional desktop apps.
Chrome is a combination insurance policy/open-source soapbox whose purpose is to make sure that Google apps (and other web apps) will always have a browser to run on.
Expected time to finish is 1 hour and 60 minutes.
I guess it works if you picture Google as taking on a Borg-like mentality.
That is UK-English, it seems TechRadar is a British site. I agree, it sounds really strange and illogical if you are used to US-English.
Circumcision is child abuse.
I would rather have the browser guys work on getting something OTHER than javascript into the browsers. Javascript is getting better, but you only polish a turd so much.
With compilers like GWT, Pyjamas, and HotRuby, I sometimes wonder if JavaScript is starting to emerge as a "portable assembly language" for dynamic languages, the way C is often used by higher-level language compilers. I mean, when it comes down to it JS is basically just hash tables and closures, some of the basic elements required for dynamic language execution.
Given a fast-as-C javascript engine, you could have a pretty decent VM to share between several dynamic languages, and due to JS's dynamic nature compiling these languages to JS is fairly trivial.
I mentioned this once on reddit and someone called it a 'braindead' approach. That may be true. I'm not sure. He also pointed out that many things you'd have to do to get languages like Ruby running in JS would require passing the context as a function argument, which he claimed would probably bypass any potential optimization by the JS compiler. Not sure about that either.
But I find it really interesting (and cool!) that JS's heavy web presence is giving it such attention in both the "compiler backend" and optimization departments simultaneously. Whether it's a braindead approach or not, it sure seems to be drawing a lot of interest lately.
it sounds really strange and illogical if you are used to US-English
Yeah, the normal and logical may seem that way if you're used to something so strange and illogical as US English - putting 'z' in almost every word, and I mean, MM/DD/YYYY? come on!
Just kidding... we love how you've butchere^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hembraced our language :)
How come it's Windows-only still if the browser is all that matters and the OS isn't, Google?
So Javascript is becoming what Java should have been, the run-anywhere language, if only Java hadn't been such a superficially ugly language and goddam slow - the browser is the equivalent of the JRE.
If all JRE's (browsers) are alike in syntax, semantics, security and libraries then the faster one will become the shell of choice to run these cloudy, ajaxy apps. And we'll partying like it's 1980 with browser-and-cloud architectures replacing greenscreen-and-mainframe.
It's a shame that, like you said, javascript is superficially pretty but deeply broken (namespaces? proper, native OO? etc.)
And I'm sure that the germans love how you've butchered theirs!
I disagree.
The problem with javascript is still browser incompabilities, and that would not lessen with other scriping languages.
We embraced during the colonial period. After the revolution we extended(and had Noah Webster ram our extensions through a standards body to give them an air of legitimacy).
Don't worry, nothing bad could possibly happen next.
I like how the Japanese do it: year/month/day.
Circumcision is child abuse.
I use it as my main browser. I've got a portable Firefox and (of course) IE, but I only fire them up when something isn't working right in Chrome. This is happening less and less.
YES!
YYYY/MM/DD makes so much more sense, as it means that you get sane sorting when ordering using a computer.
DD/MM/YYYY results in a mess of dates, whereas YYYY/MM/DD always orders dates in chronological order.
I hate printers.
We're gonna tax your coffee, you freeloaders!
To be fair, we've butchered Latin as well as German.
incidentally, you may be unaware of the distinction made in the UK between pants and trousers, i.e. that pants are what one wears under trousers.
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
Call me ignorant, or rash, or just living on the edge, but I actually use it on a daily basis for *almost everything. I haven't installed FF on this (brand new) machine and don't plan on it simply due to its bloat and slowness - things it didn't have when it was introduced.
Chrome introduced features which IE and FF either have since included as well or are planned for future releases. I am certainly aware that Chrome is quite limited in some areas, but in the end its speed, flexibility, small memory footprint, and physical layout (minimal intrusion into the web page display area) make it my first choice despite its drawbacks. Feel free to correct me where I may be ignorant (seriously, no sarcasm intended).
*Every now and then I find a web app that's just not well coded (mostly due to funky CSS that's poorly formed) that works or at least displays properly in IE but not Chrome. C'est la vie.
For conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it
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The problem is people still fail to grasp the difference between Javascript and DOM and CSS manipulation....
All Javascript engines have been ECMA compliant for 5 years now. Javascript incomparability is not the problem, it is the DOM and CSS incompatabilities.
"resistance is futile, you will be assimilated"
i think slashdot needs to update its icons
the borg bill gates icon is threatening only circa 1996. microsoft of 2009 is on a real decline
meanwhile, the company of all-domination in 2009 is obviously google. we need a remake of the google icon for slashdot to include the borg cube
and the microsoft icon should be remade with just a non-borg bill gates holding a jar of mosquitoes
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This is why Superman dresses as he does. He landed in America, and was told to wear his pants on the outside.
Well, mystery solved! I love it when it is that easy :) I guess the American way is slightly lazier... "February second, two-thousand and nine" is 2 fewer words. Is that lazier or more optimized?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
ISO standard is YYYY-MM-DD which I use for documents when I need it. Good for sorting.
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
"incidentally, you may be unaware of the distinction made in the UK between pants and trousers, i.e. that pants are what one wears under trousers."
So what the hell are under-pants in the UK then? Do they go under your pants?
You guys wear 3 layers of pant?
Do you wear a pair of pants or more? So confusing.
