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

60% faster loss of privacy

[h4rr4r]

I bet google would love to see your bookmarks, I bet advertisers would pay dearly for that sort of info.

Re:60% faster loss of privacy

[RiotingPacifist]

if only you could look at the source* to see that they are not doing that...wait what?

*and if you don't trust them compile your own

Re:60% faster loss of privacy

[h4rr4r]

That would be chromium-browser, chrome itself is a derivative of that, but not Free software.

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: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

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, they slap some Google branding on. That's it. The distinction between Chrome and Chromium is entirely academic (or legal if you prefer). They're functionally equivalent.

If you have a problem using Chrome because it isn't free software, use Chromium. You won't notice a difference other than the branding.

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:60% faster loss of privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:60% faster loss of privacy

[bonch]

Slashdot fucking loves Google. They want to use Google's OS, browser, bookmarks, RSS reader, email, and phone. Then they bash Microsoft's platform expansion attempts and Apple's branding.

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

Re:60% faster loss of privacy

[lwsimon]

While I believe you are correct, there is absolutely no way to know that. Google could be taking any number of things onto the Chromium codebase before shipping Chrome, and you would have no way of knowing.

Re:60% faster loss of privacy

[afex]

woah woah, buddy - you are WAYY off base
We absolutely do NOT want to use google email anymore!

we want to use google wave.

Smoking

[Nithendil]

Loads reddit.com and slashdot.com almost instantly. Occasionally the browser will just hang for a second but it makes firefox look like molasses. I have serious reservations about using Google as my search, browser, voicemail, and email but it is difficult when they keep blowing the competition out of the water.

Re:Smoking

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm right there with you. Basically all of the free tools from Google have no serious competition in terms of quality. Other tools may have more users, but it's not because they're better.

I'm not saying we give them a free pass, but have there been any serious breaches of privacy by Google? We've seen dirty moves by Microsoft, we've seen slow moves by Firefox. We've seen silly moves from Yahoo. We've seen invasive moves by Facebook.

I see Google as pretty freaking amazing. I think even the people who take issue with one thing here or there would have to agree that they are definitely the least of all evils.

Re:Smoking

[gparent]

both work, dipshit.

Re:Smoking

[Toonol]

But "Slashdot.org" is more ideologically pure than "Slashdot.com". Get your priorities straight.

Re:Smoking

[SuperAlgae]

Well said. Google bashers always baffle me with their lack of factual support. A healthy caution of companies that have so much information is justified. If someone wants to avoid Google for that reason, then fine. But they should not pretend it is because Google has shown any pattern of abuse. If anything, they have been much better than most companies.

I saw someone in another forum using Google's slogan "don't be evil" as some kind of argument that they are evil... asking why they would need such a motto. From my perspective, "don't be evil" is one of the few corporate slogans worth anything. Unfortunately, it is something that cannot be taken for granted. It's sad, but that's the world we live in. And "don't be evil" is certainly more meaningful than most of the warm/fuzzy tripe that other companies spew in their mission statements.

Re:Smoking

[BikeHelmet]

Yeah, Google has consistently required court orders before they hand out info. They've even turned down the US government's warrantless demands numerous times, while Microsoft and Yahoo just handed everything over.

I haven't heard of them sharing private info with other companies - they keep whatever they mine closely guarded. I think they realize their reputation is worth more than whatever they could gain by collaborating.

Re:Smoking

[juletre]

I just type /. and Opera takes me here.

Re:Smoking

[Nick Novitski]

I've seen precisely two sensible arguments for Google-mistrust.

One is from a perspective of generalized mistrust: stated in the strongest terms, no one besides you should have access to any of your data.

The other is from a perspective over the long-term: there is a real chances that, in one's lifetime, either due to individual breaches or a shift to corporate evil, Google will cease to be entirely trustworthy.

To me personally, they both seem tiresome, and not worth the effort, but I understand why people with stronger commitments to privacy or safety would make those arguments.

Re:Smoking

[Thing 1]

Yeah, more like "don't be evil ... unless in China."

Password Sync also please

[James Carnley]

The biggest feature keeping me on Firefox right now is bookmark and password syncing. Xmarks does the job beautifully.

I love the fact that native bookmark syncing will be coming to Chrome, but nobody has mentioned password syncing. This is arguable just as important as bookmark sync and should be possible to release alongside bookmarks in this next release.

I wish they would mention it at least just to know that they are working on it. At the very least I can fallback on the Xmarks version for Chrome that will be available for Chrome 4, but I would much prefer a native solution.

