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New Chrome Beta Adds Themes, Speed, & HTML 5 Video
adeelarshad82 writes "Google developers are always working on and updating Chrome in three channels — Stable, Beta, and Developer — in increasing positions on the bleeding-edge scale. Today the company thought changes to the Beta channel warranted a post on the main Google Blog. The advances range from the superficial addition of themes for customizing the browser's window borders to even faster speed under the hood to internal support for HTML 5 tags such as <video> and 'web workers,' which allows the browser to divvy processing work among sub-threads."
Using it now, with a sexy theme! Woo!
When will google learn that plugins, especially something like adblock, is the killer feature they need to attract the "willing to switch" audience, a lot of whom are using firefox right now. I personally love Chrome for its speed and stability, used it for a week or so, but then switched right back to Firefox because I just didn't realise how it is to do many things in Firefox with extensions such as adblock, no script, autopager, del.icio.us integration etc.
Has Google managed to get Chrome install in the "program files" director yet? The fact that it installs in "application settings" is the number one reason I can't install it.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
The first thing that really got me about Chrome was how well it seemed to learn my browsing habits. At least, that was my first impression when I booted it up. The first view you get in Chrome is the "most visited websites" page or something like that. As a incognito porn site surfer, I was really taken aback and worried about privacy issues.
It took a long time in Firefox to fix the URL history functionality. It used to keep the URLs in some cache so that it could be called up right away when you started entering a URL into the address bar. Now, the URLs at least seem like they are gone forever when you delete them from your History.
IE still has this problem (in addition to completely retarded address bar behavior). In fact, if you delete the entire browsing history at once, the URLs themselves can never be deleted except by completely clearing the cache, but then that also deletes the "cover" sites that I visit to make it seem like my surfing is just innocuous browsing and not the hardcore porn viewing which it ostensibly is.
So if Chrome wants my patronage, I think the first thing it needs to do is convince me that my personal privacy is safe. That my URLs aren't going to be cached and exposed at some inopportune time, and that it isn't tracking them for me to helpfully find other related websites.
In this way, I've found Firefox to be the most accommodating browser on the market today. It does what I want and doesn't try to be smart about it. Funny how so many things in life work better that way.
Yes it does (Not the crappy wine one). There is a beta native version I use regularly, and on 32-bit it even does plugins (Flash)... However, I got myself a 64-bit comp these days, and it does not run plugins on that one... It feels much faster than Firefox on Linux...
Ah I understand...
Looking at those flashing, blinking ads all day long would turn me into an angry frothing grumbler too...
After all of Ben's ranting about how inconstant Linux is I am sure glad they choose to turn on the silly blue boarder by default on Linux. Because now it really fits into every Linux desktop. Yah for branding. http://groups.google.com/group/chromium-dev/browse_thread/thread/b89ab99a0c848b89#
Do you changes clothes while making the "chee-chee-cha-cha-choh" transformation sound?
Does it have smooth scrolling and adblock yet? If not then I can't move. Especially after the huge speedup in FF 3.5.
Improve at backgammon rapidly through addictive quickfire position quizzes: www.bgtrain.com
I'm just not going to give google more info about me by using their browser.
Dyslexics are teople poo
How do you define "wrong"? I for one like it when new tab is opened next to the current one, instead of the last. Am I liking it wrong?
I'm a not-very-happy Firefox user, since I find it has horrendous memory leaks. I can get it up to 2GB virtual memory in a morning's average browsing. Yes, I have tried the tips on the Mozilla site.
However, I have become addicted to a controlled web experience with NoScript and Adblock. I won't be switching to Chrome until I can get similar tools.
Although I like them, I see no point in using alternative webkit-based browsers like Stainless or Shiira. I'd definitely give Chrome a try, though - their extra efforts really make it worth!
I like to think that themes for individual applications died out in the nineties.
Themes sound promising in terms of not having the ugly Chrome look standing out like a sore thumb against the rest of my GTK themed apps, but 64-bit is the killer. That plus the fact that they can't be bothered to make a simple RPM of it and only want to deliver a DEB. It's a shame, because I'd be interested to see how well it works and how much faster it is, especially on my quad core at work.
How do you define "wrong"?
Tabs go above the content that is part of the tab.
The address bar is not part of the tab.
I use Firefox and will never in my lifetime use a browser made by a data collector like Google.
It is being x86 only means that it will never ship for ARM, Symbian. It is a show stopper for me since I heavily use smart phones, powerpc machines etc. for browsing.
I know the OS X developer and he is a nice person who doesn't drop PPC support for nothing. If it is not supported, it must have a reason. i386 ASM? Whatever. I don't want to rant too much about a browser which I can't use 3 of my 6 machines anyway.
are they supporting theora (like firefox) or just h.264 ? both would be great, of course.
What ? Me, worry ?
