Google Betas Chrome 4, Touts 30% Speed Boost

CWmike writes "Google upgraded the beta version (4.0.223.16) of its Chrome browser yesterday, boasting a 30% speed improvement over the current production edition and adding integrated bookmark synchronization. Developers Idan Avraham and Anton Muhin, who announced the release, tout Chrome 4.0's faster JavaScript rendering speeds. 'We've improved performance scores on Google Chrome by 30% since our current stable release, and by 400% since our first stable release,' they said, referring to Chrome 3.0. The new beta includes the ability to sync bookmarked sites across multiple computers."

Comments

Cheating on my first love - Firefox

[MasterOfGoingFaster]

I so loved Firefox and use to tell everyone to use it. I loved that it kicked IE's ass. Gotta love any open source project that goes up against Microsoft and wins.

As much as I hate to admit it, I can no longer stand to use Firefox. Like a slut that wins you over with fantastic sex, Chrome got me where it matters most - raw speed.

In fact, it seems way too fast. Is Google caching the web pages in a nearby Google server? Even sites that use little JavaScript seem to load really fast. Is something going on here?

Re:Cheating on my first love - Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll be keeping firefox around for as long as there's no adblock and no flashblock for Chrome.

Adsweep and BlockFlash2 are the Chrome equivalents, respectively.

Re:Cheating on my first love - Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

The ridiculousness of this post is, of course, that webkit is getting features at a crazy pace, mostly driven by Apple wanting to get as much native support for stuff that could be done in javascript (so it runs fast on the iphone), and everyone else (google, apple, etc etc) who is behind the "html5!!" drumbeat.

look at bugzilla for webkit and you'll see an even match for mozilla in terms of adding features. you'll see the same parity (or worse) in RAM and CPU time (what happened to the decrying of process/tab?).

now, there is a much better argument to be made about gecko's antiquated architecture. webkit's source is a joy to browse, comparatively. there are several kitchen sinks in webkit, but someone did a nice refactor and they all derive from one water-dispensing receptacle superclass.

Re:Cheating on my first love - Firefox

[onefriedrice]

Yes, less features.

I don't completely buy that argument. On my setup, even gimp-2.6 cold-starts faster than FF 3.5.4, and gimp seems to be pretty featureful. FF and Thunderbird are the slowest apps I use, and presumably they share some code. That tells me there's something really wrong with how Mozilla is writing or deploying their programs.

Not only is FF slow, but it uses amazing amounts of memory. I can't understand what it's doing with all that memory, because it's obviously not using it to cache stuff to make it faster. Or if it is, it's failing. In the very least, I find it amazing that even after all these years, it's still noticeably leaky.

Actually, I've noticed FF seems to be zippier on Windows, so maybe Mozilla just struggles with with Linux port... Regardless, after chromium grows up a little bit more, I'll also probably be leaving FF.

Re:Cheating on my first love - Firefox

[Guspaz]

The lack of extension support is a myth. As is the supposed lack of adblocking extensions.

The chrome extension API specifically includes the exact functionality needed for ad blocking via the filter APIs... and yet here we have conspiracy theorists breaking out their tin foil hats and claiming that Chrome is Google's plot to get rid of ad blockers. *facepalm*

The adblock extension I linked above isn't the only one, although it's the only one that I've tried. It's a bit buggy and the UI isn't all there yet, but it does subscribe to the real ABP's easylist, and it *does* block the ads in the list.

Re:Cheating on my first love - Firefox

[QRDeNameland]

What is with people whining about AdBlock all the time? OH NOES TEH ADZ@!1!One. Is it really that big a deal? Thanks to my Slashdot obsession and excellent karma, I have the option to disable ads on Slashdot natively, but I don't even use the option. Why do people care so much about little images trying to sell things?

In addition to the previous reasons offered, another good reason to block ads is to reduce the number of potential vectors for malware. For instance, when malicious third party ads were served from the New York Times web site less than two months ago, needless to say users of AdBlock were unaffected.

Re:Cheating on my first love - Firefox

[SanityInAnarchy]

I used to be like you. Still am, in a way.

Here's the thing: Clicking something and having the action take place instantly makes that unnecessary for quite a lot of tasks. And that goes not just for links to new pages (though that is a factor), but for links that drive Javascript.

