Google Releases Chrome V2.0

RadiusK writes "Google has released the second major version of the Chrome browser. This version features more speed improvements thanks to a newer version of V8 JavaScript engine and WebKit. JavaScript-heavy web pages will now run about 30% faster. Other new features include form autofill, fullscreen mode, and improved New Tab page. If you're already using Google Chrome, you'll be automatically updated with these new features soon. If you haven't downloaded Google Chrome, you can get the latest version at google.com/chrome." A version for Linux or OS X would be nice.

Comments

AdBlock Plus

[MrMista_B]

Does it have AdBlock Plus?

As soon as it does, I'm ditching Firefox.

Re:AdBlock Plus

[Laxori666]

just get privoxy. works with anything! http://www.privoxy.org/ .

Re:AdBlock Plus

[EggyToast]

Agreed, although this is one reason why Firefox will likely still have a life -- it's unaffiliated with a company that makes money through advertising. Why would Google support a browser add-on that allows you to block their main revenue source?

Re:AdBlock Plus

[Anonymous Coward]

does it break an existing adblock plus install like the last one?

Re:AdBlock Plus

[chrysalis]

Chromium is opensource.

Fork your git branch
Rewrite AdBlock plus for Chromium ...
??? ...
Profit !

Re:AdBlock Plus

[Anonymous Coward]

Fork your git branch

Please watch your language.

Re:AdBlock Plus

[Goaway]

They specifically listed AdBlock as one of the things they wanted to support through their extension API, which is still in development.

Re:AdBlock Plus

[kindbud]

It can run most Greasemonkey scripts.

Re:AdBlock Plus

[swilver]

Not ditching it before it also has NoScript. I seriously couldn't care less about JavaScript performance, I donot want applications in my browser.

Re:AdBlock Plus

[bruno.fatia]

Not AdBlock Plus but close, its a user script called adsweep (from adsweep.org). It blocks some of the most common advertisement. Chrome is looking pretty good on my system right now, better than Firefox actually.

Re:AdBlock Plus

[Anonymous Coward]

Try Chrome-based SRWare Iron + http://tinyurl.com/7mxeod for how-to easily block ads in Iron.

Re:AdBlock Plus

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been done: SRWare Iron.

Re:AdBlock Plus

[Anonymous Coward]

I use this:

Adsweep

and it works pretty well. It doesn't get rid of quite as many ads as Adblock, but it blocks enough of them that it allowed me to switch to using Chrome full time.

Re:AdBlock Plus

[anton_kg]

Yes it does. You'll need to enable userscripts plugins. http://www.chromeplugins.org/tips-tricks/installing-userscripts-on-chrome/

Re:AdBlock Plus

[ghetto2ivy]

it's unaffiliated with a company that makes money through advertising

You do know Google is the biggest sponsor of the Mozilla foundation?

Re:AdBlock Plus

[Photo_Nut]

Go check out AdSweep. It works just fine in Chrome. Maybe it's not AdBlock plus, but it works in Chrome without much too fuss.
http://www.adsweep.org/

Re:AdBlock Plus

[Eil]

Agreed, although this is one reason why Firefox will likely still have a life -- it's unaffiliated with a company that makes money through advertising. Why would Google support a browser add-on that allows you to block their main revenue source?

Err, you're not aware that Mozilla's biggest financial sponsor is Google?

Re:AdBlock Plus

[williamhb]

Agreed, although this is one reason why Firefox will likely still have a life -- it's unaffiliated with a company that makes money through advertising.

You mean apart from Google providing the vast majority of their funding, in exchange for Firefox pointing its default homepage and search provider to Google.

Re:AdBlock Plus

[godIsaDJ]

I use adsweep and it rocks. I was a firefox user, but the javascript speedup is just unreal!

Re:AdBlock Plus

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that Privoxy has occasionally murdered my girlfriend's ability to visit some sites on no basis at all. Multiple 403 errors and general page load failures. It's a nice concept, but it really does have its problems since it runs between the network connection and whatever is using it.

Re:AdBlock Plus

[sootman]

Gah. People who ask "does it work with AdBlock?" in every single thread about any browser other than Firefox (and asking rhetorically, rather than doing two seconds of research and posting an honest "Hey, I checked, and it doesn't work with AdBlock") are getting to be just like area men who constantly mention that they don't own televisions.

Area resident Jonathan Green does not own a television, a fact he repeatedly points out to friends, family, and coworkers... According to Melinda Elkins, a coworker of Green's at The Frame Job, a Chapel Hill picture-frame shop, Green steers the conversation toward television whenever possible, just so he can mention not owning one.
 
Elkins said Green always makes sure to read the copies of Entertainment Weekly and People lying around the shop's break room, "just so he can point out all the stars and shows he's never heard of."
 
"Last week, in one of the magazines, there was a picture of Calista Flockhart," Elkins said, "and Jonathan announced, 'I have absolutely no idea who this woman is. Calista who? Am I supposed to have heard of her? I'm sorry, but I haven't.'"

FFS, AdBlock is not the only solution to annoying ads. I spend 99% of my time in Safari on OS X because I like it a whole lot more than Firefox (for various reasons I won't bother going into here) and the combination of a custom /etc/hosts file and a flash blocker (can't find it right now... one was released, then discontinued, and now there's another, I forget the name, but I've got it at home; only works in 10.5; there seem to be several non-free solutions) make the Web pretty tolerable. (Plus that particular /etc/hosts file blocks many spyware and malware sites, so it's great to have on Windows--security in layers, and all that--and it works for all browsers on the system, with no additional configuration needed at all .)

That said, as excited as I was when Chrome came out, the fact that Safari got pretty good, pretty fast (version 4) makes me not even worry that Chrome may never make it to the Mac. Every once in a while, competition really works. :-)

Re:AdBlock Plus

[Blakey Rat]

Agreed, although this is one reason why Firefox will likely still have a life -- it's unaffiliated with a company that makes money through advertising.

Uh, it is? You mean the Mozilla Foundation dumped their business relationship with Google? That's big news, you should submit it to Slashdot.

Re:AdBlock Plus

[idiot900]

Um, Google is responsible for quite a bit of Mozilla Foundation revenue.

Google's motivation is just to get people away from IE, because MS controls that, and has had little incentive to improve it. Now, with a substantial installed base of competing browsers, all of them are of much higher quality (Firefox memory leaks aside) and Google can build more neat stuff for you to use so you can click on ads.

Re:AdBlock Plus

[evanspw]

I want an option to mandate websites appear using certain fonts, and those fonts only. Firefox has this feature. It is required before I swap.

Re:AdBlock Plus

[garphik]

I don't think Chrome will have Adblock+ ever.

That would mean killing its own business. Thats probably the reason for creating the browser in the first place since firefox was harming its Advertising business with image block and ad block. The improvements on speed are remarkable though, but its not good enough to quit ad block :)

Re:AdBlock Plus

[dword]

You do know they are slowly backing off and Mozilla is looking strangely at Google?

Re:AdBlock Plus

[sam0vi]

AdBlock Plus? I have never used it, but for me the real deal breaker would be NoScript (it's really awesome!), and it also blocks ads so...

Re:AdBlock Plus

[Anonymous Coward]

I tolerate ads because I publish my own web sites but also because I find page ads unintrusive, especially compared to TV or radio ads. At least they don't monopolize your TIME. I can spot the ads in a fraction of a second, although I agree some are poorly placed and interfere with navigation.

Why am I defending ads vs. adblock? I have no idea... especially considering when you block ads the publisher actually makes MORE money as it increases their CTR - you weren't going to click anyway.

All is well in the world :)

Re:AdBlock Plus

[xtracto]

Does it have AdBlock Plus?

As soon as it does, I'm ditching Firefox.

I agree... but in addition to AdBlock Plus, I will wait also to have an equivalent to:

- CHM Reader
- Diccionario Español Mexico
- DOM Inspector
- DownThemAll
- EasyGestures
- fireFTP
- GREASEMONKEY
- REFSPOOF ;-)
- Repagination
- SCRAPBOOK
- TinyMenu (for eeePC size screens)
- unMHT

About two months ago I installed the Chrome web browser and it felt very similar to Internet Explorer 6 "+tabs" in that it was very barebones.

A lot of the extensions I use in firefox do small things, however when summed up, they provide a completely different working experience.

Still, I love Google online applications, I am a fan and avid user of Google Notebooks, Google Docs, Google Calendar and of coruse Google mail!

Re:AdBlock Plus

[emanem]

Totally 100% agree...I'm tired of web 2.0...wtf is JS?!?! If I want an application I use my own pc...and btw gmail without JS works a treat. Cheers!

Re:AdBlock Plus

[AmiMoJo]

I really wish someone would do an open fork of Chrome, and remove all the privacy-invading data that gets sent back to Google.

I know about Iron, but that is forked by a commercial company too so isn't really any more trustworthy than Chrome. Trust is a big issue with web browsers, since most people don't have the time/knowledge to review the code themselves.

Re:AdBlock Plus

[temcat]

I used Firefox 3 (with AdBlock Plus) but recently switched to Chrome 2.0 when it still was in beta. And then I realized that ads don't bother me anymore, now that my browser is SO fast. I've been running Chrome 2.0 for a couple of weeks - not a single hiccup since!

Re:AdBlock Plus

[AmiMoJo]

Surely it would be better if your browser didn't all Javascript to do stupid things like resize windows or set OnExit() pop-ups. You could have all the benefits of Javascript without any of the problems that made you install NoScript.

Re:AdBlock Plus

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet you get all the chicks, don't you?

Re:AdBlock Plus

[fateswarm]

Only adblock? There are countless of addons that can make browsing better.

It is hard to compete with that and even you did compete well, you'd probably manage to fragment the area so much that it'd make it worse than it is, since now most addon developers just go to firefox.

The only solution is firefox plugin compatibility.

Re:AdBlock Plus

[Edam]

And mouse gestures... definitely need mouse gestures too...

Re:AdBlock Plus

[ThatsNotPudding]

Does it have AdBlock Plus?

Given that Google is actually an advertising company, I doubt that will ever happen - at least in any official, sanctioned manner.

Re:AdBlock Plus

[Hurricane78]

Hey, that's a cool way to pitch your deep packet scanning and password grabbing proxy. :P

I never ever trust someone who wants me to run all my packets trough his proxy. Especially if he offers me added comfort.

Re:AdBlock Plus

[Cigarra]

Also don't forget to wait for NoKidsOnLawn. You'll love it.

Re:AdBlock Plus

[Anonymous Coward]

How long did you use Lynx for before you ceded and admitted that, in real life, you would benefit from being able to see images in your browser?

Re:AdBlock Plus

[L4t3r4lu5]

Privoxy is GPL and opensource.

If you're feeling paranoid, and can read C, please feel free to peer-review the code.

Here, I'll make it easy for you. http://sourceforge.net/projects/ijbswa

Re:AdBlock Plus

[L4t3r4lu5]

It seems the download link on the main page is out of date. Try the forum instead.

Re:AdBlock Plus

[Anonymous Coward]

Not ditching my Mark 1 Model T Ford until I can get a car which allows me to remove gears 3 upwards, the front doors, radio, air-con and starter motor. I donot want extras in my car.

Re:AdBlock Plus

[Keeper Of Keys]

Fork your git branch
Rewrite AdBlock plus for Chromium ...
??? ...
Non-Profit !

FTFY

Re:AdBlock Plus

[Thaelon]

How is this informative? Iron does not support adblock. It's just a build of chrome that has the phone home stuff removed and as far as I know, hasn't been updated since its release. It was largely PR stunt by SRWare rather than a real commitment to a version that doesn't phone home like Chrome does.

Re:AdBlock Plus

[SJ2000]

You run it on your own machine.

Re:AdBlock Plus

[brunes69]

And I never trust anyone who is a big enough tool to write comments on something without even looking into what it is.

You run privoxy on your own local machine. No packets are being inspected by anyone.

Re:AdBlock Plus

[Lord Ender]

It must be awesome to still live in 1998. How's your stock portfolio lookin? I bet the job market's good for you, too. Good times, good times.

Re:AdBlock Plus

[ID000001]

One thing I have to agree, my primary reason for blocking ad, is to decrease loading time.

Chrome appear similar, if not faster with ads then firefox without ads. Unless you just can't stands those particular flashy one (for me, I will just stop visiting the site if they don't get their habit right), I don't see why you would care. Most ads are not difficult to ignore.

Beside, it is nice to get the right repersenation of the site as it was originally intended. Yes, I considers the Ads part of the site design.

Re:AdBlock Plus

[BitZtream]

I'm not sure why this was supposed to be funny, but stocks and the job market were both very good in 1998 for any techie out there.

Is that the joke, or did you just miss the late 90s?

Re:AdBlock Plus

[Lord Ender]

Swilver wants to use NoScript to remove javascript from his web pages. 1998 was an era when javascript was only used for "stupid browser tricks", as opposed to today, when javascript is essential to the functionality of a large percentage of web resources. He's living in the past.

Re:AdBlock Plus

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Chrome is open source
2. Firefox is owned by Mozilla foundation, a corporation... this is why the 64bit firefox branch is called minefield, because its done by a third party that does not own the rights to the name firefox.
3. Google is the one funding mozilla, mozilla makes it's money by setting google as the default search provider and yahoo as the default news provider, aka, they are making money off of ads.

Windows Only

[imamac]

A version for Linux or OS X would be nice.

This is incredibly sad. How hard can it be with their resources to include Mac and Linux?

Re:Windows Only

[Goaway]

It takes time to develop software. It doesn't matter what resource you have, beyond a certain point, it still takes lots of time.

And they are working on both, you know. They're open-source. You can go look at them. You can go help out - isn't that what open source advocates tell you to do every time you complain about an open source app?

Re:Windows Only

[cptnapalm]

I thought that Google used a customized Ubuntu on a hell of a lot of their desktop systems. If that is still the case, it would be odd that they would exclude a lot of their own employees using Google's own browser while at work at Google.

Re:Windows Only

[stonedcat]

Given that they run Linux in house even. >.>

Re:Windows Only

[A12m0v]

There are builds of chromium for GNU/Linux and Mac.

I tried the Mac build and it works, but still rough around the edges.

Re:Windows Only

[ogrisel]

An experimental (daily snapshot) version for ubuntu is available here: https://launchpad.net/~chromium-daily/+archive/ppa

Re:Windows Only

[imamac]

Didn't know that. Going to look now...

Re:Windows Only

[blind biker]

Google only targets the platform where IE is predominant - that is, Windows. On the other platforms, Firefox or Safari will do the job that Chrome is doing on Windows. Either way, it suits Google's strategy.

Re:Windows Only

[rikkitikki]

I used to ask the same question. I now work for a small startup. Most of us develop on Linux, a couple on Windows, and a couple on Mac. If we could afford to do a linux-only version, we would. But in order to have any kind of marketshare on the desktop, we need to output a Windows version.

The mac and linux versions mostly "just work" and simply need testing. But about a month before release, the entire team needs to stop what they're doing and get the Windows version fully working and tested. Windows development is a resource hog (in terms of people). In some ways, Windows is just different, but it seems in many ways, Windows is deliberately incompatable with anything else at the source code level. Windows makes it as difficult as possible to be cross-platform.

As a result, we get the Windows version out and working before we have time to test the Linux and Mac versions. It kinda sucks to spend that much time and resources on a Windows version. It's either that, or re-route our development resources to Windows-only and ignore the other platforms. Of course, we don't want to do that.

Re:Windows Only

[grahamd0]

A version for Linux or OS X would be nice.