Re:Password Sync also please

[LordLimecat]

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

Re:Password Sync also please

[Korin43]

Xmarks is actually extremely slow and bloated. You should try Weave..

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

[BitZtream]

Yes, less features.

Firefox is bloated now. Too many features, those features cost RAM and CPU time. Start adding all the 'must have' extensions that geeks use and Firefox REALLY starts to suck ass performance wise.

Couple in that Mozilla has seriously lost its focus and is too busy inventing more crap rather than making Firefox run properly. Mozilla building something like Breakpad/Socorro makes sense, adding crap like new font formats when they already support ones that are more than capable and MORE open is.

Chrome doesn't have a bunch of crap to tweak, doesn't support everything and the kitchen sink. You get far less features from Chrome and more speed.

You decide which one is more important for you. Me, I take Chrome for web browsing, Firefox for a mutli-OS development platform where speed isn't as noticeable.

Re:Cheating on my first love - Firefox

[Junior J. Junior III]

I get annoyed when I try to scroll a window in Chrome and it's so fast I can't control it easily.

I'll be keeping firefox around for as long as there's no adblock and no flashblock for Chrome. Chrome wins the instant they're compatible with Mozilla plugins.

I'm glad that there's once again some vibrant competition in the browser sphere.

Re:Cheating on my first love - Firefox

[L0wt3ch]

I disagree, Firefox is perfect,

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

[Judinous]

No matter how good Chrome's JavaScript performance gets, it will never be faster, more reliable, or safer than simply not running any JavaScript at all. Blocking all JavaScript by default, with the ability to individually white-list individual items (close, but not quite, Opera), is a bare minimum requirement for safe web surfing. Blocking advertisements does more to speed up real-world browsing speed (not just benchmarks) than any other single change. Until another browser implements these two features, Firefox is the only rational option for home browsing.

I'm not a Firefox fanboy, I'm just aware of my needs. In the business arena, I wouldn't recommend anything but Internet Explorer (behind a proxy, of course), because no other browser comes with the enterprise management tools necessary for large deployments. That's another area that I wish more browsers would improve upon.

If either Opera or Chrome would implement those two feature sets along with their superior rendering performance, they would blow the web browser market wide open. I don't know why it hasn't happened yet, since most technical people are well aware of these issues.

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

[jim_v2000]

I actually get more value out of the addons in Firefox than the speed boost in Chrome. This is mainly because I usually open a bunch of links in new tabs first, and then go through and read them. In this situation, speed isn't that important.

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

[ElectricTurtle]

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?

Re:Cheating on my first love - Firefox

[BitZtream]

Heh, considering I develop software for a living, one of our products is embeds on XULRunner 1.9.1 (which is what Firefox 3 is built on top of) and several of our products use WebKit for rendering HTML.

So yes, my knowledge of them and profiling them tells me this.

You can find my name in the Gecko commit logs and all over the developers mailing lists, wheres yours? I don't think I've seen Anonymous Coward committing anything.

Re:Cheating on my first love - Firefox

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Beyond simple dislike of relentless commercial pressure, which is a matter of taste(but can be a strong one, is the issue of performance.

For reasons that, I assume, have to do with the fact that advertisers are subhuman vermin who would sell their own grandmothers for a nickle, ads are overwhelmingly among the slowest page elements to load. Even if you don't mind what eventually pops up(which can be a tall order, particularly with noisy flash crap) wasting 10 or 15 seconds on what would otherwise be a highly responsive page waiting for one or more overloaded 3rd party ad servers sucks. It sucks even more when you do it dozens of times a day.

Re:Cheating on my first love - Firefox

[BitZtream]

We're not talking about WebKit, we're talking about Chrome. Chrome is faster than Safari, they both use WebKit. Safari has more features and it costs.

FireFox uses Gecko rather than WebKit. I'm not talking about the differences in the rendering engines alone as that is not all their is to a browser. The stripped down browsers that use Gecko are faster than FireFox as well. Same rendering engine, different wrapper, different speeds.

Gecko is FAR more feature rich than WebKit, but Gecko also supports XUL, whick WebKit does not and I doubt it ever will since WebKit isn't trying to be an application development platform for all sorts of apps. WebKit just renders HTML pages and the requirements that go with supporting those standards.

WebKit can support more HTML standards and still not have as many features as Gecko.

When you can load an XULRunner app in WebKit and everything work, then get back to me, until then, I stand by my statement.

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

[aardvarkjoe]

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?