Downloaded the latest Chrome Beta (3.0.195.4), installed AdSweep, failed to be impressed. AdSweep loads ads the first time you visit a page in a session then erases them, highly annoying. The biggest problem I had was that I failed to notice any speed difference between Chrome and Firefox 3.5.2 on the sites I visit. If anything my non-scientific observation was that with AdSweep loaded, Chrome was significantly slower than Firefox.
I would certainly image it does feel faster than Firefox on Linux x64. As per bug #489146, TraceMonkey is still not enabled on x64 Linux builds. This does make it feel rather sluggish on any page with serious amounts of JavaScript (i.e. any Slashdot story), and is something that really bugs me about the 3.5 release. I'm sure I'll really enjoy it someday, but not until I can actually use the biggest enhancement of the release.
When will google learn that plugins, especially something like adblock, is the killer feature they need to attract the "willing to switch" audience, a lot of whom are using firefox right now. I personally love Chrome for its speed and stability, used it for a week or so, but then switched right back to Firefox because I just didn't realise how it is to do many things in Firefox with extensions such as adblock, no script, autopager, del.icio.us integration etc.
Oh here we go again! :)
SRWare Iron is the same browser as Google Chrome except it has all the privacy concerns removed.
IT ALSO HAS ADBLOCK SUPPORT.
SRWare Iron - http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php ADBLOCKER SUPPORT: "11.10.2008: Adblocker integrated in Iron
The wish of many users comes true: We integrated an Adblocker in Iron! With a filterlist so nearly all online-advertising can be blocked. A working list can bedownloaded here and just has to be copied to the Iron folder (e.g: C:\Program Files\SRWare Iron\). Note: You must first get the latest version of Iron you can find under "Downloads". So Iron is the first Chromium based webbrowser worldwide which has an adblocker included."
Here is the link to download the latest adblock.ini file http://www.srware.net/downloads/adblock.ini
Fun fun fun. lol. I love always telling people about Srware Iron. It's awesome.
AC was laughing so hard on the floor, he got dyslexia in his ROFL!
If you want Adblock, I think I heard somewhere that SRWare Iron supports it.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
In the non-cyber world, we all accept ads in the magazines and newspapers, realizing the subsidy they provide to the mags and papers. Same way here.
I wish there is a way to set my browser agent to tell the websites something like:
Will accept text ads.
Will reject all animations gif, flash or javascript.
Will allow 20% of screen real estate to ads.
Content load time not less than 0.33 times ad load time.
Currently looking for ads with keywords : digital camera, DVD cases/sleeves, air tickets to India
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Different != Wrong
In my opinion, it makes more sense for the address bar to be part of the tab, because the address of the page has a 1:1 relationship with the page you're viewing.
Have you driven a fnord... lately?
You must wait a little bit before using this resource; please try again later.
it does seem strange that all this talk of Chrome OS and yet they're still pushing Chrome to Windows users first. Either these are two very different projects or Google is going to have to do much work getting these two groups synced up for the Chrome OS release.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Having passed all of the different Acid Tests with a perfect score on the latest JavaScript oriented Acid test.
My thumbnail look at Sunspider scores shows about a 20% overall speedup over the latest Firefox beta, but Firefox wins in enough of the individual tests that I expect BOTH to improve quite a bit, that is if the fastest times on each are used, even Chrome's time would be 20% better.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
There are several widgets on the address bar, none of which change in layout or behavior depending on which tab you're on, and only one of which changes its contents... and they're ALL "part of the tab"? Give mea break.
If you want to put your tabs somewhere weird, be my guest, but not giving me an option to put it back is a complete deal-killer for me. It drives me crazy. I quit using Opera when they started doing that, and I'm not going to bother even looking at Chrome until they fix it.
I run Chromium, the Linux port of Google Chrome since a couple of weeks. At first it was barely usable but things has started to pickup fast. Its dead fast on my eeepc 901 and on my normal workstations at work and at home. Over time i have really started to like Chromium, even more so than Firefox.
Ive also ran some on Windows with the normal Google Chrome and its even more stunning comparing IE8 and Google Chrome. The differences in speed and "up in your face!, here i am!, look at me!" are stunning. While IE8 is all over you trying to stear you towards Windows Live Google Chrome just stays the hell out of my way. Speedwise the difference is enormous on all sites.
If Google releases a real Google Chrome for Linux i suspect both Firefox and Konqueror is in for a ride. Not that they are bad in any way, rather that Google Chrome is so darn good already.
HTTP/1.1 400
It seems "themes" or "branding" is the new fad these days. Is it so hard to just leave the window frame's look to be managed by the window manager, as it should?
I like my apps to look consistent. In fact, I usually take matters in my own hands when they insist on not doing it.