This is incredibly sad. How hard can it be with their resources to include Mac and Linux?

If you're on Mac, try Safari 4. They both use Webkit, it's pretty nice, fast, and is very similar to Chrome in the terms of the look and UI.

Personally, I feel naked without Firebug.

Re:Windows Only

[DarthBender]

Posting this from Chromium running on Ubuntu 9.04 64bit. It's alpha but seems stable and fast.

Re:Windows Only

[zuperduperman]

All that you say is true, but there is something not credible about the length of time that it has taken for them to get this done. It seems to have taken longer for them to do the linux port than it did for them to build the entire windows version.

Having said that, I don't really suspect there's anything sinister going on here ... something tells me it is more to do with there being fundamentally more difficult challenges on linux than windows. When I compare Firefox across ubuntu and windows it is noticeably slower and uglier in linux - there's no two ways about it. I strongly suspect that Google is being a perfectionist here and are simply not willing to release something that doesn't meet the incredibly high bar they have set for chrome.

Re:Windows Only

[Goaway]

All that you say is true, but there is something not credible about the length of time that it has taken for them to get this done. It seems to have taken longer for them to do the linux port than it did for them to build the entire windows version.

How would you know? You don't know when work started on the Windows version. And the Linux and OS X versions have been in development for no more than half a year.

Re:Windows Only

[Anonymous Coward]

isn't that what open source advocates tell you to do every time you complain about an open source app?

For a volunteer project, yes. Google Chrome is a free, open source, commercial project. It's a professional, corporate-planned, -managed, and -funded product.

They've now released Windows v2, after originally claiming the Linux version will be ready "as soon as possible" eight months ago during the original hype & release of v1. Google is due for some flack about this. Not to mention the lack of Mac version.

Re:Windows Only

[KasperMeerts]

I doubt it. Have you looked at the Chrome code? It's littered with hard-coded windows-only bullshit. It's just very unelegantly designed, that's why it's taking so long.

Re:Windows Only

[Svippy]

Haha, that's like Microsoft using Internet Explorer in house.

Re:Windows Only

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to ask the same question. I now work for a small startup. Most of us develop on Linux, a couple on Windows, and a couple on Mac. If we could afford to do a linux-only version, we would. But in order to have any kind of marketshare on the desktop, we need to output a Windows version.

The mac and linux versions mostly "just work" and simply need testing. But about a month before release, the entire team needs to stop what they're doing and get the Windows version fully working and tested. Windows development is a resource hog (in terms of people). In some ways, Windows is just different, but it seems in many ways, Windows is deliberately incompatable with anything else at the source code level. Windows makes it as difficult as possible to be cross-platform.

As a result, we get the Windows version out and working before we have time to test the Linux and Mac versions. It kinda sucks to spend that much time and resources on a Windows version. It's either that, or re-route our development resources to Windows-only and ignore the other platforms. Of course, we don't want to do that.

Just develop your applications using a Qt/C++/gcc framework.

Fast, native code, easy, powerful, free (LGPL) and cross-platform.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_(toolkit)

http://www.qtsoftware.com/products/developer-tools

VLC, Scribus and VirtualBox are good examples of cross-platform applications developed using Qt and Qt creator:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VirtualBox
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scribus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VLC_Media_Player

If that doesn't appeal, then use Lazarus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_(software)

Only potential problem with that is that you would have to write in Pascal. For me personally, that would be a bonus not a problem.

Peazip is a great example of cross-platform software developed using Lazarus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peazip

AFAIK all of these examples of cross-platform applications bring out versions for Windows, Linux and Mac at the same time.

Re:Windows Only

[i.of.the.storm]

I'm pretty sure there are Chromium builds for Linux. Chromium is the open source version of Chrome basically, without the Google branding and such. See here for Linux build instructions.

Re:Windows Only

[ChunderDownunder]

I guess that would explain why running it under wine isn't without problems.

Part of me would like to imagine that philanthropic Google would write 'clean' Win32 code, so that in the event they couldn't be bothered with a Linux port (as now), they'd at least make it run smoothly via wine as they did with Picasa.

Re:Windows Only

[Anonymous Coward]

A woman can give birth to a baby in nine months, but that doesn't mean nine women can do the same in one month.

Re:Windows Only

[socsoc]

All the webcasts I have participated in have them using Google products pretty much exclusively, with what appears to be their personal desktops. Some could be using a customized Ubuntu, but many of the outward facing employees know to pimp Google properties, even if they aren't overt about it.

I just don't understand why they use WebEx instead of some Google version

Re:Windows Only

[drizek]

This is the mac daily build page

http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/sub-rel-mac/

Re:Windows Only

[jerep]

I do develop on Windows and linux simultaneously, it's not hard at all.

If you build a nice platform abstraction layer, the only part where the platform makes a difference in the code is that layer, everything else just uses the API you've built for it. There isn't much to abstract either, and most of the time its just forwarding to the corresponding system call.

My first thought is that your codebase wasn't planned enough to ease its development.

Re:Windows Only

[icannotthinkofaname]

I have a question: If there are instructions on how to build it in Linux, why can't Google just build it, brand it, and release it?

I tried but failed to successfully build the application in Linux, so I don't know how it runs, but it seems to me like it would take just some building and testing to make sure everything works. What could the problem possibly be?

Re:Windows Only

[juancnuno]

It's frustrating for me too. I mean, Mozilla did it.

Something that can drive Linux adoption is a killer app. Chrome could've been that app.

Re:Windows Only

[i.of.the.storm]

I think some other people posted links to prebuilt builds for Ubuntu on launchpad or something. I think the real problem is that Chrome was designed a bit too Windows specific from the start so the Linux versions are a bit buggy. But uh, here's a link to something that might be helpful, although less so if you're on a different distro. https://launchpad.net/~chromium-daily/+archive/ppa

Re:Windows Only

[juancnuno]

Sorry to reply again, but I also want to mention that although I have zero data to back this up, Chrome's usage share could've been higher now if it came out on Linux and Mac first. I mean, we tend to be eager and early adopters, don't we?

Re:Windows Only

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using and testing this daily version on ubuntu 9.04 and it seems to behave faster than Firefox, it starts 10x faster, but still not Flash plugin compatible, so have to keep firefox around for some flashy sites.
I've also instaled in on Acer aspire one netbook with netbook remix 9.04 and it's much smoother than the default firefox included in the distro. (maybe because Atom CPU is hyper-thead showing as 2 CPUs and chromium can distribute the multi tab load on both). Maybe it's disk cache is more effective on Flash-memory filesystems. Anyway it does feel smoother.

Re:Windows Only

[Sark666]

How has John Carmack with id software pulled this off all these years with having a linux binary in short order after release? Yes you're not dealing with toolkits but I would think 3d games & sound wouldn't be trivial. I read they code cross-platform from the start and it's not too much effort once they have that codebase.

And to quote him, he said they do this not because it's necessarily profitable, but because 'it's a good thing'.

Although to knock down a little what I just said, I play quake wars - enemy territory frequently (great game, too bad it didn't do well), and I just can't get the same smooth performance I get in xp over the linux version. So I have to reboot everytime to play.

Re:Windows Only

[Goaway]

It probably doesn't run well under Wine due to using some pretty advanced functionality to implement its sandbox.

And what's with the "as now"? There is a Linux port, it's just not done yet. You can run it if you want.

Re:Windows Only

[Hucko]

He wasn't complaining, he was sympathising.

Re:Windows Only

[Anonymous Coward]

Other posters have commented on how to write cross-platform code, but if your code is already firmly Windows-only, please make an effort to only use calls supported by Wine -- or if that is not possible, submit bug reports to Wine for the features your software uses. That is, take the Blizzard approach to Linux compatibility.

Re:Windows Only

[Anonymous Coward]

A version for Linux or OS X would be nice.

This is incredibly sad. How hard can it be with their resources to include Mac and Linux?

A version for Linux or OS X would be nice.

Hmmm...writing this response on my Mac using what? Why it's Chromium version 2.0.181. A beta version for the Mac. It's not ready for release yet, but it functions and proves they're working on it.

Do a search for Mac Chromium Beta, download and install; then provide feedback so they can improve it.

Re:Windows Only

[radarsat1]

Yup, I've been following the PPA build too, and I have to say it's come a long way! I've been using it regularly.

It no longer crashes all the time, though still does so once in a while (but hell so does firefox). These are usually repeatable so I'm sure they'll be fixed in the not too distant future.

One thing I've noticed recently is that one of the first things I tried when first installing it was to check whether the Chrome Experiments would work, and unsurprisingly it crashed immediately when I tried to start any of them. However, a few days ago I tried it again and they all worked!

All in all it's definitely usable now (if you're into trying alpha software). I've kept it open for long periods of time and had up to 15 tabs open at a time. It's noticeably faster than Firefox 3.0.1. (This may change with 3.1, which contains the tracemonkey jit engine.. i'm looking forward to making a comparison.)

Re:Windows Only

[BrokenHalo]

I don't really suspect there's anything sinister going on here

Nor do I. However, what it does mean is that Google has utterly failed to get the penetration they need to get Chrome accepted by the average user. By essentially consigning it to the Windows-only camp, Google has alienated Linux and OS X users, so they won't bother picking Chrome up even when (or if) it does become available for their platform.

When I compare Firefox across ubuntu and windows it is noticeably slower and uglier in linux

Hmmm. Maybe you have a bad build. Or maybe it's something specific to Ubuntu. Firefox is at least as quick on my Arch Linux machine by comparison with any Windows implementation I've seen. And ugly? We are talking about a distribution that favours baby-poo brown for its default theme here. I rest my case...

Re:Windows Only

[hanwen]

I am using the Linux version on a daily basis. It is usable, and the speed blows FF3 firmly out of the water, to the point that I don't want to go back to FF. Of course, it does crash every once in a while, and there are many rough edges.

Re:Windows Only

[x2A]

That's not gonna stop me from trying!!!

Hey wanna hear my favourite chatup line for pregnant women? "Room for one more?" haha I doth cracketh me up

Re:Windows Only

[mallumax]

There dare daily builds available for all platforms here http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/ For the mac build, to get an idea about what status it is in and what works and what doesn't you can see my post on it http://www.manu-j.com/blog/download-updated-native-google-chrome-for-mac-os-x/230/

Re:Windows Only

[Skapare]

It also takes a LOT longer time if you don't develop the software properly using standard programming interfaces and make sure it is portable.

Re:Windows Only

[Skapare]

If they had coded it with portable methods, the Linux and Mac versions would be ready now. I guess they didn't do that. But for something is important as a browser, I want it in source code, anyway.

Re:Windows Only

[Anonymous Coward]

Google Chrome is a free, open source, commercial project. It's a professional, corporate-planned, -managed, and -funded product.

Just like Mozilla Firefox?

Re:Windows Only

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh well, as long as somebody else is putting the time and effort in it's all OK to complain *jumps back up on high horse*

Re:Windows Only

[weicco]

This is the technique we used some years ago. We were in the business of writing a kind of VPN software that ran on Linux and Windows. We defined crossplatform API and had two different teams to build it up, one which contained people who knew everything about Linux and other, which I worked in, for Windows. Everything went quite smoothly taking account that we even did some kernel mode network drivers for the VPN stuff.

There were some parts where it wasn't really wice to put one-liners to the API so we just #ifdefined those parts and let the build scripts figure out definitions for those.

But it really sounds like that people at 'rikkitikki' work place aren't so competent as they think, at least not in the Windows world.

Re:Windows Only

[IntlHarvester]

Google still has to pay Mozilla and Apple to be the default search engine, just like they pay Dell and other Win OEMs.

Obviously one of the goals of Chrome is that it's cheaper to do it yourself than pay middlemen.

Re:Windows Only

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. The hard parts are the security sandbox and multi-process model. That's what's taking most of the time; and it can't be made cross-platform, by definition.

It's for a reason that Chrome is the most secure browser. And it's for a reason that it requires a lot of effort to port. Go look at the source tree if you don't believe me.

Re:Windows Only

[Anonymous Coward]

You're getting it all wrong. The Chrome strategy isn't "fight IE/fight MS", it's "push browsers to new speed an security levels", so that webtop applications would be more and more acceptable. GMail under Chrome is faster than Outlook or Thunderbird under the same machine.

For this strategy, they *need* Chrome for other platforms, too. And they're clearly working on it. See for example https://launchpad.net/~chromium-daily/+archive/ppa for the daily Ubuntu builds.

Re:Windows Only

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm writing this reply in Chromium, in linux.

If you're using Ubuntu:

Add this line at the end of /etc/apt/sources.list :

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu hardy main

Then:
apt-get update
apt-get install chromium-browser

Re:Windows Only

[Anonymous Coward]

a quote from Coding Horror:

When these open source projects owners refuses any request by saying stuffs like "it's open source. why don't you do it yourself", they are actually saying, " fk you!"

Re:Windows Only

[Anonymous Coward]

The linux port is well on its way. I'm using Chromium on Ubuntu for most of what I do for now.

The main problems so far has been:
  - Crashes a tad more often than ff.
  - No flash support.
  - No plugins.

The main advantages so far has been:
  - It's blazing, blazing fast!
  - It's so .. non-bloated and nice.. visually.

I love it. I only use firefox for flash stuff these days.

Re:Windows Only

[Anonymous Coward]

One reason Chrome is heavily developed/tested on Windows first is that a good part of the Chrome team in the Google Seattle office (where most of the Chrome development happens) consists of ex-Microsoft employees, with a heavy Windows background. Or so I heard [citation needed].

Re:Windows Only

[amorsen]

When I compare Firefox across ubuntu and windows it is noticeably slower and uglier in linux - there's no two ways about it.

Your issue with Firefox probably is actually with Pango. IMHO, Pango renders text far more beautifully than any version of Windows does, but it IS a lot slower. You used to be able to disable Pango when building Firefox; I'm not sure whether that is still possible.

Re:Windows Only

[Skapare]

Those things can be abstracted, and the component code plugged in as part of the collection of source files during the build (not to be confused with a run time plug-in). All the rest of the code is then made multi-context safe.

Maybe I don't believe you. How do I know that the Chromium source code is what really gos into the Chrome binary, no more no less?

Porting software from one platform to another is simply the wrong approach. It is wrong to start with any ONE platform and then try to rig it to fit on another (what most porting efforts end up doing). The correct approach is to plan for every major OS (BSD, Linux, Mac, Solaris, Windows, etc ... in alphabetical order to avoid any perception of bias), and isolate as much of the development into common components as possible. You don't need to write different CSS/HTML/XHTML/XML parsers for each different OS.

The security models in the OSes are for protecting the OS itself, and other programs, from any bad programs. That means preventing the browser from messing with other processes or the kernel, or files it isn't allowed access to. Managing the security of things like Javascript (for example, making sure JS code from site A can't mess around with the DOM of a page from site B, when both are loaded at the same time) isn't something to be handed off to the OS. The OS has no concept of site A vs. site B, nor should it. This is something for the browser itself to manage, and it should do it exactly the same way on each different OS.

Re:Windows Only

[TeknoHog]

Google has made its fortune using Linux and other open source software. Therefore not catering for Linux users seems unfair.

Re:Windows Only

[Anonymous Coward]

Pango can be used to call the underlying OS text drawing functions, it needn't be used with Freetype on Windows / OSX.

Re:Windows Only

[Waccoon]

Windows is deliberately incompatable with anything else at the source code level. Windows makes it as difficult as possible to be cross-platform.

