Google Releases Chrome 5.0 For Win/Mac/Linux

ddfall writes "Four months after the release of version 4.0 for Windows, Google has announced the availability of Chrome 5.0 for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux — the first stable release to be available on all three major platforms. Chrome 5.0.375.55 is available to download from google.com/chrome. Users who currently have Chrome installed can use the built-in update function."

Comments

Google is catching on fast

[microbee]

Just look at the version numbers. It's already 5! On the contrary Firefox is still lagging behind with 3.6.

Re:Google is catching on fast

[Kabloink]

Microsoft has both of them beat with IE 6.

Re:Google is catching on fast

[natehoy]

Yeah, but remember, they are shooting for version 10^100. They have a long way to go.

Re:Google is catching on fast

[phil reed]

Nigel Tufnel: The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and...

Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most amps go up to ten?

Nigel Tufnel: Exactly.

Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it's louder? Is it any louder?

Nigel Tufnel: Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?

Marty DiBergi: I don't know.

Nigel Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?

Marty DiBergi: Put it up to eleven.

Nigel Tufnel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder.

Marty DiBergi: Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?

Nigel Tufnel: [pause] These go to eleven.

Re:Google is catching on fast

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

The web is only 3.0 !!?

This is confusing!

Re:Google is catching on fast

[Draek]

Bleh, Emacs is already at version 23. Take that, Microsoft!

Note: if you're thinking of replying "Emacs isn't a web browser!", you clearly have never used Emacs.

yay?

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to be looking forward to this day; I used Chrome until the day my http:// disappeared. Due to that, I'm sticking with Firefox.

Re:yay?

[yelvington]

In 5.0.375.55 the protocol appears to be back in the location bar, at least on Linux.

Re:yay?

[ElKry]

I didn't realize it until he mentioned it, but I see it now: The url field does not show the "http://" anymore. It does show "https://", but I guess someone decided that it was more useful to show more of the actual URL and remove "http://", as it's not informative in any way anymore.

Re:yay?

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Parent is not a troll. It's a valid complaint. Displaying the entire URL, including the protocol, is absolutely the standard and should remain that way.

Re:yay?

[MichaelJ]

So if I copy all but the first character, I get exactly what I copied, but if I copy the first character it prepends the protocol to the front on the clipboard? That's incredibly inconsistent. I should have control over whether or not I get the protocol when I copy, and that control should be the extent of my selection.

Re:yay?

[istartedi]

Heh. I didn't even realize that. The funny thing is, I have no idea how to upgrade anyway. They don't have the usual File/Edit/View menus. There's just a wrench icon, and it doesn't appear to have any updater under its menu hierarchy.

Googling around (heheh) I found out they left out the F/E/V on purpose. That might make sense for mobile, but I'm using a nice wide LCD with more screen real estate than you can shake a stick at. Without F/E/V I feel like I'm subject to somebody's vision of "clean minimalist design" where they thought they knew what was best for the user. For cryin' out loud, if I wanted to use a Mac I'd already be using one. Hey... maybe it'll automaticly upgrade to 6.0 if I throw it in the recycling bin... no, wait... AHA! The updater is in the "About Chrome" thingy.

Oh sure, bury the updater in the widget that usually just shows copyright info. That's, just... wonderful. To be fair though, interfaces to updaters aren't quite as standard as F/E/V.

Re:yay?

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Because users who want to know what their browser is doing want to see it, that's why. No other justification is needed.

One of the commenters on the CNET story on the issue compared it to the Windows practice of hiding file extensions, which is a good analogy. We know how well that worked out (click here on mysterious_attachment.doc{.exe} and see what happens!) Sure, the protocol name may be gabble to most users, but at least the information's there, right out front. And occasionally it even leads them to educate themselves, asking a more technically knowledgeable friend, "What is that http thing, anyway?"

Re:yay?