All I know is if you wear pants under your trousers and that's all... well then you aren't wearing underwear and that's nasty.
It seems to me that the browser will not be able to replace the desktop ... or even claim to be an "OS" in anything but the most attenuated sense... until we have the ability to use something other than javascript in a reasonably cross-platform way. Imagine for a second that Windows could only be programmed in Visual Basic, or Linux could only be programmed in C. We'd absolutely hate it, and we'd be right to hate it.
Now, granted, any given development platform generally displays a preference for a given programming language. If you're going to develop Gnome applications, you're probably going to use C, if Cocoa, then Objective C, etc. But right now the situation in the web space is one of total locking to Javascript, which isn't even all that good of a language.
What I really want to see is a reasonable degree of cross-platform support for the use of a reasonable variety of object-oriented scripting languages embedded in the browser, as plugins. So I can develop web pages in HTML + Ruby, or HTML + Python, or HTML + Javascript, as is best suited for my application. The hooks are there in the HTML specs to do this, but browser implementations don't seem to have caught up.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
it's faster to develop for a single platform than to use a shotgun approach.
Yeah, but telling your developers that they can develop for windows only and then porting the application is likely to be a lot slower than writing things portably from day 1.
An argument to back this assertion up: the sooner you fix a bug, the cheaper it is to fix [this is widely believed]. Every dependence on a particular platform that's not put into a platform abstraction layer is a bug. If you develop for every platform all the time, you'll find and fix those bugs immediately, paying the lowest possible price for portability. If you develop for $PLATFORM first and then port, you'll pay the largest possible price for portability.
ok, it was exploitable, but does that mean it was fundamentally a bad idea?
can't we have some type of integration once in a while?
You mean during the colonial fullstop?
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
I use it as my primary browser in Windows. The only time I use anything else is when I need to go to the Windows Update site.
You mention the minimal intrusion of menus and taskbars and such. I wish all software was that good at getting the administrative debris out of my way.
When I go back to Safari in OSX I immediately notice the difference between it and Chrome's UI, Chrome is light years better. They've uncomplicated and uncluttered the modern address bar design while keeping it (making it?) actually useful. First letter, tab, search phrase is brilliant. I'm not sure I care one way or the other yet about the screenshot start page but it is growing on me. I like how settings and history and such open as browser tabs rather than dialogs. That pretty much avoids the overextended 'stack of tabs' convention.
I am probably less feature demanding than most Slashdot users. It seems like the first 10 comments in any Chrome story are about the lack of extensions. When I used FF I think I had AdBlock, maybe Forecast Fox, a skin or two. I can see how Chrome wouldn't work if I really really needed the /b/ Toolbar, but since I don't the UI improvements alone sell it.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
How many people even view Slashdot? I only ask because I don't know of many. Does it even exist? I asked the baby sitter and she said no. Also, what are these personal computer things? My company only lets us use winterms. Obviously, this whole PC fad is not ready for any real use since my job gets by just fine without them and my job is the determining factor for anything needing to exist.
Using plural verb forms for entities which are clearly singular (band, group, family, company) but which are by definition composed of multiple individual components -- that's a quirk of Brits. You know, the ones who sneer at Americans for using an inferior dialect of English, yet can't seem to figure out basic subject/verb agreement or the concept of collective nouns?
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
The combination of your statement and your sig makes it clear that you are one of those people who has to be dragged kicking and screaming into the future. You weren't like that when you were young, were you?
I think it's pretty clear when he means: the OS is becoming little more than the driver for the dumb-terminal you use to access your web-based applications. Stuff like file system management is pointless if all your data lives server-side in web apps.
You can go after his terminology in a display of petty pedantry, but it doesn't change the fact that what he is saying is becoming increasingly the way things are. We may not be there yet. We may not ever get there. But that is certainly where the momentum is.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
'The web is becoming an integral part of the computer and the basic distinction between the OS and the browser doesn't matter very much any more', he says."
Outch. After this quote, I know I'm never going to test Chrome.
There is an absolutely vital distinction. The damn browser will happily run any code embedded in any website I visit. My OS (don't know about yours, but mine) only runs stuff that I explicitly tell it to, usually after explicitly installing it. In fact, I'd prefer even tighter limits on that.
If you don't get that distinction, your security mindset is fucked up.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
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Still, if you write "february 26th"? I have to ask - 26th of what?
Uhh... February. You know, like "day 42 - George and I are still stranded on this desert island, and each day, he looks tastier and tastier..." That isn't too terribly confusing for you, is it? :)
I strongly disagree. JavaScript is a great language - in fact I think it is one of the best dynamic languages out there. The biggest problem is that 95% of the people who program JavaScript never bother to figure out the right way to use the language. I have heard people who had worked for years programming in JavaScript (actually JScript) claim that the language does not support inheritance, which could not be more untrue. As Douglas Crockford stated in a talk titled "JavaScript: The Good Parts":
If people would actually bother to learn the language (and could be convinced to give up the notion that you can't do OO properly without classes) you'd probably hear a lot less hatred for it.
Also, adding other support for other languages wouldn't do anything to address the biggest difficulty in writing code that runs in a browser, which is the incompatibilities between the different browsers' DOM and CSS implementations.
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
can't we have some type of integration once in a while?
No. You should read your internets by sending email to a daemon on a different box that downloads the pages and sends them to you as text files, the way Stallman intended things to be.