While I sympathize, I must ask at what point the world turned into only two major OSes: Windows and UN*X.

I remember back in the 80's when there were a dozen OSes that were all radically different, and people just sucked it up and wrote software for each platform. Each OS (and the hardware) really stood out and had its own special advantages and quirks. Those were the days of real competition and innovation. These days, if it's not UNIX-ish, it's not "standards compliant" or some crap like that. Nobody is interested in going beyond UNIX. Nobody wants to be different... except for niggling things that make source compile on one Linux distro and not another. Real innovation at the OS level is hard to come by these days.

Of course Windows is deliberately incompatible with everything else. It's not UNIX. It's pretty much the only non-UNIX OS left outside of the proprietary commercial market. Complaining about it being bad is one thing, but complaining about it being deliberately incompatible is rather silly.

Re:Windows Only

[Anonymous Coward]

And time to time it works just fine (already way faster than Firefox on Ubuntu), and looks almost same as Chromium (dev version) in Windows.

I think that Mozilla is going to be in trouble with this Chrome, if Google can alleviate privacy concerns of geeks, it will dominate in Linux once finished.

I've been working on Adblock Plus filter parser for Chromium, it is quiet simple to do on top of AdSweep. Gestures is also possible already using userscripts and extensions connect API, just send the mouse movement signal to toolstrip and let it handle the closing tabs etc. though I'm still waiting for the http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/extensions/ release of Keyboard/Mouse API so one doesn't have to implement gestures on top of userscripts.

Re:Windows Only

[MoogMan]

If you looked at the code recently, you'd see that they've stubbed out a whole new set of OS-independent classes, and a whole lot of them have been implemented.

That said, chromium is usable right now, for me on Linux.

The easy way, for Ubuntu users

Re:Windows Only

[Anonymous Coward]

I am using the Linux version on a daily basis. It is usable, and the speed blows FF3 firmly out of the water, to the point that I don't want to go back to FF. Of course, it does crash every once in a while, and there are many rough edges.

I've used the latest build of the Mac version. While it is fast - faster than FF on OS X - it can't log into any secure web site. It doesn't even try.

Re:Windows Only

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, and it's not just a matter of gratitude. Alternative OSes means less entrenchment with windows, which in turn means less ways for Microsoft to influence the market. Software giants, who have the resources to code for multiple platform, have all to gain from an OS agnostic market.
 

Re:Windows Only

[jonaskoelker]

Google is due for some Flock about this.

Broke that for you.

Google is due for some flac^Hk about this.

Fixed that for you, maybe. You could mean that Google should get some publicity (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/flack), of the bad variety.

You could also mean that they deserve criticism and a hostile reaction (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/flak).

The two seem to go hand in hand...

Google is due for some flax about this.

But it's all zen in the end ;-)

They would do well to support Linux usitatissimum (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/flax). (s/x/m/g)

Re:Windows Only

[jonaskoelker]

Heh, now there's chromium vs chromium-browser and epiphany vs epiphany-browser. Both the non-"-browser" packages are games.

Coincidence?!? I think not!

</tin-foil-hat>

Re:Windows Only

[Dystopian Rebel]

I prefer the security features and extensibility of Firefox to the speed of Chrome, so I haven't tried this -- how does Chrome run in Wine?

Re:Windows Only

[Lord Ender]

You can go help out - isn't that what open source advocates tell you to do every time you complain about an open source app?

No, that's what trolls tell you when you complain about an open source app. Not even the trolls are dumb enough to presume that everyone knows how to program competently in every language and for every application type. They just enjoy being jerks.

Re:Windows Only

[KasperMeerts]

Hmm, no 64 bit builds. And I don't want to install a lot of 32-bit libraries just for one program. I probably have an old Ubuntu LiveCD here somewhere.

Re:Windows Only

[BitZtream]

You think that Firefox on Linux renders text well? Are you using a CRT from 1980 in 640x480 mode or do you just prefer ugly as shit, makes stingers anus look better fonts that it uses on Linux?

You've got to be smoking something.

Re:Windows Only

[BitZtream]

If you were an actual developer or had looked at the code before being an arrogant fuck, you'd realize that making a multi-process app able to share windows, combine and split them on the fly is not something that is A) trivil or B) Is written into any toolkit.

Fortunately, its clear you aren't a developer in any way and are clueless about whats involved.

I leave you with my final thought. I run Linux and Chrome on Linux. So does Google. So do many others that made the effort to find it.

Sorry they didn't put massive bold red letters on their home page announcing to the world something that about %0.000001 of their customer base cares about.

Re:Windows Only

[IceFox]

The Windows version took two years. The linux and osx ports will easily take 18 months and you wont see a somewhat complete port for linux or osx until next Christmas as the earliest. They are re-inventing a lot of cross platform classes.

Re:Windows Only

[agrounds]

A version for Linux or OS X would be nice.

This is incredibly sad. How hard can it be with their resources to include Mac and Linux?

I suspect there is something going on behind the scenes that keeps them from targeting the Mac. Perhaps a joint venture with Safari in the future, or something new that is a hybrid. Mac is a stable development platform, so there has to be something business-related going on.

Speaking of development platforms:
Which linux distribution should they target? Which packaging system should they use? Which compiler version should they compile against? Should they make it QT-based or GTK-based? Will GNOME crap on it for breaking their precious HIG? What about in 6 months when all of those things needlessly change and break?

No matter how you answer those questions, someone else in the linux community will tell you that you are WRONG. This more than any other reason is why I don't see it ever being ported by Google. Who would want to have to deal with the hassle of perpetual fragmentation and breakage?

Perhaps they are secretly laughing at us right now since the code is out there and no one is doing anything with it. Tin foil hats abound!

Re:Windows Only

[amorsen]

The text rendering I'm looking at right now is really good. 1680x1050 on an LCD screen with subpixel rendering. Fedora's default fonts.

Well ok, the fixed width font is crap, but that's the case on Windows too.

Re:Windows Only

[imtheguru]

Firefox fonts on Ubuntu are excellent in 1650x1080. Using Lucida fonts.

Your troll is weak.
Cheers.

No plug in support

[NitroWolf]

No plug-ins, not usable.

Needs to support an Adblock function at the bare minimum before it would be even marginally accepted by the masses. Mouse gestures would be nice. Those two things would go really far towards the acceptance of Chrome.

Re:No plug in support

[zoips]

Chrome has plugins (Flash, etc). You mean add-ons.

Re:No plug in support

[Goaway]

"By the masses"? You honestly think the masses use Adblock?

Re:No plug in support

[Elwood P Dowd]

Way ahead of you.

http://adsweep.org/

Re:No plug in support

[Tubal-Cain]

Needs to support an Adblock function at the bare minimum before it would be even marginally accepted by the masses.

You only say that because it's how IE became so popular.~

Re:No plug in support

[Marcika]

Chrome will have proper extensions in the next 1-2 months. (They already work in the bleeding-edge dev version.) Adblocking extensions already exist (like AdSweep), but it'll take at least half a year to have the comfort and functionality that Adblock for Firefox has (extra blacklisting/whitelisting without editing arcane JavaScript files, easy installation, easy updates, choice of filter lists...).

Re:No plug in support

[basementman]

Really? On the high end maybe 1% of the internet population uses some type of adblocking software. Not to mention there are ways to block ads and still browse with Chrome, not as well as Adblock, but it gets the job done.

Personally I have no problem without adblocking software, if it means I don't have to run the bloated piece of shit that is Firefox (sorry guys, just being honest).

Re:No plug in support

[pseelig]

Just use privoxy and even Chrome will become a haven of ads free peace.
Check out www.privoxy.org for info and down.

Re:No plug in support

[Ohio Calvinist]

I'd consider calling a browser without addins "unusable" a little over dramatic.

I'd conjecture most users don't even know about addins, and quite a few in addition would consider them as glue-and-bandaids over a browser shortcoming; not that as an inherently virtuous platform "feature."

Most people will choose Chrome for performance and the Google name that they trust, if they change their browser at all.

Re:No plug in support

[MarkvW]

I've got adblock plus, but I dont' go to masses anymore. Too preachy. I like to limit the ability of other people to tell me what to do.

Re:No plug in support

[chrysalis]

If the masses were blocking ads, what would happen?

1) The web would become a marvelous place without any ad anywhere.
2) Tons of web site would just close
3) Tons of web site would require you to pay per view
4) New, more intrusive, difficult to block, kind of ads would go mainstream. (similar to spam filters vs spammers).

To tell the truth, 1) would only happen in a fairy tale.

Re:No plug in support

[Drafell]

It's called GodBlock Plus, or atheism, by the masses.

Re:No plug in support

[moniker127]

Thanks for the link, looks good.

Re:No plug in support

[value_added]

Way ahead of you. http://adsweep.org/

I guess I'm ahead of everyone. ;-)

Privoxy blocked http://adsweep.org/.
See why or go there anyway.

Re:No plug in support

[MrEricSir]

Needs to support an Adblock function at the bare minimum before it would be even marginally accepted by the masses.

...says the guy who has an ad in his signature.

Re:No plug in support

[mugnyte]

  you forgot...

5. Nobody would know. Although determining if an ad-focused object is in the loaded dom, no many sites check. And why would they, this is more development effort.

There's no real way to tell how many firefox users are employing adblock. But at most it's around 23%

Re:No plug in support

[Itninja]

I think he meant "by them asses". When you read it that way it makes WAY more sense.

Re:No plug in support

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps it was blocked because Privoxy is portrayed there in a negative light? The page has a picture of Distrowatch with unblocked ads for everything except Adsweep.

Re:No plug in support

[Anonymous Coward]

>The web would be dead.
I believe i fixed your last part.
Whether you like it or not, ads are here to stay.
I certainly won't be paying to view any websites, ever.
And if you think 90% of web users would pay for viewing websites either, hah, that'll never happen.
Having to go through processes JUST to view a site is bad as it is (registrations, etc), PAYING on top of that is just going to turn people away even more.

This whole adblocking movement is just by a bunch of whiny "kids".
You all expect free things, but you block the very tiny things that let them be free.
Totally a childish mentality.

While i do adblock, it is ONLY abusers of GIFs and Flash.
GIF abuse being anything more than 1 frame per 3 seconds, and Flash being stupid animations that eat up CPU even in the background, learn to code your ActionScript damn it

And i use HOSTS, like any intelligent person would. Privoxy is also a good one too.

Re:No plug in support

[Anonymous Coward]

Ad blocking will always be a black market pirate community type of thing. Same reason tivos/dvrs will never auto-skip commercials. Could you imagine the law suites if IE blocked ads out of the box? Geeks amaze me sometimes with how detached from the real world they can be.

Re:No plug in support

[anton_kg]

http://www.chromeplugins.org/tips-tricks/installing-userscripts-on-chrome/

Re:No plug in support

[icannotthinkofaname]

I like point #1 in your list. With Adblock Plus on my Firefox, site content looks so much more focused on whatever subject is at hand. GameFAQs looks focused on games, Slashdot looks focused on geeky stuff, and it all looks like people care about the web.

And then occasionally, I try a new browser (like Chrome), and I see the ads. And they are EVERYWHERE! It's impossible to concentrate on the site!

If the masses blocked ads, the web would, in fact, be much more awesome.

Re:No plug in support

[Anonymous Coward]

I use adblock the same way, just blocking those ridiculous flash popovers and insanely spinning animated GIFs.

As a result that Easylist row completely blew over my head.

Re:No plug in support

[Anonymous Coward]

If the masses were blocking ads, what would happen?

1) The web would become a marvelous place without any ad anywhere.
2) Tons of web site would just close
3) Tons of web site would require you to pay per view
4) New, more intrusive, difficult to block, kind of ads would go mainstream. (similar to spam filters vs spammers).

To tell the truth, 1) would only happen in a fairy tale.

What about 2)?

'Cause that sort of implies 1).

Re:No plug in support

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe. To prevent this, I'll let the masses look at the ads for me ;)

Re:No plug in support

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got adblock plus, but I dont' go to masses anymore.

I used to like mass. But then the exam had all these differential equations in it, and I decided it was too hard.

Re:No plug in support

[ion.simon.c]

I don't click on ads, ever. (Not even AdSense ads.)

How does my Adblock/NoScript usage hurt the websites that I vist?

Re:No plug in support

[romcabrera]

Do you honestly think the masses use Firefox? The geek-enough to use Firefox, also are more likely to use AdBlock.

Re:No plug in support

[romcabrera]

You are forgetting the solution already running on this TiVo and Youtube era:
Product Placement.
Now, as they know we will skip a Coca-Cola ad, they make Rachel (Jennifer Anniston) drink it on Friends. (Is it obvious I don't see TV series anymore ;)) ??

Re:No plug in support

[Anonymous Coward]

They lose ad impressions.

If you still don't understand, think about newspapers and television. You don't click on those ads either (they're not even clickable) yet they make money.

Re:No plug in support

[Cimexus]

Sorry but I don't know a single person that uses mouse gestures, and very few that use Adblock. Most just use a default out of the box install of Firefox.

I've shown a few people at work Chrome and they seem impressed. I've switched to Chrome fulltime at home now, although I still have Firefox on my work laptop (I work for Oracle and their default machine image includes only FF).

Techies might use Adblock but 'the masses' out there just want a plain old browser that displays their internets. That's why IE did so well - it was there when you installed Windows and it worked (sorta).

Re:No plug in support

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember the web before ads became commonplace. In many ways, it was better. If I had to pick aspects of the new web that I prefer over the old, I'd probably start with wikipedia - and that doesn't need ads to support it.

Re:No plug in support

[Falcon4]

Puh, you can keep your mouse gestures. I switched back to Firefox because I want a convenient in-browser RSS reader like Firefox has (live bookmarks on toolbar). Any other RSS reader is simply too much trouble. Google is leaning too heavily on its clunky "iGoogle" (or whatever it's called) to provide RSS support. And when you do view a RSS feed, the browser explodes. Boo.

Re:No plug in support

[Anonymous Coward]

Who gave this muppet a 5? The masses wouldn't have a clue what Adblock is.

Re:No plug in support

[mgblst]

Ok, so needs to have a Adblock function, or installed on every windows machine, before it is accepted by the masses.

Re:No plug in support

[dword]

On the adsweep page it says "please select a random time of the day when users are unlikely to download at the same time, just to spread out the server load over the day" about updating... If people were to try and choose the least busiest time of the day, they'd all choose the same time and make that the busiest time of the day, so I'm going to choose the busiest time of the day by default, because that will be likely the least busiest time of the day. Right?

Re:No plug in support

[kestasjk]

I donate $10 via PayPal to sites regularly, when they'd never raise that much via advertising, and use Plura rather than ads on my own site.

For me micropayments are fine, but having them earn 0.000001c off of me for annoying the hell out of me is something I have no guilt about stopping.

Re:No plug in support

[Omestes]

I like how you write
      its like modern
Poetry, sweet
broken
    And slightly insulting

This whole adblocking movement is just by a bunch of whiny "kids".
You all expect free things, but you block the very tiny things that let them be free.
Totally a childish mentality.

No. I'm sick of ads, even tasteful ones. How you keep your website up is your problem, not mine. I don't have to go to it, there is a replacement out there, probably even a better site that I haven't found yet. If you charge me for your page, I'd be happy to pay IF (and only if) you make it worth my time and money. If it isn't worth paying for, no one will, and you will either be forced to have something worthwhile, or you will go away. I'm fine with this.