Because web advertising has gone way beyond "little images trying to sell things." Instead, we get Flash monstrosities that slow my computer to a crawl, pop-ups that jump in front of the content you're trying to read and steal mouse clicks, and pages full of blinking, animated pictures that make it difficult to find the actual content.

Just because you don't mind having your time wasted in that way doesn't mean that everyone else will put up with it.

Re:Cheating on my first love - Firefox

[Whiteox]

Agree totally. What's the point of /. if you can't discuss relevant poi's?
Maybe /. should instigate a moderator license scheme as lately they've been hopeless.

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:Cheating on my first love - Firefox

[SanityInAnarchy]

Actually, you're proving those people's point:

sure, maybe Java/garbage-collection/50mb-binaries/etc. are a little slower,

Let's see...

chromium-browser is a 38 meg binary on my system, and that's just the binary. The libraries it distributes bump it up above 40 megs, and it's probably easily 45 or 50 with all the system libraries it pulls in.

Here's an example of where you're both very right, and very wrong:

You're very right in that speed still matters, and always will. By applying a little optimization at just the right point, we gain massive speed boosts for everyone. For example, Webkit instead of Gecko, and all the little tweaks of v8, make Chrome's HTML, Javascript, and CSS at least on par with, and usually several times better than the competition.

On the other hand, you're entirely wrong about the argument you've used. Tons of stuff in Chrome, including the entire extension API, is done entirely in HTML and Javascript, because they are fast enough. I'll give you a stupidly simple example: Hit "new tab". That entire New Tab page is HTML and Javascript.

Want proof? Ctrl+U.

Want more? Next time you start a download, open the download list/manager. HTML and Javascript. In fact, the only things that aren't HTML and Javascript are the Chrome itself -- the toolbar, tab bar, and status bar. Even the toolstrip bar, managed by extensions, is mostly HTML and Javascript.

At a lower level, much of the core Javascript library in Chrome is, in fact, written in Javascript.

Guess what? Javascript is a little slower than C++. It's also garbage-collected.

Guess what else? Even if you could theoretically do these pages in C++, programmer productivity is still more important.

What did we learn?

Premature optimization is the root of all evil. Chrome is fast not because speed always matters, but because speed matters at the specific points they targeted.

If you know anything about Javascript, you know how difficult it must have been for the v8 team -- yet if you look at the v8 presentation, much of the optimization they do is remarkably obvious in hindsight. So the second thing we learned is that Java is not slow. A language is generally not fast or slow, by its very nature -- while some aspects of language design can make it easier or harder to optimize a language, it is ultimately the implementation that is fast or slow.

Conventional wisdom (like what you're spouting) says Javascript is slow. Chrome proves otherwise. Remember that the next time anyone says something as stupid as "Ruby is slow."

Re:Cheating on my first love - Firefox

[CoughDropAddict]

Want proof? Ctrl+U.

Whoa, don't blow my mind quite so hard. I'm not sure I can handle all this wisdom at the same time.

C'mon, you think I execute shell commands by writing a C program that calls fork(), exec(), and pipe()? You think I write web pages pixel by pixel? Obviously high-level languages and programming paradigms are appropriate in many cases.

I'm sticking it to the Java weenies who think that C and C++ are obsolete. The people who year after year say that *now* Java is "often as fast as C++ and sometimes faster." The people who still won't acknowledge that there is a real reason C and C++ are still the languages of OS kernels.

It's not premature optimization to write libavcodec in C. Likewise with OS kernels, virtual machines, rendering engines, DSP plugins, and many other applications where the code will almost certainly be on the critical path of a resource-intensive application. It's not premature optimization to use manual memory management in applications that need to move lots of data around with low latency.

Re:Cheating on my first love - Firefox

[bkr1_2k]

Except for the fact that, generally, resumes are solicited for job openings and you are therefore not "advertising". You are responding, which is something entirely different.

Re:Cheating on my first love - Firefox

[SanityInAnarchy]

With regard to the AJAXy Slashdot, the speed issue was never important to me. I'd command-click the reply button and have it load the reply box in a new tab while I read.

Yes, I did exactly the same.

These days, though, it's just faster -- especially if I have a quick point to make (right now). It's also nice in that I get that much more context while replying -- I can see your post, and posts below the one I'm making. When I submit, if Slashdot is feeling fast, I can preview/submit without leaving the page, without having to manage multiple tabs, and without really waiting at all.

It's kind of like the advantages I get from Git being faster. It's actually faster enough that it changes the way I work, because I can now commit at pretty much any stage, knowing I can redo the commit, or rearrange a bunch of commits before I push. I can also branch as often as I want, knowing that the merge will be instantaneous and much more often conflict-free than with Subversion.

In short, we're not complaining about AJAX in general, just the incredibly poor implementation on Slashdot.

Perhaps, or a bit of both. The point is that AJAX in general is faster on Chrome, and that it can make an incredibly poor implementation usable, a barely-usable implementation awesome...

Really Fast

[gmuslera]

With it Google news is showing articles of next week.

Re:Really Fast

[martin-boundary]

I'm on Debian, you insensitive clod. For some reason, the only articles I actually see are from two years ago.

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.

Fast, even on Slashdot

[zach_the_lizard]

The annoyingly slow preview scripts here on Slashdot, that appear to bring Firefox to its knees, take very little time at all to run. Now we can finally enjoy Slashdot with its annoying web 2.0 features. Thanks, Google!

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.

JIT javascript

[IGnatius T Foobar]

I learned something interesting about Google's javascript parser while evaluating various parsers as potential candidates for a scripting engine in an application. The reason it's so fast? It's got a JIT compiler, just like modern Java runtimes. This means that once things get going, JavaScript is going to approach native code speed. Unfortunately it also limits the platforms on which the engine can run. Google is targeting x86 (of course) and ARM (naturally, since they've got their eyes on the mobile market). Interesting times...

Re:JIT javascript

[Anonymous Coward]

Everybody already knew that. Fuck off back to digg, loser.

Re:JIT javascript

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, they all have JIT compilers (TraceMonkey in Firefox).

Almost every scripting language does these days. If you're looking at embedding scripting languages then look no further than Lua. It's super small and easy to embed, fast, easy API for extending, and similar semantics to Javascript (except way better). Also, LuaJIT 2 beta just came out a few days ago and it's kicking all kinds of ass as far as performance in scripting languages go (rewriting the book in fact)..

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...

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Mac

Hello PC, Whats that you have there?

PC

Oh this? Its Google Chrome and its faster than IE and Firefox.

Mac

But it still gives you viruses and spyware right?

PC

Oh Mac, you're such a brainwashed little cunt.

PC (Cont'd)

Look, it uses WebKit, the same stupid thing your Safari browser uses. Happy now?

Mac

Sort of. I'm a Mac and I want it my way. I want Google Chrome now!

Mac (Cont'd)

PC... give that to me.

PC

You know Mac...You could just buy a PC, or at the very least boot windows on your over priced PC hardware.

Mac

But then I will get viruses...

(PC Throws his arms up and walks away)

PC

I give up.

Re:Sucks To Be You

[jeffstar]

That all depends on your industry/area of research.

ah, i see, it depends on your niche...

Re:100% less advertisements would be nice...

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

I know. Perhaps this is the real reason Chrome even exists. They can prevent people from blocking ads, and of course track peoples surfing habits.

Quite sad actually. The browser is pretty nice overall. Its too bad they will most likely treat their users like most corporations do... like shit.

Firefox is much better in this area. As if that needed to be said.

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.)

Speed is nice, but lets get some basic features

[pyrico]

I really wish they would put at least one developer on getting some of their basic features requests done.

For example, I wanted to use Chrome as my HTPC browser as it does a good job scaling it's plugins to the system 2x DPI (unlike Firefox where flash applets are tiny squares in big dark frames they are supposed to fill).

But Chrome does not save the full page zoom setting! Every time you open a tab or browser instance you have to Ctr + which becomes unusable. It has not browser-wide options related to full page zoom and their font options are confusing and seem to make no effect.

Worse is the how easy it is to fine lots and lots and lots and lots of people complaining about this on their own help forums without a single response from the developers.

I know they are avoiding feature creep and keeping things slim, but even by a 80/20 rule, this kind of thing should be picked up (and could even replace their useless font settings dialog).

Re:Love to use it, but...

[JasonMaloney101]

Anyone else have the commercial's traditional piano tune playing in their head while they read this?

Re:100% less advertisements would be nice...

[Temporal]

I know. Perhaps this is the real reason Chrome even exists. They can prevent people from blocking ads, and of course track peoples surfing habits.

Actually, Chrome 4.0 has extensions, and multiple ad blockers have already been written using the system, without being stopped by Google.

Quite sad actually. The browser is pretty nice overall. Its too bad they will most likely treat their users like most corporations do... like shit.