I'll give you an example: I always hear people whining about the new Slashdot AJAX crap. I agree, it's bloated and completely unnecessary, and on Firefox and Konqueror, it's slow as hell. In Chrome, it's actually faster than the old system -- click reply, half a second later there's a reply box ready to type, and that's about the longest anything takes here. Clicking on a semi-hidden thread to expand it is even faster.

Granted, that's not "instantly", the way so much of the Web has become for me. But the difference is pretty staggering, and pretty significant.

I still use tabs almost the way you do, but that's when I have a slow connection, or a bunch of links that I can't easily visit in serial.

Re:Cheating on my first love - Firefox

[anethema]

I use Adblock+ for chrome and it works well, but keep in mind it does not actually block anything. It still downloads all the ads and then hides them upon render. Probably little to no speed benefit but sure is easy on the eyes.

It isn't their fault though, apparently this functionality has not been coded into Chrome yet.

Re:Love to use it, but...

[ltmon]

FYI, nightly builds for all platforms (Mac, Win, Linux, Linux x64) available here: http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/

Should get official versions soon, I guess, but I find any given nightly build (on Linux) fast and reliable.

Re:Love to use it, but...

[BitZtream]

http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/

Which can be found by visiting:

http://www.google.com/search?q=chromium+mac+download

Imagine that.

I stopped bothering with Chromium, Safari isn't different enough to justify the instability of Chromium for me.

Re:60% faster loss of privacy

[Dwedit]

That would be Firefox which reveals your bookmarks. By abusing the visited link style, it can conditionally load images depending on whether or not you have visited a specific page. Carpet-bomb enough of those, and you can tell which of the top 5000 websites a user has been to.

Re:Plugin support

[13bPower]

http://www.chromeextensions.org/

They have adblock.

Re:Plugin support

[Temporal]

Until it has that or built in addblock and vimperator, no chrome here.

So run the dev channel. It has extensions today. Yes, including ad blockers. Dev channel is actually perfectly usable if you don't mind the occasional disembodied head taking the place of a button. Dev channel Chrome has been my primary browser for over a year now.

Re:Love to use it, but...

[Temporal]

You mean this?

(It's dev channel, meaning it's still a little finicky, but it is good enough to be my primary browser on Mac.)

Re:60% faster loss of privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

Try SRware Iron. It's just Chrome - tracking bits.
 
  Comparison of Chrome Vs Iron

Re:60% faster loss of privacy

[LordLimecat]

For the tinfoil hat crowd, theres always SRWare Iron, which is Chrome, with updated webkit, with any google-related tracking removed. You lose site suggestion and auto-update tho, which personally i enjoy.

Re:JIT javascript

[BZ]

Spidermonkey (the ECMAScript implementation in Gecko, hence in Firefox) and Nitro (aka SFX Extreme, the ECMAScript implementation in Safari) both use JITs as well.

> just like modern Java runtimes

Not quite; the tradeoffs are somewhat different.

> JavaScript is going to approach native code speed

Somewhat. Depends on your jit, on your code, etc.

Re:Love to use it, but...

[Temporal]

The dev channel may be more stable than the nightly builds.

Re:Smoking

[gparent]

both work, dipshit.

Re:60% faster loss of privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

That is true for ALL browsers that have the visited link style and browsing history activated.

Re:Password Sync also please

[LordLimecat]

Password sync is coming in version 4, as are extensions.

Re:60% faster loss of privacy

[V!NCENT]

"SRWare Iron: The browser of the future - based on the free Sourcecode "Chromium" - without any problems at privacy and security

  Google's Web browser Chrome thrilled with an extremely fast site rendering, a sleek design and innovative features. But it also gets critic from data protection specialists , for reasons such as creating a unique user ID or the submission of entries to Google to generate suggestions. SRWare Iron is a real alternative. The browser is based on the Chromium-source and offers the same features as Chrome - but without the critical points that the privacy concern.

  We could therefore create a browser with which you can now use the innovative features without worrying about your privacy.

  We want our users to participate in our work and make the browser free to download under the name "SRWare Iron" into the net."

http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php