The web will not die, the internets will survive. If worse comes to worse 10% of the total population will ever figure out how to use an ad-blocker, and this 2% segment of the population is probably not the market your looking for anyways. If I'm so sick of ads that I will go out of my way to find a way to get rid of them, I'm probably a nasty, penny pinching, curmudgeon, and you don't want me to buy your stuff anyways.

Though I really kind of like the pay-to-play idea for webpages, it would kill a ton of content free crap. But, luckily, that is just my opinion, just like your opinion is only yours, and both of our opinions are equally valid.

Re:No plug in support

[Omestes]

Funny thing, I was setting up my fathers computer, and threw ad-block on Firefox. He never noticed.

To me this says that ads aren't as powerful as people think they are. I don't watch much TV, nor browse the web without adblock+, and when I actually do turn on network TV, or use a friends computer (that I didn't set up) I'm shocked. I don't think thats because there is too many ads, but because I haven't been exposed to them for 8 years. To other people, their normal background noise that they subconsciously block.

Sure, they're going for unconscious exposure, but 99% of them are completely irrelevant to anyone.

Unless there really is someone out there that thinks drinking crappy domestic beer will make them sexy, and the life of the party. This is the person I fear.

Re:No plug in support

[smash]

Install squid proxy, block ads there. For everyone on the network.

Seriously, what sort of nerd are you?

Re:No plug in support

[epine]

Unless there really is someone out there that thinks drinking crappy domestic beer will make them sexy, and the life of the party. This is the person I fear.

What do the people who spend hundreds of millions of dollars filming and airing those ads believe about this proposition? The customer drinks our crap macro brew because it tastes good? Or because none of his penis enlargers are working too good?

Seriously, advertising memes that stand the test of time (dirt churning monster trucks, herky-jerky bullet-time sorority angel pub-swoop) are most definitely hitting the desired nerve within a large consumer demographic.

Not only that, these ads are shaping entire social values systems regarding consumption and life style.

Another goal of advertising is to cause a momentary amnesia when the customer is standing there in WhizMart eyeing the shiny HP printer under the $30 rebate coupon what it feels like to sit on hold to an Indian call center for 15 minutes and then reach a person who is accountable for nothing except tiring you out while your fancy new printer with the half empty by design chip cartridge completes the 17'th consecutive unnecessary head clean operation.

This momentary detachment needs to last for all of five minutes between impulse and purchase.

The HP brand was revered during the homebrew era the way Apple is now. I had classmates more devoted to their HP41C than your typical iPhone addict. My SAT exam contained the syllogism

HP : engineers :: Disney : children

It was such a deep hook into my psyche, when I walk past a post-Carly HP consumer product display I develop Capgras syndrome.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/vilayanur_ramachandran_on_your_mind.html

There's a lot of beer loser in all of us. You are what you drink. AdBlock is a tiny little oasis of mental Reinheitsgebot.

Re:No plug in support

[Afty0r]

How does my Adblock/NoScript usage hurt the websites that I vist?

1] They may be using Google Analytics or another JS-based in browser stats tracking program. f they do, and a significant proportion of their users have NoScript their site will report significantly lower viewership figures than reality - this will affect their ability to market to larger companies (who may want eABC or similar auditing, many of which are based on JS-required methods) who demand minimum traffic levels before considering spending money with the site creators.
2] They may be paid by an advertiser on a per-impression basis to serve adverts - in this case they would get paid no money for your visits.
3] They may advertise their own services/cross sell to other products they provide which you will now never be aware of - meaning you can never choose to purchase them (hurts both of you).
4] They may have a cost per click campaign so good and so relevant to you that you may click on it if you could see it - by not seeing it, and not clicking it, they miss out on the revenue.

Finally, why would you *NEVER* click on ads? I very rarely do myself, but from time to time, I do see stuff online that's relevant to me. Why *ON EARTH* would you not click in those scenarios?

Re:No plug in support

[Omestes]

I understand this, I originally went to school for social psych and marketing, though it was fully too useful and I ended up in philosophy. This doesn't make me an expert, but it does help me understand that this is true.

This still doesn't invalidate the larger point, the people most likely to actively go through the effort to block ads are probably also the people least likely to buy products because of them, especially because of the sub-conscious factors. I'm guess I'm rather common in this group, where I go out of my way to AVOID products that had advertising that I hated. Beyond that, I buy products that I like, I won't buy domestic swill because I hate it, sadly I don't like the major "micro brews" such as Sam Adams and New Belgium either because I can't stand their taste, their "I'm a person of taste and distinction who truly loves beer" memes notwithstanding. If Stone had a Stone IPA commercial staying what a bitter hoppy bastard I am, I'd buy it, but mostly because I actually like the beer. the commercial might induce me to try it, but my continued contribution to their revenue stream depends on it being to my tastes.

Back when AMD was the processor of nerds, their advertising budget was... I don't think they ever did... while Intel pimped themselves desperately. I bought both, and stuck with the unadvertised brand for years because it was a better product. Even now I'm weary of Intel, even if they are still more advertised, and technically better just because AMD was a better product years ago.

Making this short, quality sells to a certain group of people better than image does. This group is probably the people who don't like advertising. If you want to sell to them, you need a genuine buzz, not a manufactured one. If I had a person I trust tell me the Budwieser was a superior beer over Stone IPA, or Dogfishhead IPA, I'd trust them. But I don't trust the company itself. Whatever they say just makes me MORE skeptical.

This isn't typical, and it might only be true for a minority of people. But this is the insignifigant minority who block ads. The effort is the key. If you had a browser that did this by default, then you'd run into problems. But once people put forth effort (commitment), then the point is moot.

Re:No plug in support

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to choose the busiest time of the day by default, because that will be likely the least busiest time of the day. Right?

No, that's what everyone else is thinking, and thus download adsweep at the same time. They should torrent it if they're really worried about their server load.

Re:No plug in support

[kipin]

"By the masses"? You honestly think the masses use Adblock?

No, the masses don't. But the early adopters do. And the early adopters tell other people what to do on their computer.

In order for any product to be wildly successful you NEED early adopters who are ahead of the curve. This is what Adblock Plus users are. Without support for ABP you will not see a lot of the "techy" early adopters that people go to for computer advice adopting Chrome, therefore Chrome will struggle to find an audience.

Just my $.02

Re:No plug in support

[dword]

Please tune your sarcasm detector.

Re:No plug in support

[BtRB_Ver2]

It* does support Adblock.

*By it I mean SRWare Iron.

Re:No plug in support

[Chelloveck]

The real test would be to remove AdBlock again after a few months, and see if he notices.

Re:No plug in support

[webheaded]

I just have to ask, why do you want free things to go away? And furthermore, what about websites that aren't actually trying to do anything than make just enough money to run the site? I'm running a website right now with ads, but I only aim to make enough money to pay for my server at this point. Am I being greedy or are you just being difficult? I very specifically took off the obnoxious flashing ads, popups, etc because they irritate me too, so really what's the problem? I had a firm belief in not putting things on my site that would annoy me if I were a visitor and I think that seems fair enough. I'm not being obnoxious, I'm not stuffing them everywhere on the page, between page loads, having them yell shit at you...I don't have to make the website you visit either, but I'd at least like to be compensated to the point that I don't have to pay a server bill for people to leech from me.

If you don't want to look at ads, that's great, but don't try to make it some retarded crusade against injustice. You're trying to justify this as some moral obligation and it is just stupid. Yes, you can just not visit the sites with ads...but you are...aren't you? I use adblock too, but I don't view it as some stick it to the man deal (I just find ads annoying sometimes...though when I really think about it, they don't bother me all that much). There are plenty of websites that use those ads just to pay their server bills and aren't really looking for a profit.

Re:No plug in support

[Anonymous Coward]

Why *ON EARTH* would you not click in those scenarios?

Because the ad usually has a url or a brand name which allows you to get there without clicking on the ad. This has several advantages:
1) They don't register your click, which makes them think their campaign wasn't successful and helps make ads go away in general. (Ok this one ad helped you this one time, but at the cost of being subjected to 1000s irrelevant ads, so you would rather see the problem go away, like spam.)
2) You avoid phishing attacks. E.g. the ad claims "buy this on Amazon" and you recognize the brand name so you click on it, but it leads to a fake frontend that will steal your credit card info and not ship the goods.

Re:No plug in support

[Lord Ender]

http://www.mychromeaddons.com/

excerpt:

If you want to install AdSweep in Chrome, create the C:\scripts directory, extract AdSweep.zip and place the AdSweep.user.js file into C:\scripts then right-click the shortcut icon of Google Chrome, either on your desktop or in your Start menu, and click âoePropertiesâ. Select the second tab named âoeShortcutâ, and in the âoeTargetâ field, append â"enable-greasemonkey with a space inbetween. For instance:
Before: C:\Users\Charles\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe
After: C:\Users\Charles\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe â"enable-greasemonkey

Re:No plug in support

[crazybilly]

Without mouse gestures, it's just a fun play-thing.

Oh, and a way to bind "find in page" to something usable like / instead of having to push the clunky ctrl+f.

Re:No plug in support

[Omestes]

I was being a bit difficult, but it was on purpose. The "zomg people who use adblock are gonna kill truth, justice, and the American way" crowd annoys me. In short, I got riled by an AC troll, happens to us all from time to time.

My main point though is that us minority of people using ad-block probably has minimal effects. Also the internet is full of 99% crap, and a small drag caused by ad blocking might act as quality control.

To further distill this down; it won't lead to the end of truth, justice, and perhaps even the Amercian Way.

Re:No plug in support

[Anonymous Coward]

shame last time I check the masses do not use Adblock. An if they did advertisers would not be seeing the clicks they are seeing and would not be buying up advert space on websites and diverting more resources to advertising on the web, but they are .
Perhaps they all imagining those clicks on the adverts.

I could live with no Adblock/Noscript

[PhrostyMcByte]

But I can't live with the invasion of privacy. Sorry :(

Re:I could live with no Adblock/Noscript

[hcs_$reboot]

Chrome is a trap! This is why there is no version for Linux...

Re:I could live with no Adblock/Noscript

[sakdoctor]

Big mistake.
The early adopters are, by definition, going to be geeks who will be most pissed off, and vocal about this tracking.

No thonx google.

Re:I could live with no Adblock/Noscript

[pwnies]

But I can't live with the invasion of privacy. Sorry :(

So why not get Iron?

Re:I could live with no Adblock/Noscript

[AMSmith42]

I'm not sure I buy into "usage tracking is an invasion of privacy" mantra. It seems to me this is a modern day "taking your photograph will steal your soul" sort of superstition. Is the internet not a public place? I'm not sure what kind of privacy people expect while using it.

Re:I could live with no Adblock/Noscript

[harryandthehenderson]

I'm not sure I buy into "usage tracking is an invasion of privacy" mantra.

Good for you.

It seems to me this is a modern day "taking your photograph will steal your soul" sort of superstition.

Actually it's more like I don't want them collecting data on me that they sell later for money without my express permission.

Is the internet not a public place? I'm not sure what kind of privacy people expect while using it.

So then you would be perfectly fine with your bank, for example, having you do transactions over unencrypted connections? I mean the internet is a public place, right?

Re:I could live with no Adblock/Noscript

[geekoid]

Actual, the send an encrypted string that you can turn off, so we don't really know what they are sending. I suspect marketing and ad info they sell.
Info that's useless if they don't know anything about the user.

Re:I could live with no Adblock/Noscript

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

According to Wikipedia, that string is the one thing you can't switch off. Is their information incorrect?

Re:I could live with no Adblock/Noscript

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't a superstition. It's a matter of having someone monitoring your actions and collecting your personal information. I cannot see a single reason why a random person should be allowed to monitor your every step and action, let alone a corporation (and foreign for some of us).

And just for you to know, sometimes corporations do release information they've collected to state officials, with happy developments like imprisoning political activists and dissidents. Do you also consider that to be superstition?

Re:I could live with no Adblock/Noscript

[mako1138]

I leave my Gmail session open in Chrome, and use Firefox for most everything else.

Re:I could live with no Adblock/Noscript

[AMSmith42]

Actually it's more like I don't want them collecting data on me that they sell later for money without my express permission.

Fair enough. Do you avoid security cameras in stores as well?

So then you would be perfectly fine with your bank, for example, having you do transactions over unencrypted connections? I mean the internet is a public place, right?

If my bank required me to do that, then no, I would not be fine with it. I don't nail my deposits to the side of their building either. And I don't expect any sort of implied privacy when surfing the internet. If I want to do anything private, I'll keep as many hands and eyes off it as possible.

Re:I could live with no Adblock/Noscript

[PhrostyMcByte]

It is not akin to someone taking your photograph. It is like someone tagging your ear with a GPS tracker.

Re:I could live with no Adblock/Noscript

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure I buy into "usage tracking is an invasion of privacy" mantra. It seems to me this is a modern day "taking your photograph will steal your soul" sort of superstition.

You do remember the Yahoo snafu from a few years back? They publicly released a large set of queries that were submitted to their search engine. Ostensibly, this was for research purposes. They claimed that the users who submitted the queries were perfectly safe from public scrutiny because each user was "anonymized" by replacing their username with a random identifier.

Turned out, however, that you can guess a hell of a lot about a person by looking only at their search engine queries. Security researchers were able to build profiles of a bunch of people on that list right down to their name, address, phone number, material possessions, health conditions, age, and sexual orientation. Lots of data points that have no business being public.

We have no idea what kind of data Google is gathering about us, but knowing Google, it's probably pretty extensive. They publicly admit to logging every single query (along with IP address and other info) entered into their search engine and The Yahoo Experiment has already proven that that's quite bad enough.

Is the internet not a public place?

The Internet is a network, not a place, so that question doesn't make any sense.

I'm not sure what kind of privacy people expect while using it.

Listen here, if I have the ability to not reveal something about myself to a person or corporation who has no business knowing anything more than my IP address (if even that), then I'm not going to do it. The more someone knows about you, the more likely they are to use that information for their own personal gain, possibly at the expense of yours.

Since you're using the Internet, and apparently don't expect any privacy on it, I suppose you won't mind if I tell everyone here that you:

- Are named Adam Smith
- Are 36 years old
- Probably live (or lived) in Kansas
- Have a 4 year-old daughter
- Own a female calico cat
- Enjoy categorizing domains for web filters
- Have a soft spot for 80's pop music
- Use Linux as your primary OS
- Have a history of tinkering with operating systems including BeOS
- Are a novice programmer but enjoy churning out the odd project once in awhile
- Buy a lot of computer equipment for your employer

It's true, you shouldn't expect any privacy on the Internet after all.

Re:I could live with no Adblock/Noscript

[twostix]

Well in any given public place (just personally) I expect not to have someone following me around 24 hours a day 7 days a week writing detailed descriptions about where I go, what rooms I go into, what I buy, what I wonder and what people other people are saying to me.

Which is exactly what Google knows through search, gmail, adwords, adsense and analytics, all nicely integrated as they are.

If you go to any site displaying google ads or using analytics (probably 80% of sites), yes Google knows you.

Just take a look at the tight combination of analytics, adwords and adsense. And that's the extremely limited view that the public gets. Google would have an extraordinary view of any given individual. And not just an anonymous statistical view, a personal we know your name and private thoughts view. Even if you don't have a gmail account.

If people choose to involve themselves with Google that is their right, but Google isn't just a benevolent charity.

Re:I could live with no Adblock/Noscript

[kestasjk]

If people track you from a server they can only track your usage of their server, which seems fair enough. If you're being tracked from a browser I think it's personal information.

I am also in two minds about it though, and think privacy advocates go over the top regularly.