[Tetsujin]

If Chrome does this, then this is a flaw. Transparent clipboard modification should never be done, by any program.

A (much) better method would be to insert the protocol string when the user clicks on the URL bar.

I can't stand all this extra logic they've stuck into URL bars (and other text fields, for that matter) in the last ten years or so... It's a text entry field, it should act like one. It shouldn't select all when I click on it, it shouldn't try to guess where I want my selection to end, snap it to word boundaries or whatever... And the simplest, most straight-forward way of making the protocol selectable for copy/paste is just to have it in the URL bar in the first place.

Re:yay?

[shish]

Because users who want to know what their browser is doing want to see it, that's why.

That's a pretty small minority -- I've actually seen more people at the other end of the scale, where they don't know what the URL display is at all. If they want to eg check their yahoo mail, they don't go to the URL box and type "mail.yahoo.com", they go to the search box, type "google", search (using google) to find google, click on the first result to get to the google home page, then type "yahoo mail" into that box, search, and click the first result there...

(This is what happens when we train people to follow patterns with no understanding of how it actually works :( )

Re:yay?

[agent_vee]

When you type in a URL directly to the address bar do you input "http://www.slashdot.org" or "www.slashdot.org"? Personally I think it's fine to leave out http and only display the protocol if it is different like https, ftp, etc... Of course I have updated to the latest version of Chrome and STILL see the http in the address bar so I don't even know what the fuss is all about.

Re:yay?

[laddiebuck]

Rather agree with you except the bit about snapping to word boundaries. If you complain about that, you vastly underrate its importance. I get that with xterms, not text entry fields, but I tell you, double-clicking on the beginning word and right-clicking on an ending word (or blank at the end of the line) to select is so much damn easier than trying to drag the mouse so precisely from the beginning of the selection to the end. Just that way of selecting has probably saved me days of computer time, and that's with me very rarely using the mouse (in an xterm). It's one of the only things I think a mouse is useful for in an xterm.

Chome 6

[jbeaupre]

I'm waiting for Chrome 6 ... only because I like the sound of hexavalent chromium.

Re:Chome 6

[ElKry]

You don't have to wait, I'm posting this from Chrome 6.0.408.1

Of course, you're going to have to use the dev channel, and get ready for a hell of a bumpy ride...

Chrome vs Chromium on Ubuntu?

[jaavaaguru]

Why would I download Chrome when I already have Chromium which gets updated automatically by Update Manager, remaining consistent with everything else on my laptop?

Re:Chrome vs Chromium on Ubuntu?

[Anonymous Coward]

Installing Chrome .deb will neatly add "http://dl.google.com/linux/deb/ stable main" to the list of software sources. This will give you automatic updates.

this is going to be

[nimbius]

a hard sell for me. The entire point of linux and me switching to it was the privacy and security. What is my incentive to switch from a floss browser on a floss OS to a nonfree browser (or not as free as id like to see it) which saps my bandwidth on the backend to report my surfing habits back to google.

and no, i cant trust that it isnt communicating with google or wont decide to at some point in the future. The whole german wifi debacle is making this company just as hot to handle as facebook.

Re:this is going to be

[MrEricSir]

Why not go with Chromium?

Re:this is going to be

[ChipMonk]

The whole german wifi debacle is making this company just as hot to handle as facebook.

I don't think so.

I do. The common mantra seems to be, "Enough privacy to get people to stop complaining." Google, Facebook, Myspace, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe are all guilty of this thinking, and they're showing no sign of letting up.

Some may argue that "people" should be replaced with "governments," but that's a pointless swap. Governments are made of people, and people will complain about privacy abuses to governments, knowing full well that it won't do any good to complain to the abusers.

Re:this is going to be

[MrEricSir]

Facebook went from being a closed network to an open one with several changes to the privacy controls, that awful Beacon feature, etc. They never back down until there's immense pressure. Usually even then they don't back down entirely. And it's all so they can monetize their site.

