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Google Returns Chrome To Beta, Touts Speed Boost
CWmike writes "Google yesterday reversed its decision to ditch the beta label from its Chrome browser, saying it is restoring the moniker to some builds to get faster feedback to developers. 'Since we took the 'beta' tag off Google Chrome in December, we've been updating two release channels: developer and stable,' said Brian Rakowski, a Chrome product manager, in a new blog Google kicked off on Tuesday. 'With our latest release, we're re-introducing the beta channel for some early feedback.' The first beta, Chrome 2.0.169.1, includes several new features, said Rakowski, and it boasts a significant speed increase over the current stable version of the browser, 1.0.154.48. According to Google's tests, the beta is 35% faster than the stable build when measured by the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark suite, and 25% faster on the company's own V8 tests."
Reader Al notes too that "Google has launched Chrome Experiments, a site where Javascript coders can upload projects that make use of Chrome's speed and processing abilities. The site already features a handful of cool 'experiments' including a balls that jump between browser windows, a gravitationally-challenged version of the Google homepage and a game that runs through nine different browsers. It's cool stuff alright, but some experts wonder whether browser security might be a more important thing to focus on."
Just because a company's informal motto is "Don't be evil." doesn't mean they have to release their products for Linux.
Now I think it'd be unwise if they didn't release it for Linux, but it definitely doesn't make them evil.
Who wanted really fast JavaScript?
Chrome is not in beta, there has ALWAYS been beta builds around for Chromium & they are advertising those builds more since the new features are pretty solid (and the speed too) but Chrome is NOT in beta.
There's an unofficial Linux build called Chromium:
http://code.google.com/p/chromium/
A story ran on it yesterday on a familiar website... I think it's called "Slashdot" or something:
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/17/2345216
What does the platform have to do with evil or not? 90% of the software out there only works on one platform, and surely you're not going to say they're all evil. Chrome is open source and has been from day one; if it doesn't work on another platform, do the work yourself to get it there. As it is, they're releasing for the platform that has far and away the most users and not diluting their development efforts.
Who cares about 90% of software, we are talking about browsers. Browsers come on all platforms these days. And to top this Chome is advertising on slashdot which is known for have tons of Windows Loving users and users who like to talk about windows only software in positive ways. As long as Chrome does not exist on LInux or exists in a form that is a joke expect it to get trashed on slashdot. And for the second part I have contributed to Chrome to help get it to compile on Linux, but it is a long way off before these is anything close to what a user would expect. Chrome really has a PR problem with Linux which a lot of early adopters use.
Do you changes clothes while making the "chee-chee-cha-cha-choh" transformation sound?
Google has not reversed their position. This is the beta for what will be 2.0 eventually. The 1.0 branch is and will be release. See: http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/17/2345216
I tried Chromium and at this stage it is so buggy and slow that it is totally unusable. At this point I am forced to run FireFox with a bunch of add ons to try and mimic chromium's functionality, but that won't help you get to the speed of Google Chrome.
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