Re:I could live with no Adblock/Noscript

[syousef]

I'm not sure I buy into "usage tracking is an invasion of privacy" mantra. It seems to me this is a modern day "taking your photograph will steal your soul" sort of superstition. Is the internet not a public place? I'm not sure what kind of privacy people expect while using it.

What complete nonsense. Here's proof by counter example. Please post your web browsing history, your bookmarks, any bank accounts and passwords you've used on the Internet, your passwords at work - after all you use the Internet there too.

Re:I could live with no Adblock/Noscript

[AmiMoJo]

Why do you trust that commercial for-profit company over Google?

Re:I could live with no Adblock/Noscript

[Reservoir Penguin]

Bad analogy, Google can not follow me 24/7 simply because I don't spend that much time on the internet. The few hours a day I'm online I see myself being in a public place, if someone want to follow every step of my boring life and habits, well more power to them, why should I care?

Re:I could live with no Adblock/Noscript

[ragefan]

I'm not sure I buy into "usage tracking is an invasion of privacy" mantra. It seems to me this is a modern day "taking your photograph will steal your soul" sort of superstition. Is the internet not a public place? I'm not sure what kind of privacy people expect while using it.

Because there is a difference between the Google Street View car just happening grab a picture of me in my car at a stoplight and it following me everywhere I go just because I am traveling on a public road.

Re:I could live with no Adblock/Noscript

[pwnies]

Because you could easily disprove any claim they made with a simple packet sniffer. No private data being sent to a server = me trusting them.

Re:I could live with no Adblock/Noscript

[Bob The Cowboy]

I'm not sure I buy into "usage tracking is an invasion of privacy" mantra. It seems to me this is a modern day "taking your photograph will steal your soul" sort of superstition. Is the internet not a public place? I'm not sure what kind of privacy people expect while using it.

Yes, the Internet is a public place. But to follow your analogy, this doesn't mean I want to followed around all day being photographed going to the grocery store, the doctor's office, the bank, etc.

The "Google" part that comes before "Chrome" is why I'll never use it. Usage tracking just makes too much sense for their business for them *not* to include it in a browser.

Re:I could live with no Adblock/Noscript

[AMSmith42]

Would someone at Google please post this for syousef? After all, I'm using Chrome so they are reading this and have all of that information on hand, right?

Still waiting...

[viyh]

I'd really love to try this hyped up browser but I don't seem to have a Windows machine at my disposal. Throw us (linux/Mac people) a fricken bone, Google.

Re:Still waiting...

[Goaway]

Development builds are right there for the downloading.

Re:Still waiting...

[viyh]

That's great but I don't want a dev build. They have now reached version 2.0 for Windows but nothing for linux/Mac? C'mon!

Re:Still waiting...

[Goaway]

You know that it takes time to develop software, right? It doesn't just spring into existence by itself?

Re:Still waiting...

[viyh]

Indeed. And they have had enough time to develop two versions so far. For Windows.

Re:Still waiting...

[SgtSnorkel]

Seriously, who has time to play around with apps that only work on a legacy OS?

Re:Still waiting...

[Anonymous Coward]

Adobe told us this for how long about Flash?
And then for how long about 64-bit Flash?

Re:Still waiting...

[harryandthehenderson]

So a smaller company like Mozilla can magically develop for 3 platforms simultaneously but a much bigger company can't? I call bullshit.

Re:Still waiting...

[Bogtha]

The first beta of Chrome was released about six months ago. Mozilla's codebase is about 15 years old. You do understand that Mozilla have had a substantial head-start, right?

Re:Still waiting...

[mR.bRiGhTsId3]

What legacy OS would that be? Chrome doesn't work on anything older than XP SP2. Oh wait, you were making a snide comment about how Windows is inferior. Golly gee.

Re:Still waiting...

[Goaway]

Once again, development builds are right there for the downloading.

Re:Still waiting...

[Ma�djeurtam]

Mozilla does it in a stupid way (IMHO) by using a non-native widget set and all this XUL nonsense. Google tries to do it the right way, by developing a specific version for each platform. It takes a bit of time.

Now, I agree that they should have began the development of the three branches in parallel from day one, but they are a for-profit company, so it makes business sense to give priority to Windows.

Re:Still waiting...

[harryandthehenderson]

The first beta of Chrome was released about six months ago.

And? What does that have to do with the lack of development for anything other than Windows? Are you telling me that they couldn't have been doing simultaneous development from the start? Please...

Mozilla's codebase is about 15 years old.

What does that have to do with anything?

You do understand that Mozilla have had a substantial head-start, right?

What does Mozilla's head start have to do with the fact that they are apparently able to do cross-platform development better than a company who has vastly more people and money at their disposal? Even the original releases of Netscape were cross-platform so I'm not sure what your point is supposed to be. So basically even at the start when they had even less resources they were somehow able to do better cross-platform development than a multibillion dollar, multinational company.

Re:Still waiting...

[harryandthehenderson]

Now, I agree that they should have began the development of the three branches in parallel from day one, but they are a for-profit company, so it makes business sense to give priority to Windows.

That would make sense if they were selling it, but it's a product they are giving away so other than sheer laziness there is no reason they shouldn't have been doing cross-platform work from the start.

Re:Still waiting...

[Ma�djeurtam]

If their top priority, as it seems to be the consensus here, is to beat IE, the sooner, the better: IE 8 is out and is less terrible than its predecessors.

Microsoft is in the race for browsers again, so if Google wants to compete, attacking before IE 8 gets mindshare makes sense.

Re:Still waiting...

[Bogtha]

hat does that have to do with the lack of development for anything other than Windows?

Lack of development? There is development happening for OS X and Linux. It's just not ready for end-users yet.

What does Mozilla's head start have to do with the fact that they are apparently able to do cross-platform development better than a company who has vastly more people and money at their disposal?

Because development isn't simply a matter of money. It takes time to develop software, and organisational/human/communication factors impose an upper limit on how fast development can move. Mozilla have a codebase where 15 years have been spent in development. No amount of money can compensate for that head-start. Mozilla aren't developing any faster than Google, they are further ahead because they've been doing it longer.

Even the original releases of Netscape were cross-platform

The original releases of Netscape were far, far simpler products. I could write "Hello, World" in 30 seconds that would run on more platforms than Chrome - does that make me better than Google? No, because the task of writing a modern web browser is substantially greater than writing "Hello, World" - and substantially greater than writing an early 90s web browser.

So basically even at the start when they had even less resources they were somehow able to do better cross-platform development than a multibillion dollar, multinational company.

Yes, because they had less to do. If your codebase is a fraction of the size and has only a handful of features, of course it's easier to port it to other systems. By the way, have you tried running those early Netscape versions on Linux and OS X?

Re:Still waiting...

[amRadioHed]

Sure it makes sense to prioritize IE, but I'm still surprised that the code wasn't portable. It doesn't take that much longer to write portable code, and it saves you a lot of time in the long run when you get around to other platforms.

Re:Still waiting...

[IntlHarvester]

What does Mozilla's head start have to do with the fact that they are apparently able to do cross-platform development better than a company who has vastly more people and money at their disposal?

Huh? It took Netscape like 3 years to get the menu bar in the proper place on Mozilla/Mac.

I don't think you know what your're talking about, Mozilla XUL was a massive multi-year multi-developer effort. Get back to us in 2011 before you decide who is better.

Re:Still waiting...

[IntlHarvester]

It took Netscape five years to deliver a working "portable" browser, and in the meanwhile their marketshare went from 50% to 1%.

Google is surely aware of that object lesson, despite your vague handwaving.

Re:Still waiting...

[blind biker]

Google is not really interested in the platforms where alternative (to IE) browsers exist and are thriving. In the Windows world that's not the case, hence Chrome.

Re:Still waiting...

[Anonymous Coward]

The first beta of Chrome was released about six months ago. Mozilla's codebase is about 15 years old. You do understand that Mozilla have had a substantial head-start, right?

i find it funny considered chrome uses WEBKIT which exists for YEARS for all platforms and all they do is a javascript engine + a "nice" wrapper for windows they call "chrome"

i'm still astonished that chrome gets so much momentum and "ill ditch firefox" just because its from google. face it, firefox is good enough, dosn't need the hype anymore.

Re:Still waiting...

[Anonymous Coward]

so you think webkit isnt already multiplatform and developped for years? oh sorry, we just renamed it, put a windows wrapper on top and a new js engine!

think again, google doesn't need your excuses for sucking.

Re:Still waiting...

[Kotoku]

I understand your point on Mozilla having a 15 year code base to build on, but it's not as if Google started from scaratch!

Google had the webkit engine to build upon, and also had many open source projects such as Firefox and the various browsers distributed with Linux as inspiration.

Re:Still waiting...

[amRadioHed]

What the hell are you talking about? Netscape was based on Mosaic, a browser that was multi-architecture from the beginning.

Re:Still waiting...

[Richard_at_work]

And? What does that have to do with the lack of development for anything other than Windows? Are you telling me that they couldn't have been doing simultaneous development from the start? Please...

Out of interest - what do Google owe you with regard to Chrome? Why do you feel entitled to criticise the lack of a stable, official port to a certain platform?

Re:Still waiting...

[IntlHarvester]

All that was tossed because it was based on Motif or whatever. You clearly don't know the first thing about the history of Firefox's development.

How do these companies avoid nix that use it so mu

[zifr]

Google's desktops are Ubuntu based, their servers are Fedora based, however their nix apps appear to be lacking.

Still waiting for OS X

[Croakus]

I ditched Windoze for good last year and will not go back. Would be cool if Google could compile this for OS X or Linux.

i would try chrome with wine

[FudRucker]

but google's screwed up method of not even letting Linux users have a download url for the windows version

Re:i would try chrome with wine

[viyh]

If you really wanted to do this, you could find it. But, it's really slow under wine anyway.

Re:i would try chrome with wine

[A12m0v]

spoof your user agent

Re:i would try chrome with wine

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this actually true, or a jab at Wine? 'cause the latest version isn't in AppDB at all.

Re:i would try chrome with wine

[Anonymous Coward]

User Agent Switcher:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59

Fool all those moronic sites that to browser sniffing.

Re:i would try chrome with wine

[viyh]

Version 1 was slow, I haven't tried version 2 under wine. I have no motivation to run Chrome unless I can run it in my native OS.

Re:i would try chrome with wine

[drinkypoo]

but google's screwed up method of not even letting Linux users have a download url for the windows version

You seriously don't have IE installed in Wine? Or for that matter Firefox?

Re:i would try chrome with wine

[woddfellow2]

You could try spoofing your UserAgent string to make it think you are using Windows. Then it will display the download link for Windows users.

Re:i would try chrome with wine

[garphik]

You can try it with Crossover, it works, but its buggy.

Re:i would try chrome with wine

[Omestes]

Linux has a 1-2% market share, while OS X has a 9-10% share, windows owns the remaining 90%. Its not hard for Google to see where to allocate their priorities.

Yes, there is a Linux and Mac version in the works. Both of which, I hear, are functional, but not quite up to Google's finished pro^W^W beta release standards. But we can see why the resources were first devoted to getting the Win version to work well. We might even decide to see the Win version as the bug check for the forthcoming Linux and OS X releases.

Patience... and lacking that, a quick bunch of Google-fu will find you the alpha for your alt OS of choice.

Here we go again

[Jamie's Nightmare]

Oh great, another post about Chrome. Brace yourself for a wave of 3 general responses:

"No Linux version, so it sucks." - The Jealous Bitch

"It doesn't have (feature from Firefox), I refuse to use it." - The High and Mighty Prick

"I'm all out of tin-foil, you can't trust Google." - The Stallman Worshipers

Re:Here we go again

[TornCityVenz]

Missing Option. But I'm already using it you insensitive clod!

Re:Here we go again

[mqduck]

I'm pretty sure you're being modded Insightful because you list three points that are very good, no matter how sarcastically you state them.

Re:Here we go again

[qtzlctl]

I'm here to use browsers and wrap tin-foil ass and I'm all out of tin-foil.

Re:Here we go again

[Anonymous Coward]

So choosing a browser due to it having important and useful features which I use on a daily basis over another browser which lacks those important features and thus significantly inconveniences me makes me a prick?

Are you on the IE development team, by any chance?

Re:Here we go again

[hairyfeet]

You forgot a response- "Google is great and good and wonderful because they said they do no evil and it doesn't matter if they track you because they are good cause they said so and everything they do is great and I just wish they would do a Google OS so we could all just love the Google all the time!"

This is of course from the screaming Googlite, a strange Internet based form of fanboyism. Originally believed to be a cellular mutation caused by too much exposure to early versions of the Jobs "iReality distortion field"(TM) or perhaps even a genetic offshoot of the RMS basement troll, scientists now believe this may be a completely new species that warrants further study. Fortunately for the world scientists are too busy playing with the new buttons on the Hubble to actually care.

Re:Here we go again

[AbRASiON]

I'm happy to be the high and mighty prick, the browser is effectively useless to me.
Once you've used FF with Tab Mix Plus, you can re-create the feel of Netcaptor which was brilliant in its day.

Very good tab control, Chrome just doesn't come close, ugly too, the performance gain (which is ALL it offers) is not enough, I'll just upgrade my PC.

Re:Here we go again

[Waccoon]

I wish I heard a lot more of the 4th response:

"Screw the minimalist fad and hiding things for my own good. I want my standard menus back!" - Anyone with more than 1 month experience with a computer

js rendering is not the bottleneck

[Anonymous Coward]

for me, most of the lag I experience is latency related. Once the webpage gets to me, I'm fairly happy if it takes under a few seconds to render.

Then, I'd like a stable connection, and working webpages (ie without bugs).

Next, I'd like more intelligent tabbing: one which tracks my current surfing location as a whole, and bookmarks that. (I'm thinking a tree structure for tabs, with parents and children and all that; and a dynamic bookmark, that would follow me clicks, for when I'm reading online documentation, or any multipage document.)

Ok, after all that, now I'm interested in js performance. Sorry :(

[a question for those who want adblock in this browser. You realize that while Google makes themselves out to be a search and indexing company, that they are really a very high tech advertising company, don't you? For them to implement adblocking, that would undercut their entire business model. If they did it anyway, and left their ads unblocked?, well, that would just be illegal, under antitrust laws.]

Re:js rendering is not the bottleneck

[bananaquackmoo]

I think you're confused about what adblock blocks. It doesn't block TEXT ads, and as far as I know that's all Google does.

Re:js rendering is not the bottleneck

[boshi]

Google also serves image ads, and I'm pretty sure I've even seen some flash ads, though I could be wrong about the last one.

I also think you are confused about how google ads work, or adblock works, because it is quite simple in adblock to block all google text ads.

Abblock for me is necessary, not because I have an aversion to seeing advertisements, but because I block content which distracts me from the page I am reading. I use adblock, but I do not subscribe the massive "catch-all" lists it tries to get me to install. I simply use it as a tool to remove content that annoys me as I browse.

Re:js rendering is not the bottleneck

[chord.wav]

For tree tabs in FF, you have "Tree Style Tab" one of my favourites FF extensions: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5890

Re:js rendering is not the bottleneck

[Eil]

For them to implement adblocking, that would undercut their entire business model.

Oh, you mean in spite of the fact that they've already said that they were going to include an ad blocker?

If they did it anyway, and left their ads unblocked?, well, that would just be illegal, under antitrust laws.]

Hardly. It doesn't come anywhere near antitrust laws until Google forces you to use only Chromium if you want to view their web sites. Although I'm not much of a Google fan, I can say that I just don't see them going quite that low.