Here's the Linux version: http://dev.chromium.org/getting-involved/dev-channel#TOC-Linux
If you want to put your tabs somewhere weird, be my guest, but not giving me an option to put it back is a complete deal-killer for me. It drives me crazy. I quit using Opera when they started doing that
Just FYI, you can configure Opera to have tabs below address bar if you want. Go into Appearance, enable "Main Bar" - which is displayed above tabs - and then drag the address field (and Back/Forward, and whatever else you want there) onto it. Then hide the address bar completely.
By the way, I'm not sure what you mean by Opera "starting doing it", because Opera tabs were always positioned above the address bar by default. Everyone else followed it from there... Well, in much older versions (like Opera 6, IIRC), the tabs were actually positioned at the bottom, mimicking the taskbar.
There are several widgets on the address bar, none of which change in layout or behavior depending on which tab you're on, and only one of which changes its contents... and they're ALL "part of the tab"?
You can't understand that some people might see things differently than you? If you want to imagine the relations, look at a toolbar button as a "tool", and a tab as a "place". Then it's just a difference between if someone prefers picking a "tool", and then using it on a "place", or going to the "place" first, and picking a "tool" to use there.
If you want to put your tabs somewhere weird, be my guest, but not giving me an option to put it back is a complete deal-killer for me. It drives me crazy. I quit using Opera when they started doing that,
Opera may default differently than you'd like, but if you want to change it to "tabs below address bar", it's been doable since at least 2006.
is that you don't get flashing / talking / music / girls in bikinis / speeding gophers / outright lies in your newspaper or magazine.
Imho online advertising did this to themselves, they were as annoying and eye catching as possible (and I mean that in the worst possible way) that people learned to HATE online advertising. I don't mind Google text ads and such, or even banners, but the flashing, animation and sound is the one spoiled apple that ruins the whole barrel.
You can't understand that some people might see things differently than you?
Sure. That's why the position of the tabs should be an option.
As I already pointed out.
When I went to the Themes page, I got this message: "We're sorry, but themes are available for Google Chrome 3.0.195.3 and above only.: The funny thing is, the about box says I'm running 3.0.195.4!
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
There is an adblock alternative for Chrome though - http://www.adsweep.org/
I'm using it now - it's not quite as good as adblock, but it's pretty effective. If you want to use the new Chrome Beta, you can use the new extension framework. If you want to stick to the stable chrome distribution, you can use the user script version.
I've been happy enough with it that I've switched from Firefox to Chrome as my primary browser.
The thing I miss most about adblock was giving me the option to selectively allow certain sites to serve me ads. Some sites I visit serve non-intrusive ads, and I'd like them to be able to make a little money off of my clicks.
--
#include <malloc.h>
free(your.mind);
I have switched to Chrome on my netbook rather than use Firefox. Although I miss some of the Firefox add-ons like ad-block, autopager, etc. I find Chrome much more efficient in terms of screen real-estate and to be faster. I wish other applications would take the approach to allow smaller widgets to better use screen real-estate.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Uh, pretty much all the widgets below the tab bar affect the current tab, and none of the others. Their placement makes perfect sense.
There are ad blockers for Chrome: http://www.adsweep.org/
Word. I've been waiting for so many years for real typography on the web. Firefox just got support for @font-face, IE and Safari have had it for quite a while, and Opera support is forthcoming. If webkit supports it, why doesn't Chrome? Maybe google ditched this feature for some extra rendering speed? Please add it in, Google! We need real typography on the web!
Quoting one of your fellow Chrome fans, "You can't understand that some people might see things differently than you?"
The stuff in the tab, for me, is "what changes when you change to a new tab". If it's in all the tabs, I don't want it in any of them.
Make it an option, I'll try Chrome. Force me to take it or leave it, I'll leave it.
Chrome is Google's attempt to get more people off IE and onto a standards-compliant browser that Google can run their web apps on. Notice how Google advertises Chrome on their sites to IE users but not Firefox users. OSX and Linux have no IE users (except maybe 5 people running it under Wine for whatever reason), so Google has no incentive to put Chrome on OSX or Linux. Despite all this, Linux has a functional, stable beta version on Linux (that I use every day).
They still haven't fixed the missing System box under Windows, there still isn't a 'don't spawn multiple threads' preference and it still secretly installs a scheduled task that runs Google Update.
Wake me up when they give you an option to get rid of the "New Tab" page, and I'll switch. That was the Chrome dealbreaker for me. When I open a new tab, I either want the webpage I want to load in it, or about:blank to load in it. I don't need flashing lights and pretty thumbnails, and I especially don't want my browsing history to show up in it.
um, except they say they will be coming out with the Chrome OS which is Chrome on top of Linux. "That" is the incentive I was talking about and why it's strange they still are releasing beta's for Windows first.
Interesting that they do advertise Chrome to IE users though. Then again, it's their site and service and I really don't think people using Chrome or anything else other than IE is a bad thing.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus