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Google Announces Chrome For Mac and Linux Dev Builds
Dan Kegel (who admits to being a Chrome developer) writes to point out a post from Mike Smith and Karen Grunberg, Product Managers for Google Chrome, with some good news for non-Windows users who want to play with Chrome: "In order to get more feedback from developers, we have early developer channel versions of Google Chrome for Mac OS X and Linux (for a couple of different Linux distributions), but whatever you do, please DON'T DOWNLOAD THEM! Unless of course you are a developer or take great pleasure in incomplete, unpredictable, and potentially crashing software." (The announcement continues below.)
"How incomplete? So incomplete that, among other things , you won't yet be able to view YouTube videos, change your privacy settings, set your default search provider, or even print.
Meanwhile, we'll get back to trying to get Google Chrome on these platforms stable enough for a beta release as soon as possible ..." The downloads are available through the Chrome developer's channel.
Meanwhile, we'll get back to trying to get Google Chrome on these platforms stable enough for a beta release as soon as possible ..." The downloads are available through the Chrome developer's channel.
Why would I need this? I already have a webkit browser with tabs on top.
Because multiple players means competition, and competition means innovation, which leads to a better browsing experience for all of us, regardless of which you're using.
And the masses cried out, "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0!"
I don't think open source software is necessarily about what you want it to be. Just because Firefox is better than the competition today doesn't mean that Firefox will always be the best but if nobody tries to make anything better then stagnation will ensue. Monoculture is bad no matter who is director and I would rather see 20 options than 2.
Even if the rest of that argument (let's not have competition now that the browser I think is good is winning) made sense and all that matters is killing IE, Chrome is an additive force. In a world with only IE and Firefox, if you disliked Firefox, there'd be no alternative. There are people who like Chrome better than Firefox; if your goal is killing IE, that's *more* switchers, even if a bunch also switch back and forth between Firefox and Chrome.
However, outside of that, there's nothing bad with having many browsers around. What is bad is having many contrary *concepts* around. Chrome didn't drag a new rendering engine in, they used WebKit, which is good. Actually, they used a fork of WebKit, which is bad, but WebKit has been able to handle this stuff by merging in the necessary abstractions in the past.
Not on a Mac it doesn't. While Fx 3.0 is far better than previous versions on a Mac, it's still pretty poor. And you can't use Fx 3.0 on older Macs at all.
Adblock and flashblock etc are coming for Chrome. I use Firefox now, but unless Fx4.0 works significantly better on a Mac, and is multi-threaded, my continued use of it is time-limited. That's entirely Mozilla's own fault. They seem to be focusing on rebuilding Firefox as the Netscape suite, rather than actually making the core browser work efficiently.
Google has, unfortunately, been very slow about developing Chrome for Mac (as they usually are for all their software, Macs users appear to be an afterthought for them). This version appears to be intel only -- I sincerely hope that this is going to change. I have an old G3 running 10.3 that looks great and works well for surfing and playing music. I'd absolutely love to get Fx 2.0 off it, and use a browser that works effectively.
Trust me, I admire Google. But I am mad at them for using the "wrong" toolkit in developing Chrome for Linux. Slashdotters, this is *my* opinion having used both toolkits and deployed software though not as complex as a browser on all operating systems.
And I have at least one supporter on this front.
What they should have done is to fund development of Chrome using the "right" tool for the job. What would be wrong with that?
Undoubtedly due to the Javascript JIT.
Here's why I'm excited about/anxious for Chrome on OS/X:
I used Firefox for awhile, a couple of years back. It bogged down the CPU, especially after running for awhile.
So I switched to Opera (and shortly thereafter went from Windows to OS X). It was a peppier experience. But with newer releases, and the increasing use of Flash (I think) on the Net, it started getting slower and slower. I don't like having my fan run while I'm simply sitting and reading a static page. Turning off all plugins seems to avoid that, so I point the finger at Flash. But not having Flash, or only having it on demand, is fairly annoying. Also, there's some sites Opera just won't render properly. Not many, but some.
So I switched back to Firefox, with the advent of 3.0. Even doing nothing, sitting with a few static pages open (and Adblock, Flashblock) it seems to still hover at 10% CPU usage. Bleh. Enough to keep my fan humming all the time.
When I tried Chrome on Windows, I was quite excited, with the process-per-page approach. I can see *what* page is slowing things down, and kill it if I chose. That's my biggest beef with Opera/Firefox (I won't even let IE into the discussion :P): you can't tell *what* page is slowing down your browser. I've tried JavaScript debuggers, other dev tools to try and found out, but have had no success.
I'm praying that Chrome on OS/X will be my salvation (although I've become dependent upon some Firefox extensions, particularly vimperator :P). Upon first glance, it looks pretty good (and I'm using it to post this article). It seems to suck up 30% CPU for 20 seconds or so *after* finishing loading a page, but then does settle down.
Right now I have about 5 tabs open, and each is using 2-3%, which is slightly concerning. That could add up to be just as bad as Firefox/Opera. But for now, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt of being an early release, and keep my fingers crossed that the "Browser That Finally Doesn't Suck [CPU]" is on the horizon...
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
I find the Chrome interface quite revolting. But what's even worse is the psychotic bitchings of Ben Goodger, former Mozilla developer. My response to Ben discusses the issues he raised.
Because you want one that doesn't suck.
And that would be the one that doesn't let you change the (marketing dept. approved I presume) privacy settings and search engine?
I smell a rat.
I would bet that while you can't print, view YouTube videos or change your privacy settings yet, the core functionality of aggregating data about the user's browsing behaviour and sending it to Google with a uniquely identifiable ID is firmly in place.
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
Using the Fedora Linux here and have been for a rather long time. I am very much "anti-advertiser" simply because they have a huge propensity to "go too far" with their advertising and data collection. (I have nothing against advertising when it comes to respectful means that the customer seeks out for himself.) Google, for everything else they do in terms of evolving the internet technologies, is still an advertiser. I don't trust them. I can't imagine why anyone else would either.
Really, an alpha build is expected to be considered a finished product? They never said we won't let you change privacy settings/search engine, it's called "we haven't even bothered coding features because this isn't stable".
If your ass smells like rats, that explains where your head is.
It seemed more like flamebait and I didn't realise it was a joke, I apologize for that. However in my defense idiots posting such comments seriously aren't rare to find on /.
:)
Again, my apologies.
I am the lawn!
You know, there are these things called "bookmarks". It's a lot smarter to use those instead of keeping open more tabs than you can use at once. You can even bookmark a group of tabs!
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
You can use chromium if you don't want to use the google branded Chrome. Chromium will not send any data to anyone.
TechSutra
As an Opera user, I haven't suffered at all from all of the innovation.
Also notice that I did not need to put the word innovation in quotes.
Avoiding software monoculture. On both OS X and Windows, Safari has been shown to have a substantial number of security flaws. Even if I liked its minimal configurability and general look and feel (I don't, but that's a personal thing) the security issues would lead me to avoid using it, much like IE6. (Hmm... is this some kind of rite of passage for a browser bundled with an OS? I hope Apple gets its security act in gear faster than Microsoft did - they're starting to become popular enough to be a worthwhile target.)
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...