I still prefer Chrome.

[lwsimon]

Say what you want, but Chrome is my default browser in Vista, and has been since it came out. I don't visit a lot of random sites, and ads aren't that big a deal.

The reason I like Chrome? Its topbar is thinner and more elegant that Firefox's by default. Really, that's it.

Otherwise, I'm your typical nerd. I run ArchLinux, use Firefox+Firebug for development, and I doubt I could get a girlfriend if I tried (I married the girl who dated me in highschool, before she realized what she had done, so that's okay)

Re:I still prefer Chrome.

[Abcd1234]

I'll do you one better. How 'bout no top bar at all? My entire browser consists of a tab strip, a thin status line, and a thin input line. Lean and mean. :)

Re:I still prefer Chrome.

[amRadioHed]

The topbar is pretty good, although customization is a nice option. It really doesn't matter to me though since the button setup in Chrome is the same as how I have firefox setup.

What I don't like though is the color and window close/minimize buttons. Maybe it matches the default Windows setup, but the Chrome windows look totally out of place on my desktop. That's just a minor annoyance though.

Chrome without Privacy Issues

[basementman]

For those of you concerned about the privacy issues surrounding Google Chrome, there is a virtually identical FOSS alternative that Google can't farm data from. See, http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php

Re:Chrome without Privacy Issues

[mqduck]

$ aptitude search chromium
p chromium - fast paced, arcade-style, scrolling space shooter

Now that's the browser for me!

Re:Chrome without Privacy Issues

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah-- I've been using it since the first version. Runs well.

Provokes an Interesting Question

[MarkvW]

If Google, an open source project, sends out all sorts of data that you might consider an invasion of privacy, is the open source community free to fork it?

Re:Provokes an Interesting Question

[MarkvW]

I mean Chrome, not Google. Sorry.

Re:Provokes an Interesting Question

[Phroggy]

If Google, an open source project, sends out all sorts of data that you might consider an invasion of privacy, is the open source community free to fork it?

Chrome is not an open source project. Chromium is an open source project, and yes, you're free to fork that, as per the terms of the licenses.

No

[Murpster]

Screw this Googleweb Explorer.

Issues of Awesome

[bryll]

It is a matter of public safety that google has not released a Linux or OS X version yet. You see, if the incredible Awesome of Chrome were to clash with the respective Awesome of either Linux or OS X, there would be an overload of Awesome, which in turn would become an explosion of Rad. This would cause a resonance-cascade incident that could result in fires, floods, a breakdown of world society and possibly also cause supermarkets to run out of most forms of effective cleaning products.

Re:Issues of Awesome

[cptnapalm]

Ah, but this is okay for some of us as the awesomeness of Chrome and the awesomeness of Linux can be be brought into harmonic awesomeness with the Awesome Window Manager.

Re:Issues of Awesome

[Danzigism]

haha sweet. thanks for the introduction to a WM I haven't tried yet. looks bad ass! additionally, Chrome is definitely a great browser. Now I can use it on my computer that is hooked up to my TV via svideo. The screen only looks well at 640x480 which is crazy I know, but it works great for movies and TV episodes. When I browse the web I always have to use IE because full screening is essential at such a low resolution, but not anymore. but for the love of God hurry up and release the damn Linux version already. I like Firefox and all, but I'd much rather use Chrome. Then release it for NetBSD too plz.

Re:Issues of Awesome

[Samah]

This would cause a resonance-cascade incident that could result in fires, floods, a breakdown of world society and possibly also cause supermarkets to run out of most forms of effective cleaning products.

And possibly the opening of an interdimensional portal to a world of sonic-weapon-wielding dogs and huge open-brain creatures.

No, but you can load Slashdot and not wait forever

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently the Slashdot developers use Chrome on a mighty fast machine; otherwise they'd realize the shame they've brought onto themselves by writing that horribly slow Javascript code and commit hara-kiri.

Not fixed in 7 years: The Firefox CPU hogging bug.

[Futurepower(R)]

What seems relevant here is that Google seems to have much better management than Mozilla Foundation: Firefox, the laptop killer: 200 CPU hogging bugs.

Once there are plug-ins for Google's browser, it seems likely that Firefox will die.

Re:No, but you can load Slashdot and not wait fore

[glennpratt]

This is why I switched to the Chrome beta almost full time.

It doesn't lock up on bad Flash sites, it just kills flash (good riddance), it doesn't fail to load JavaScript on Slashdot (Firefox), it doesn't sit on 1GB of my RAM for no apparent reason (Firefox) and it doesn't crash for no apparent reason (Safari).

Does it have "No-Adblock"-Block?

[IvyMike]

You know, the plugin that blocks the endless comments from people asking "does it have Adblock?"

Re:Does it have "No-Adblock"-Block?

[jesser]

Yes, but it's buggy and blocks your comment too.

Re:Does it have "No-Adblock"-Block?

[jonaskoelker]

I can only view your post in Chromium.

Apparently firefox has "has-\"no-adblock\"-block"-block.

Re:Does it have "No-Adblock"-Block?

[Lord Ender]

Chrome 2 has greasmonkey support, so this would actually be easy to implement.

Re:Does it have "No-Adblock"-Block?

[Anonymous Coward]

nope but I wish someone developed one, it would be the first and probably last one I installed.

Chromium has fullscreen mode

[paziek]

Chromium has fullscreen mode, and I saw something like Opera's form filling, it did asked to save password and then that input box got yellow borders, just like in Opera... but can't get it to actually fill them.
Not sure about that improved New Tab Page, since I never saw that "non-improved" one.
Flash doesn't work, websites with flash will try to load "forever" and just display blank page until then.

Anyway, I've got full HD resolution at work, and it runs on some crappy intel card without OpenGL support (or me not knowing how to enable one), with makes scrolling very choppy in Opera/Firefox, so I use Chromium for frequently used websites, that I don't mind to see ads. It has smooth scrolling in comparison to those 2 and renders much much faster.

I don't like its interface at all, but for my favorite sites - I don't need anything more, just fast display/scroll. So for me its not JackOfAllTrades browser, but its best at what they advertise it - speed, and thats where I put it into use. Don't really mind using yet another, I had open Firefox/Opera all the time anyway, one more doesn't make a difference... well, actually it does - in a good way :)

All that was on svn revision from 20090520rIdontRemember, ubuntu box (yeah, I use one at work T_T).

Can't use Gmail on Google Chrome

[fullcircleflight]

If something as basic as check boxes worked in Google Chrome, I'd be more inclined to use it. I love the multi-process architecture.

Re:Can't use Gmail on Google Chrome

[smash]

err... works for me. looking at that bug report, it looks like its only broken with windows "classic" theme.

Re:Not fixed in 7 years: The Firefox CPU hogging b

[MrEricSir]

I have that problem as well, but then only on the machines where I've installed every add-on I could find. So something tells me it's more my fault than Mozilla's.

Consistency Fail

[nemesisrocks]

Why do certain companies insist on changing making their applications look inconsistent with the rest of the operating system?

The main reason I don't use Chrome (and abhor iTunes) is that Ultramon doesn't work with them. And that makes working with dual monitors painful.

Re:Consistency Fail

[UltimApe]

I've been using chrome + ultramon for a a while, works fine for me...

Re:Consistency Fail

[shutdown -p now]

Why do certain companies insist on changing making their applications look inconsistent with the rest of the operating system?

I don't know about OS X, but on Windows, from Vista on, there isn't really anything to be consistent with to speak of. Office 2007 uses window chrome for its toolbars (which isn't that far from Chrome using it for tab bar), and did you see the screenshots of Expression Blend or VS2010 beta (no, it's not a custom color scheme - they really look like that by default)? Heck, what about IE7+ and Windows Explorer extending the transparency effect (which normally marks the window chrome) to their toolbars / address bars?

Re:Consistency Fail

[levicivita]

Let me get this straight - you paid $40 for this? Do you know that Ubuntu offers this by default for free, and more? My interface right now looks as if it were controlling a UFO and it travelled from 3,432AD to save Sarah Connor.

FYI

[SBrach]

2.0 works by default on Win 7 x64 RC1. No need for the "--in-process-plugins"

Re:advertising

[munk3h]

This was my initial thought too. Google make their money off adds. To make it easy to use Adblock Plus on Chrome would lose them money. Chrome is good, but I have too many Firefox plugins that are _so_ useful, I cannot switch.

* ietab - For SharePoint integration features with evil nazi M$ Office (Sucks, but I need it for work)
* Adblock Plus - Making the internets bearable
* Gmail Manager - multiple gmail accounts monitored
* XMarks - Sync'ed bookmarks, mit the tags also. ftw.
* SwitchProxy Tool - For work/home migration. Changing the proxy for ie, safari (damn I hate that one) and chrome is a bitch. Firefox + Proxy Switch Tool really ftw.

Linux version not far away

[murp]

From: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/wiki/LinuxWeeklyNotes

mmoss: release channel setup, first official build

It works well and looks great.

[MisterSchmoo]

I have been using chrome for about 3 months now and I have to say I like it, the tab layout at the top is very conservative with your screen real estate and very intuitive. Why the home button is disabled by default I have no idea but once you turn that on, it works well, I love how it remembers the last 9 or so pages you have visited as thumbnails on the start page and how you can arrange folders full of bookmarks across the top. and they don't hog the screen when you move away to other pages. It really hated facebook before version 2 but I just checked version 2 and it has no issues so far, so I'm going to stick with Chrome. Firefox could take a leaf out of chromes book with the tab layout, it won't even let me hide all the menus bars that I want to. I know some people like to waste a whole inch of the top of their screen as they browse the web, but I think it's just crazy, especially if you have a widescreen which has a less than full height screen to begin with. I wish there was a shell replacement for explorer that looked like chrome so I could sort out my windows desktop the same way.

I'm always amazed by cries for more adblocking

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the worthwhile content on the web is paid for by ads. If all ads are blocked that revenue source will dry up and those sites (including Slashdot, YouTube, Digg, Yahoo, and even Google itself) will become extinct. Then you can enjoy ad free surfing of corporate sites, government sites, paid subscription sites, and sites owned by suckers willing to offer free bandwidth... but at least you won't be bothered by ads.

Re:I'm always amazed by cries for more adblocking

[IBBoard]

Slashdot: That'd be a loss
YouTube: No bad thing, most of it is junk and what is worth keeping will be put elsewhere
Digg: No big loss
Yahoo: It has ads? It has been too long since I visited
Google: They'll do sponsored, in-line ads instead of easily blockable stuff.
Other sites: I already pay for the hosting of my own site without putting any adverts on it. If it is important enough to be put online then it is important enough to pay for. The majority of sites could make do with hosting that's cheaper than you can get a McDonalds meal for. If it uses more bandwidth than that then it is normally because people don't understand the concept of "optimisation" and "being sensible with images".

Re:I'm always amazed by cries for more adblocking

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, no, because the Internet is not designed like that.

You do not pay your ISP for access to the Internet and then ALSO pay for all the content you want. The fact that your content is available to countless millions of people means that you pay and you shut up because it's the best distribution medium that's ever existed in the history of man.

People offering content grossly overestimate their importance in the grand scheme by requiring payment - although some can get away with this, those are the exception to the rule. Think about it: Before, you had to pay incredible amounts to get such wide notice and distribution. Now you turn around and say people owe you for this wide notice and distribution? That's simply not how it works.

For every person that has paid-for content, there are generally at least a few other free alternatives. This will continue to be the natural order of things, ads or not. The bandwidth is a natural cost of this distribution medium - if you're running a site and want people to consume your content, you're going to have to foot this bill or provide them with a value that you can't get elsewhere.

Re:I'm always amazed by cries for more adblocking

[Spatial]

If all ads are blocked

And if the Earth blew up...

If if if. It'll never happen, your point is moot.

Only a few people actually use adblock plugins, mostly the technically minded. Slashdot probably has the highest concentration of adblock users on the entire Internet and it's still standing.

worthwhile content [...] Digg

Ha ha ha ha ha ha no.

Re:I'm always amazed by cries for more adblocking

[cffrost]

You're a good sport; you fool around with the ads for me... Extra credit for financing my pirate booty.

Thanks good buddy, I knew I could count on you! =)

Version 1 isn't even out yet

[Anonymous Coward]

$ apt-cache search chrome
iceweasel-dom-inspector - tool for inspecting the DOM of pages in Iceweasel
libslang2-dev - The S-Lang programming library, development version
libxpm-dev - X11 pixmap library (development headers)
libxpm4 - X11 pixmap library
libxpm4-dbg - X11 pixmap library (debug package)
linuxlogo - Color ANSI System Logo
prboom - clone of the legendary first person shooter Doom
splix - Driver for Samsung's SPL2 (bw) and SPLc (color) laser printers
xpat2 - Generic patience game for X11
xserver-xorg-video-via - X.Org X server -- VIA display driver
yabasic - Yet Another BASIC interpreter

Re:Version 1 isn't even out yet

[kyrre]

ketilkn@minipus:~$ apt-cache search chromium
chromium - fast paced, arcade-style, scrolling space shooter
chromium-data - data pack for chromium
chromium-browser - Chromium browser
chromium-browser-dbg - chromium-browser debug symbols
chromium-testsuite - Chromium test suite
chromium-testsuite-dbg - chromium-testsuite debug symbols
ketilkn@minipus:~$

Instructions for Ubuntu are here: https://launchpad.net/~chromium-daily/+archive/ppa

not to mention

[caitsith01]

The legal assignment of the right for Google to spy and report on you as they see fit.

Newsflash for Google fans: that stuff they're giving you isn't really 'free'...

Re:Not fixed in 7 years: The Firefox CPU hogging b

[atmurray]

Once there are plug-ins for Chrome, Firefox probably will die but then people will load up Chrome with plug-ins and it will go slow too. Then the cycle will continue... Disclaimer: I like both Firefox and Chrome (but I use Safari 4)

Android?

[gearloos]

I am really surprised google doesn't push this for Linux, OSX, and then the obvious move to Android. I would think it is in their best interest to get a G1 version on the Android platform first. Maybe there is one in the Cupcake build. I'm rooted and happy at RC33 JF so have yet to try 1.5.

Re:Android?

[Anonymous Coward]

What in the hell did you just say?

XSLT2.0

[rleibman]

I'm probably the only person in the world, but does ANY browser support this two year old standard?

Passes Acid3

[WebManWalking]

Just got 2.0 and went straight to http://acid3.acidtests.org/: Passed 100/100.

Re:Passes Acid3

[TailDrag]

Though it still has the linktest failure and there is an X in the top right corner so it's not quite there yet.

Re:Passes Acid3

[th77]

I get, alternately, 97/100 or 100/100, with a "LINKTEST FAILED" message in red regardless of the score. According to an unsubstantiated statement on Wikipedia's Acid3 page, "The testing report claims that test 26 took too long and thus is not within the 30fps criteria."

Why get your mouse gestures app-by-app?

[Anonymous Coward]

I use StrokeIt (http://www.tcbmi.com/strokeit/) - and get mouse gestures on everything.

Update Fail

[Anonymous Coward]

1.0.154.65
Checking for updates...
Update Server not available (error: 3)
from http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=111996
"Error 3 is a failure to communicate with Google Update. There are two known reasons for this:"
"1. You're running Vista.."
Nope, XP.
"2. Google Update isn't registered properly. The 'Default' registry value should correspond to the location of your GoogleUpdate.exe file"
I looked, it's exactly where it's meant to be.