Actually, we're a little bit smarter than that. As it turns out, treating users "like shit" -- for example, by crippling our products just to drive away the small minority of users that run ad blockers -- is actually not profitable. On the other hand, making the internet better for users, in general, is profitable to us, since it directly leads to more usage of other Google products. Which is why Eric (the CEO) frequently tells employees, in plain terms, that we should be doing whatever we can think of to improve the internet for users, without worrying about how to monetize it -- in the long term, this approach is far more profitable than being dicks.

(This post is my personal opinion -- I am not authorized to speak for Google.)

Re:Sucks To Be You

[causality]

Say what you will, but it is nice having an OS that is *tightly* coupled with the hardware -- it cuts way down on poorly written drivers that are responsible for many of the BSOD in MS land. It is a premium to pay, but the frustration spared is well worth it.

Ah yes the "blame it on the drivers" apologetic for various Windows issues. It's the perfect excuse, really, because it's difficult to falsify. So I'll ask you this: how, pray tell, do you explain how properly-installed Linux has its rock-solid stability on such a wide variety of hardware? If indeed the support of a wide variety of commodity PC hardware is the cause of instability, and if the Mac is so stable because it has such a comparatively narrow range of hardware to support, what would be your answer to that question?

Note, my question was about Windows. I don't dispute that the Mac is quite stable. I just believe it's stable because it's based on Unix and Unix had this kind of stability long before Apple decided to use it. Apple was just smart enough to recognize that and smarter still to put a pretty and usable GUI on top of it. It's the "faulty drivers" excuse for Windows that I don't quite buy, and mostly because I've never received an answer to that question that made sense.

Re:Love to use it, but...

[Temporal]

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

Re:Sucks To Be You

[HybridJeff]

I haven't seen a BSOD that since Windows 98.

Re:Sucks To Be You

[shutdown -p now]

So I'll ask you this: how, pray tell, do you explain how properly-installed Linux has its rock-solid stability on such a wide variety of hardware?

The simple answer is that it doesn't. WiFi is still hit and miss on some popular chipsets. Don't even get me started on audio - headphone/speaker auto-switching is still broken in my Karmic, and clicks and pops are all over any played sound (particularly so when it starts). Video is normally fine... except when either NVidia or X decide to break something and forget to tell the other side.

Re:Is it 30% faster? Does it matter?

[LordLimecat]

Ummmm... Slashdot? Google Wave? Yahoo Mail? Google Mail? Facebook?

uh...

[circletimessquare]

you seem to be left on an island in history. i remember that island, it was somewhere around 2003 i think:

the thinking was that javascript was unnecessary bloat and a properly written website didn't need any javascript, and a good netizen concerned about safety and privacy turned his/her javascript off. people were (and are) doing harebrained unnecessary things with javascript (whoa dude! look at the animated cursor!) and incompatibility between browsers in an era when firefox was still a cult and ie5 was king meant nobody thought to program for anything but ie. and ie's javascript quirks meant anyone using any other browser was getting nothing but error messages anyways. so just turn javascript off

sorry dude, but the functionality AJAX delivers and how it fundamentally changes the browsing experience in powerful and positive ways utterly washed away any validity to that kind of thinking

but, enjoy your craiglist. i think that's the only site of any heft that came out of that era of web philosophy that survives today with the "pure HTML 3.2 ought to be good enough for anybody" attitude still intact

i think that anti-<TABLE/> jihad from that era is still going strong though. all hail the holy <DIV/>!

Re:Plugin support

[Simetrical]

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.

Me too. Best part is, you can get Glen's head back by running "google-chrome --glen". (At least on Linux.) I highly recommend you freak out all your fellow Chrome users by changing their browser shortcuts when they aren't looking!

Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely

[rsborg]

But they should not pretend it is because Google has shown any pattern of abuse. If anything, they have been much better than most companies.

The quote in my subject from Lord Acton, has been proven time and again, that despite the purest of intentions, a concentration of power will corrupt any person, organization or company. This is the reason that "smaller government" is a desirable thing; We have examples time and again from history that overpowerful organizations aren't trustworthy (current example: US "intelligence community"). It's also the reason we have things like seperation of powers in governmental structures.

This applies equally to companies, and is the reason we have anti-trust laws (not to punish success, but to maintain free markets). In this vein, I think Google may be able to stay "non-evil" for some time (or maintain that illusion for the cynics), but eventually like enough concentrated mass creates a black hole, the power will collapse the regulatory structures. It's a matter of time, and that's why people (even Googlers) want to prevent this from happening.