Assuming google's servers didn't get slashdotted, I'm saying fuck it and going back to Chromium. I only wanted a screenshot of Acid3 for the wiki article anyway. Someone else can do it.

Chrome V 3.0 is so fast

[EEPROMS]

Your keypad will be sticky before you have even googled for a new MILF website it's that fast.

Re:Chrome V 3.0 is so fast

[Anonymous Coward]

yupyouareright

Q: Is the tiny font problem still there?

[Tumbleweed]

A: Yep, it certainly is.

Re:Q: Is the tiny font problem still there?

[jrumney]

Shouldn't that be Yep it certainly is, as they compensate for the font size by setting it bigger by default (16 point - I suspect they actually use pixels instead of points, or divide instead of multiply at some point in their calculation) for Sans and Serif styles, but the fixed font size is left at 12.

Re:Q: Is the tiny font problem still there?

[Tumbleweed]

Shouldn't that be Yep it certainly is, as they compensate for the font size by setting it bigger by default

I said yep, it certainly is. Did you mean to say isn't?

This is DEFINITELY a bug of some sort, but this doesn't happen on all pages, even on all pages on certain sites. It's really very weird and frustrating.

Note: I just tried this with Safari (also renders via WebKit) and it does NOT have the same problem. Truly bizarre.

OS X version

[Anonymous Coward]

*sarcasm* there is an os X version. its called webkit (webkit.org).*sarcasm*

    i find the nightly builds faster than the "stable" safari release.

AdBlock Plus - And normal UI!

[pinkfloydhomer]

Chrome is a killer browser. Because it is _very_ fast and renders correctly most of the time.

The problem is that they insist on ALSO breaking a lot of UI conventions and inventing their own. That's nice, but one should have the choice to use a "normal" UI. Firefox with the Chrome engine, or Chrome enginge with Firefox UI would be a killer.

Re:AdBlock Plus - And normal UI!

[kLaNk]

they insist on ALSO breaking a lot of UI conventions and inventing their own

Can you give some examples?

I generally use chrome when I'm able and haven't noticed broken UI conventions that cause me much pain.

Re:AdBlock Plus - And normal UI!

[Allicorn]

On Windows, Chrome's window decorations are always in a horrible bubbly Fisher-Price style that somewhat mirrors the default XP/Vista themes. The application does not honor system-wide windowing theme settings. This is stupid. You've kinda come to expect media players to do this (it's still annoying, but it's become the accepted convention) but serious applications like a browser that I'm going to be looking at all day should not lock themselves out of the OS's visual theme system. I'm stuck with one app which seems like an alien on my system because all the colors and widgets are completely different to everything else. It's as bad as bloody Apple!

Another thing I suspect the GP is talking about is the menu. Oh, I mean the toolbar button. Or do I mean menu? Who knows. Take any normal application on Windows that has a menu - press ALT. Now you can navigate the menu option with the cursors or with menu shortcut keys. Google decided that I didn't need this ability and hacked out the well understood, standard concept menu and replaced it with a little popup off of two toolbar buttons. And for a cherry on top, put those icons at the opposite side of the window from where you'd go hunting for a missing menu anyway.

Ooo lessee... how about allowing the application's controls (in this case, the tab bar) to impinge upon the applications titlebar and moving the apps title from the left to the right. This is just more of the kind of utterly pointless "gloatware" interface decisions that often characterises Apple software on Windows. "Our scrap of software is the single most important thing you'll ever use on your computer so - obviously - it's important that it break established visual style and usage conventions to remind you how important is is!". Gloatware.

These seem like trivial things but interface conventions are of huge value to users who lack confidence in front of a computer. Once you've learned that there's always a Menu and it always has File, Edit, View and Help on it - you've got a huge head-start on getting to know any new bit of software.

There are other things that annoy me about Chrome like that stupid is-it-or-isn't-it-status-bar; curiously referring to its SSL preferences as "computer-wide" in the options page (it's going to change SSL behaviour across all apps and OS?); Bookmark interface; yadda yadda AdBlock, NoScript, yadda.

I feel better now XD

Re:AdBlock Plus - And normal UI!

[x2A]

Have you tried the new Safari? I'm anything but an Apple fan, but downloaded it because a project I'm currently working on has to be cross browser compatible... and credit where credit's jew, I was impressed, it's still on my machine. It seems to have the speed improvements of chrome, with a more complete UI (menubar, bookmarks where I look for them). The window decoration does encompass the tabs but seems a bit dark on my system, but isn't bubbly like chrome. Also, for developers out there, is had a nice set of development tools such as javascript profiler 'n debugger that in some places is better than IE8s. I tested 5 browsers in all, also latest FF and Opera, which seem so far behind the curve I can't see any point in using them. Much to my surprise, out of all of them, the browser that (after going through a process identically on all 5 browsers) had the lowest memory usage was IE8, by up to a third of the others. Safari took the highest (memory vs speed?), chrome sat about 10-20% less (unsurprisingly, safari is much more featureful), although some usage patterns firefox would overtake them both (note my tests weren't extensive as browser tests, with opening and closing tabs etc, they were just testing usage patterns for the project which includes webapps that I'm working on). Oh, also, Safari 'n Chrome as far less annoying to develop under than FF and Opera.

So, it's IE8 and Safari4 for me. The others have far too much catching up to do. Here's hoping IE8.1 manages to close the gap on render and javascript speed that Saf4 and Chrome have, whilst still keeping its footprint smaller.

Re:AdBlock Plus - And normal UI!

[gnarfel]

I actually thought that the Chrome UI was designed pretty decently...when you maximize the program, the title bar becomes the tab bar. Why do you still need a full title bar when the window is maximized? It has a dedicated restore button after all.

Another thing, the colors in the UI are much more pleasing than the default XP Luna theme. They're much more pastel, much softer. They don't distract from the content, unlike the large full-color icons Firefox uses. In Chrome, the icons are all a darker shade of the overall color for the scheme.

I guess Chrome seems like a browser that is polished enough for the masses, while still being incredibly fast and powerful enough to deliver the JavaScript heavy pages we've all come to expect.

Re:AdBlock Plus - And normal UI!

[IntlHarvester]

Take any normal application on Windows that has a menu - press ALT. Now you can navigate the menu option with the cursors or with menu shortcut keys. Google decided that I didn't need this ability and hacked out the well understood, standard concept menu and replaced it with a little popup off of two toolbar buttons.

In Google's defense, Microsoft did it first with IE. The menu bar is clearly on the way out as a standard Windows UI element.

Not providing ALT navigation is inexcusable, however.

Re:AdBlock Plus - And normal UI!

[riceboy50]

I thought the reason Internet Explorer appears to use less resources is because of all the shared components that it uses that are built into Windows... isn't this a well-known fact?

Re:AdBlock Plus - And normal UI!

[x2A]

I'm not talking about "appears to", I'm talking reality... process explorer tells you how much private, shareable, and shared memory processes and each library linked in is using. Very nice little tool, has been my taskman replacement for years now, highly recommend it.

Re:AdBlock Plus - And normal UI!

[Adam Jorgensen]

I actually like the new UI for the most part. It's a whole lot less intrusive than the Firefox UI and about as low profile as the Opera one.

Re:AdBlock Plus - And normal UI!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the purpose of it all, to make it as convenient as possible to run applications in your browser. That is, to replace your OS. Hence the reclaimed titlebar space, to leave as much room for applications (web pages) as possible. Hence, the weirdly positioned menu (it's a "system configuration" menu, not an application interface --- why would you want that to be so proeminent?)

It's only inconvenient to technically minded people, for whom the computer is the computer. It's not to the average google-app user, for whom the network is the computer.

Cheers.

Re:AdBlock Plus - And normal UI!

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen!

Re:AdBlock Plus - And normal UI!

[Anonymous Coward]

I love absolutely everything you have mentioned here. You should (if u still can) drop that "get off my lawn" attitude. It is the most promising browser nowadays.

ps. for the adblock, well use privproxy for now, but it should be here very soon anyway

Re:AdBlock Plus - And normal UI!

[Anonymous Coward]

"...and credit where credit's jew..." You've gotta be fucking kidding me. It is, "...credit where credit is due...". I'm trying to help you come across as less stupid than you are so instead of whining, try learning.

Re:AdBlock Plus - And normal UI!

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, enjoy the changes they made to the interface, practically for the same reasons you seem to dislike it for, so it's hit & miss

Convention is nice to a point, but if somebody doesn't try a different approach once in a while, then we are stuck with the same interface paradigm that can't seem to evolve with time along with all the other components. A better paradigm will never emerge if nobody tries something different once in a while.

Re:AdBlock Plus - And normal UI!

[BitZtream]

I agree, this is stupid.

But, if you're using Windows 7, you'll never notice. What Chrome pretends to be is a Windows 7 app.

Fits in perfectly with the rest of the windows, to the point that I can no longer rely on finding the 'funny looking window' to find a chrome titlebar.

Re:AdBlock Plus - And normal UI!

[Anonymous Coward]

>> So, it's IE8 and Safari4 for me.

Hey man! you are a kick ass old school, man!

Re:AdBlock Plus - And normal UI!

[StuffMaster]

Well said.

Re:AdBlock Plus - And normal UI!

[x2A]

"You've gotta be fucking kidding me"

Well, not jew specifically, you're just the one that bit *lol*

"I'm trying to help you come across as less stupid"

Which makes this all the more ironic... or maybe moronic? So convinced that I was stupid, rather than just someone who's been watching too much South Park, that you forgot to consider your own looking stupidness!

Ah, if only you'd just politely said something like "did you mean to say...?" or "do you know it's meant to be...?" you would've just come across as someone who didn't spot an admittedly not too easy to spot joke rather than as a complete twat. But, I guess you're saved by posting AC huh.

Also, look up the word 'whining', I do not think it means what you think it means, because recognising achievement and awarding credit for it does not by *any* stretch of imagination constitute whining!

Be good to people man, there's absolutely no call for your attitude.

Re:AdBlock Plus - And normal UI!

[x2A]

Haha yeah I missed out w3m didn't I? Yeah I have that installed on my Linux boxes for when X fails to load and I need to look stuff up and other similar occasions :-)

Re:AdBlock Plus - And normal UI!

[Paul Slocum]

Wow, the UI sounds almost as bad as an open-source project!

Re:AdBlock Plus - And normal UI!

[pod]

I too am missing a great many things from Chrome.

The UI IS different, for no reason.

For the life of me, I don't know where all my bookmarks are, or why they are so hard to get at.

I'm a little privacy obsessed, and I don't know what is going on with my cookies. On the one hand you have no visibility into what cookies a site is setting, on the other you have the "incognito" mode, which takes things too far in the wrong direction (ie, zero control over cookies).

Not having even simple addons like text2link and flashblock and basically dealbreakers for me just for regular daily use.

I'm sure some of this will get sorted out sooner or later, not quite ready for prime-time yet.

Re:Not fixed in 7 years: The Firefox CPU hogging b

[jojo78]

You can always take the code and morph it into what you want.

It's highly unlikely Firefox will die, and you'll never know you're using it in the future.

Re:Plugins? -YES

[anton_kg]

BTW, it's available under dev channel for now. http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/extensions/samples

I think I see what you are saying.

[pizzach]

I think I see what you are saying. If Firefox kept it's Linux and Mac versions exactly one version behind, it would be a much better browser. ;-) Maybe we will eventually see Google skip a version of chrome because they are so far behind like Adobe did with Flash. (now waiting for the tomatos)

Google didn't put the whole browser together like Mozilla, they used a bunch of parts form various places and then inserted their own JS engine. The JS Engine was likely in developement in Google labs long before the name Chrome was even thought of. Google labs is just where random projects exist like that. And no, they don't even have to do any work on the renderer themselves which is viewed by many as the hardest part.

Right now, Google's sole target is getting some Windows browser share. Supporting alternative operating systems would be nice too, but that is not their goal, it is icing. Don't give them more credit than they deserve.

Having said that, Chrome is getting this much flack because people want to use it. Not because they hate it.

Yes, but will it download on Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, why is that so difficult?

Mod parent +1 punny. (N/T)

[Anonymous Coward]

N/T

Re:Not fixed in 7 years: The Firefox CPU hogging b

[Anonymous Coward]

nah, it's not your fault, it's just mozillas shitty coding!

you know the usual reason behind it...oh yeah, they need to fix the memory leaks! just cause I have 10 add-ons installed doesn't mean it's one of them it's firefox's fault.

Re: alpha but seems stable and fast

[neonsignal]

Chromium... alpha but seems stable and fast

[laughs] I'm just imagining what an alpha version of IE would be like (or what it would do to my machine).

Re:AdSweep

[PRMan]

So, the dangerous scripts still run but they aren't shown to me?

Uh, no thanks, I'll wait for NoScript.

Soon, extensions coming.

[Anonymous Coward]

The dev branch of chrome has initial support for extensions, and an ad blocker is already available for it.

http://www.adsweep.org/

Re:AdSweep

[Anonymous Coward]

Javascript is only dangerous under IE and Firefox. Chrome doesn't have Javascript vulnerabilities like either of those and never will. It sandboxes each site.

Re:Not fixed in 7 years: The Firefox CPU hogging b

[Anonymous Coward]

Once there are plug-ins for Google's browser, it seems likely that Firefox will die.

Once there are plug-ins for Google's browser, users will have all the same complaints about it as they do about Firefox.

FAQ

[Vexorian]

Q. Will chrome ever work in OS/X / Linux / *BSD like real browsers tend to do?

A. Not really. However, in order to make it up to you, we are allowing you to download an install a chrome-themed webkit window that doesn't have any of the features, is unstable and does not integrate with your OS at all. Of course, as a precondition you first need to find it through a huge maze of links. Please ignore your OS currently got much better native browsers using webkit anyway...

Q. Is it true Chrome is open source software like some articles said?

A. No, Chrome is not open source software. It does not provide you any of the basic reassurances Open source software actually gives you. To make up for this, we invented Chromium, which you can find after diving to another maze of links and compile yourself. We designed Chromium as just a way to selectively get free code. Please, don't use it as it will give you the basic FOSS freedoms and we do not want that for our browser.

Q. Is it true that other non-IE browsers like Firefox, Opera and Safari are also working on javascript speed making the only important chrome feature worthless?

A. Definitely, as a matter of fact, since some of their new versions actually beat Chrome in memory usage and they have no problem in working in many platforms -integrating correctly with the OS, even windows' themes - , there's really no point in using Chrome unless you want a porn tab or want to follow hype. Ok, to be fair those browsers' new versions do have something like the porn tab and each have always had their fair amount of over-hyped fans... Of course, chrome might still be faster, but this is due to the fact we implemented the javascript VM using as much crazy, unmaintainable windows hack as possible. But don't worry, the only web site in which you might actually notice the difference is one we made in which we placed a bunch of demos designed to stress test javascript...

Re:FAQ

[smash]

Funny... but the most important chrome feature to me is 1 process per tab. no other browser seems to do that anywhere near as well yet.

Re:FAQ

[asdf7890]

Q. Is it true that other non-IE browsers like Firefox, Opera and Safari are also working on javascript speed making the only important chrome feature worthless?

That is a little disingenuous. While work was afoot on improving JS performance significantly in the Mozilla camp before the surprise announcement of Chrome, it could be said that Chrome's performance bolstered the resolve of the teams working on that and encouraged MS to take a stronger look at the issue for the IE roadmap.

There is also the process model that, while more demanding RAM wise and maybe a little CPU wise, should result in greater stability. This is something that seems to have inspired Mozilla and IE devs too.

This is one of those "competition is a very good thing" situations. There is certainly room in the market for FF/Chrome/others to be around keeping each other on their toes (as long as "de facto standards wars" don't break out again) so things don't stagnate badly like they did in the IE6 era.

Re:FAQ

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox beats chrome on memory usage? what are you smoking exactly?

Here on Jaunty, I start up a blank firefox, I got 170mb usage right away. The only plugins I'm using are Firebug and ABP.
10 tabs open, 350mb. Just gmail, slashdot and google reader tabs.

I'm using Chromium right now (UA: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686 (x86_64); en-US) AppleWebKit/531.0 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/2.0.182.0 Safari/531.0) on Linux. It works great. There's no plugin support yet, hence I still keep ff3.5 around.

As for speed, try actual web apps and see the difference for yourself. Gmail is STUPIDLY faster in Chromium2 than ff3.5.

The masses will not block ads

[xant]

The only fairy tale is that this would ever happen. Who gives a crap whether the web would disappear if the masses started blocking ads? The masses will never start blocking ads. The masses don't care. They are fine with ads. They filter them out mentally, instead of using technology.

Re:The masses will not block ads

[epine]

They filter them out mentally, instead of using technology.

grep *ad* > /dev/subconscious

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

HOST FILE !!!

[frecky]

Come on... -Go to Google & Search for Host file -Click on second link & download host file -install that -VOILA no more ads, virus etc. ! Page that contains ads are WAY faster to load. And you know what? It works on ANY browser !

Mod Parent Up

[Hal The Computer]

I too strongly endorse Privoxy. You can use it with any browser you can imagine. It's pretty simple to set up too.

Re:Mod Parent Up

[johnkzin]

Me too. Privoxy is da bomb.

Re:Mod Parent Up

[damaki]

I strongly disagree. Yeah, it's easy to set up but it's a pain in the ass to extend and the default filter sucks. The selling points of adblock plus are the fantastic default filters and the easy click and ad to block list.

Chrome needs an adblock plus.

Re:Mod Parent Up

[Muad'Dave]

I too strongly endorse Privoxy.

Then maybe you should use words like "Acceptable" and "Okay" instead of "Amazing!" and "Fantastic!".

8-)

Re:Mod Parent Up

[Chelloveck]

Yeah, Privoxy is a pain to set up and maintain for ad-blocking use. I use it, but would rather use AdBlock if it was available on all the browsers I use. At least with Privoxy, I only have to configure it once.

My big problem with Chrome and Privoxy is that Chrome (as of the 1.x series, haven't tried 2.x yet) uses the same "Internet Properties" as Internet Explorer. You can't change one without affecting the other. Worse, there's no simple way to toggle proxies on the fly. Something like FoxyProxy would be a big help.

Re:Mod Parent Up

[kokojie]

Exactly my problem with chrome too, why can't chrome have their own options like firefox does? Firefox is still the only choice for me. Opera doesn't even support socks proxy.

You can update with "About Google Chrome"

[blind biker]

If you were wondering how to force an update to 2.0, that's how.

So I am now at 2.0.172.28. There doesn't seem to be any difference in the UI at all whatsoever, but pages render slightly differently. For one thing, Slashdot (with its broken slashcode) looks better, now.

Re:You can update with "About Google Chrome"

[cattrain]

I am running windows 7, and I had to add "â"in-process-plugins" to my shortcut. I am not sure if it was because of this, or simply some other error, but chrome wouldn't update for me, even when I went to the "About Google Chrome". I uninstalled Chrome and then reinstalled from the new install file. When I uninstalled, it did not remove my personal settings and data, so I kept everything I had before, even my open tabs.

I'll use Chrome when...

[johnkzin]

I'll use Chrome when it's available on _all_ of:

Mac OS X
Ubuntu x86
Maemo/Mer

With warm fuzzies if it's also available on Ubuntu ARM ... and I'm sure eventually they'll make it the Android browser (the webkit browser on Android is not Chrome).

Until then, there's no point in me running it ... not just for ideological reasons, but also for practical reasons. Those are the OSes I run, so I can't run it at all until it's available on at least one of them. But, it's already annoying that I get a "firefox-like" browser on Maemo, and an oddball browser on Android. I'm not going to make that worse by throwing another browser into the mix. When I can run it on all of my devices/platforms, then I'll start deciding if I like it in comparison to Firefox.

FAIL!

[fulvioc]

FAIL. http://acid3.acidtests.org/

Re:FAIL!

[DanJ_UK]

Barely, it's not a bad effort, only one little x in the top right.

Faster Javascript could be a bad thing.

[cyclomedia]

(Google for UserPreferences DOM for my thoughts on this subject).

Personally I believe that we're bloating the web and need to reign in the horses a bit, it's all nice and lovely to have uber fast javascript performance but all that means is more developers falling over each other to make more bloated, media rich web experiences. Sometimes all i want to do online is check my web mail, read the news and a bit of slashdot.

I have a very small PDA that i can do this from and also a relatively old laptop, the latter's purpose is solely web browsing (though it can handle Doom jsut fine) but even google maps (apologies, it may be live maps) brings it to a screaming grinding halt because the developers didnt think to put a timeout in the zoom in/out interpolation. Meaning it takes about a minute to change one level of zoom in aerial photo mode.

I do not however think the solution is to have to choose between script and no-script. MY suggestion has been that browsers have globally readible javascript preferences with (deliberately) loose categories so i can for example:

• Stop videos (flash, embedded or other) playing automatically
• Stop audio playing automatically
• Have a master volume control (so i can set it to mute when browsing AND listening to music)
• turn off javascript "transitions" (so dialogs and map zooms have to jump into place instead of interpolating)
• turn off css opacity (completely)

All of the above would be presented to the page's javascript, and it would be up to the site's author to respect or ignore these settings. But if it were a standard set of preferences (and each browser could impliment the GUI however they liked, letting set them on a per site basis or jsut having global settings with per-tab-session overrides) then non-compliant sites would be named and shamed into compliance - much more effective than trying to force rules through.

Finally, i think the above would be a much more elegant solution than forcing pages into predefined profiles (i.e. Mobile vs Desktop) because whilst my pda is most definitely mobile it's 500mhz ARM processor means it probably could handle more than a mobile phone. My laptop is most definately somewhere between the two, it has an 800MHz Celron in it, so is probably slower than the pda, hardly a candidate for a predetermined "Desktop" role...

Re:Faster Javascript could be a bad thing.

[Quantumstate]

For firefox you can do quite a few of these things you listed already.

The Flashblock Addon prevents flash from starting automatically.
The Stop Autoplay addon prevents audio playing automatically.
Turning off css transparency can be done using instructions from this web page: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=521126

The master volume control would be difficult because most of the sound comes from flash in my experience so the browser would need to interface with flash for this to work.

Also turning off Javascript transitions is also very difficult since there aren't any predefined javascript transition functions so you would randomly break stuff. This should be implemented by the website programmer.

Re:Not fixed in 7 years: The Firefox CPU hogging b

[koiransuklaa]

Firefox, the laptop killer: 200 CPU hogging bugs [slashdot.org].

Either you don't know how bug databases work or you're just using the numbers to push an agenda. The important idea to take home here is: The number of reported bugs is a really poor indicator of anything.

The above is the only thing needed to make your statement useless, but I can point some other problems with it as well: Mozilla has ~50 different products in their bugzilla, you searched them all (including things like websites). Also, the vast majority of the bugs in your list are unconfirmed (from experience I can tell you most of those don't have enough info to reproduce or even to mark them duplicates: I'm guessing there are a _lot_ of scrolling related reports that are actually the same bug).

Note that I'm not saying that Firefox is efficient or that it doesn't have major problems with e.g. scrolling. I'm telling you to stop bringing that "200 CPU hogging bugs" figure up whenever there is a browser discussion: it has no meaning. Either do your homework and find the actual important bugs or shut up.

Smart Bookmarks

[cbrichar]

Admitting freely that I haven't RTFA, I'll ask all the same...
Does Chrome now support Firefox-style smart bookmarks with keyword support? Currently, that's really the only thing keeping me tied to FF.

As a simple example - I keep a bookmark to dictionary.com in Firefox that I associate with a keyword 'd' which can be used to open the page directly from the address bar. The bookmark's URL definition inclues a '%s' to allow it to pick up additional parameters. The end result is that I only need to type 'd myWord' into the address bar to be taken directly to the specific page I was looking for, instead of having to first navigate to the top-level URL and kick off the search from there.

I have similar links for imdb, wikipedia, google maps... it's really convenient to skip those introductory pages.

Re:Smart Bookmarks

[DanJ_UK]

Yes it does. For example I have a bookmark called 'Google Quick Search' with the google keyword assigned, when you type google search term it changes the keyword to the title of the bookmark and grabs the URL specified with the term when you return.

Bundleware

[dugeen]

I tried the last version of Chrome and it installed a shedload of other crip-crap, including the notorious Google Update. I'll give the new version a go iff I can just install the browser.

Launchpad+bzr rocks

[Anonymous Coward]

n/t

URL / Search bar like Firefox?

[MarcoPon]

Is there any tricks / settings for the address bar? I'm too used to Firefox Awesome Bar; it let me basically stop using bookmarks and still find all the interesting URLs I visited. Chrome bar is near there, but the search isn't that effective...

Re:Not fixed in 7 years: The Firefox CPU hogging b

[Briareos]

Firefox, the laptop killer: 200 CPU hogging bugs [slashdot.org].

Either you don't know how bug databases work or you're just using the numbers to push an agenda.

Considering he posts the same shit in every story about Firefox...

Nope, definitely no agenda here. No sirree.

Can we please get a "Ignore user" option on Slashdot already, or - failing that - a "Nuke user from orbit" option?

np: Secede - Vega Libre: The Citadel (Vega Libre)

Re:advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

Well Adblocker and Gmail manager is up and running to an extent.

I'm not sure about IETab, or generally integration with external renderers and stuff like that.

Xmarks should be easy enough to build very soon. (or even now)

SwitchProxy, not sure about that one either

Re:Not fixed in 7 years: The Firefox CPU hogging b

[Hurricane78]

You mean the FLASH CPU hogging bug! Seriously! Try it!

Re:No, but you can load Slashdot and not wait fore

[BorgDrone]

Try browsing slashdot on an iPhone, it's horrible. Almost everywhere you press triggers some kind of javascript. Viewport keeps moving to the top of the page, etc.

Re:Not fixed in 7 years: The Firefox CPU hogging b

[mlk]

I'm sure you had that by setting someone to "Foe" and then setting "Foe" to "-10 points" and viewing at +1.

But /. developers have given the interface a good AJAXing and now I can't find the settings.

Firebug

[Anonymous Coward]

All I want is Firebug for Chrome. Yes, I know they have a built in element browser, but I want to also be able to see posts/gets and their contents as they come and go in the console.

Your excuse is number 21.

[Futurepower(R)]

That's another excuse for the list. Yours is number 21.

Note that, for several years, Google has been paying more than $50 million per year to the company that makes Firefox, so that Google will be Firefox's default search engine. It seems reasonable to suppose that $50 million per year is enough to allow Mozilla Foundation to fix the major bugs.

Most software that has been written is now not used. When Google's well-designed Chrome browser has enough extensions, why would anyone use Firefox? That is especially true because the CPU hogging bug sometimes locks a computer so completely that the only way to recover is to turn off the power, which means that other work is lost. Also, CPU hogging causes processors to run hotter, which causes the CPU fan to run more. CPU fan failure is the biggest cause of laptop failure.

Google waited until 2 months before its agreement ended to renew it. Perhaps the agreement will not be renewed again, and Mozilla Foundation will lose most of its funding.

Firefox developer top 21 excuses
for not fixing the Firefox CPU hogging bug
after more than 7 years and hundreds of reports

These are actual excuses given at one time or another.

1. Maybe this bug is fixed in the nightly build. [The same memory and CPU hogging bug has been reported many, many times over a period of seven years.]
2. Yes, this bug exists, but other things are more important. [The bug eventually takes 100% of CPU power, and makes Windows XP unusable, even after Firefox is killed. The bug affects the heaviest users of Firefox.]
3. Yes, this bug exists, but it is not a common occurrence. [Numerous users have reported the bug. See the links.]
4. Works for me. [The bug is complicated to reproduce, so the developers did a simplified test, which didn't show the bug.]
5. No one has posted a TalkBack report. [If they had read the bug report, they would know that there is never a TalkBack report, because the bug crashes TalkBack, too, or a TalkBack report is not generated. TalkBack does not generate a report if Firefox is hogging the CPU. TalkBack cannot generate a report if the bug takes 100% of the CPU time.]
6. If you would just give us more information, we would fix this bug. [They didn't bother to reproduce the bug using the detailed information provided.]
7. This bug report is a composite of other bugs, so this bug report is invalid. [The other bugs aren't specified.]
8. You are using Firefox in a way that would crash any software. [But the same use does not crash any version of Opera.]
9. I don't like the way you worded your bug report. [So, he didn't read it or think about it.]
10. You should run a debugger and find what causes this problem yourself. [Then when you have done most of the work, tell us what causes the problem, and we may fix it.]
11. Many bugs that are filed aren't important to 99.99% of the users.
12. If you are saying bad things about Mozilla and Firefox, you must be trolling. [They say this even though Firefox and Mozilla instability is beginning to be reported in media such as Information Week. See the links to magazine articles in this Slashdot comment: Firefox is the most unstable program in common use.]
13. Your problem is probably caused by using extensions. [These are extensions advertised on the Firefox and Mozilla web site, and recommended.]
14. Your problem is probably caused by a corrupt profile. [The same bug has been reported many times over a period of five years. One of the reports discusses an extensive test in both Linux and Windows that used a completely clean installation of the operating systems, not just a clean profile. The CPU hogging bug and instability was just as severe.]
15. If you are technically knowledgeable, you can spend several hours (or days) trying to disc

Re:No, but you can load Slashdot and not wait fore

[visible.frylock]

It's not the javascript so much in my experience. When I'm using FF on linux, the performance on /. is horrible. So I turned off JS completely and the problem persisted.

But then I turned on the simple ui option in my /. prefs, and got a huge speed boost.

FF on linux has had generally worse performance for me across the board, but /. was especially bad. I'm not a css/dom guru, so I don't have the time or the experience diagnose it.

Re:Not fixed in 7 years: The Firefox CPU hogging b

[Briareos]

I'm sure you had that by setting someone to "Foe" and then setting "Foe" to "-10 points" and viewing at +1.

But /. developers have given the interface a good AJAXing and now I can't find the settings.

Well... even though I have a few people on my foe list (more as a reminder to myself to read with caution than anything) I don't want to filter them all out, just one or two of them...

np: Yagya - Rigning Fimm (Rigning)

WIN!

[cattrain]

And linktest failed, and slight skewing of the "Acid3" text. Other than that, it's perfect. It ended with 100/100 so I think it's pretty good.

Chrome has been hacked

[societyofrobots]

Of interesting note, my Norton Antivirus detected a trojan stored directly in my Chrome cache trying to spread on my laptop today. Possibly hacked, maybe not. Something got through for sure!

Only for Windows

[Dr.Ruud]

AFAICS only for Windows.

Chrome

[RB-UK]

I have been using Chrome for a few weeks now and have been really impressed with it thus far. It can be iffy at times on some sites, but it is lightning fast which is just what I've been looking for from a browser. Did use I.E, but have had a fair share of bugs recently. Cheers. http://www.howtomakemoney2k.com/