Google made a mistake with their wifi collection software and quickly admitted to it when asked about it, then came up with a plan to destroy the data.

How are these two things even remotely similar?

Re:this is going to be

[LordLimecat]

which saps my bandwidth on the backend to report my surfing habits back to google.

The whole german wifi debacle is making this company just as hot to handle as facebook.

Several points...
1) If you want to eliminate the "phone home", you can do so very easily under options-->under the hood. Uncheck the top 5 boxes; now your data is secure. This is what I did on a live-boot cd where CPU and bandwidth are at a premium.

2) If you do not feel you can trust that it isnt communicating, you can actually VERIFY that, either through about:net-internals, or wireshark, or netstat, or router logs. Not to mention most of the source is actually AVAILABLE....

3) Google as a whole tends to be in line with foss philosophy. They make it clear what they are after-- your data-- but otherwise they use open protocols, with open access, unlike just about anyone else. Ever try and move your data off of AOL, or Yahoo? Ever try to access hotmail over imap? Ever try and do a contacts export from AOL?

4) If it is really that big of a deal, use Chromium; you really cant complain that that requires blind trust (as it is open source). Of course, note that with any browser, when you use google, you have 90% of the same privacy issues-- most of the Chrome issues stem from auto-suggest.

5) The "wifi debacle" amounted to Google coming out with no prompting or coercion and saying, "We may have goofed and gathered some data, bear with us while we investigate." Thats a lot different than having a leak or getting caught doing something, and I think it is unfair to try to equate them with Facebook. If you're a techie, and have used google products, you KNOW what theyre after anyways, and they generally give you tools to opt out anyways.

Re:this is going to be

[LordLimecat]

But at least google takes pains to ensure you can leave them at ANY time by using open protocols and standards. Can you say the same for any of those other companies?

Sidebars?

[simp]

Does Chrome now support a bookmark sidebar? With the wide-screen TFTs everywhere these days a bookmark sidebar has become a must-have for me. I cannot stand bookmark pull-down menus. And to make things worse Chrome has put the default Bookmark menu in the upper- right hand corner of the screen, which for some reason is a place of the screen where my cursor never is.

Re:Sidebars?

[swillden]

With the wide-screen TFTs everywhere these days a bookmark sidebar has become a must-have for me. I cannot stand bookmark pull-down menus.

You must be one of those... <shudder>... full-screen people. Dude... windowing environments were invented for a reason!

Re:Correction

[Urban Garlic]

On Debian and Ubuntu, the .deb-packaged Chrome adds the Google deb archive in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-chrome.list, which is automatically searched by apt and aptitude, so your regular "aptitude update; aptitude upgrade" will pull in new versions of Chrome. Presumably the Synaptic package gizmo does the same things, but I am far too cool for GUIs, so I don't know.

If you want to turn this off, and leave it off, you can change the settings in /etc/default/google-chrome.

Re:stable?

[The MAZZTer]

The "beta" indicator is an indication of your update channel... it's not part of the version number. I'm guessing you're on the beta channel and noticed the stable channel got the same version, but yours still says "beta". Am I right?

Re:Correction

[Anonymous Coward]

One caveat: if you have it installed in ubuntu, it's the beta, so you'll have to remove it "apt-get remove google-chrome-beta" before installing "apt-get install google-chrome-stable".

Re:Correction

[Anonymous Coward]

I suggest, instead of actually installing the .deb, you simply extract the files from the archive to a local directory using dpkg -x chrome.deb.
This way, you're not giving Google any special permissions on your machine, which effectively amount to root access.
Chrome runs perfectly from a local user's home directory when extracted like this.

can't install behind proxy

[FunkyELF]

I'll keep using Firefox as it is actually possible to download and install it.
Since the day Google released Chrome you haven't been able to install their crappy 550k installer if you're behind a proxy.

Re:Obligatory Adblock Reply

[Nysul]

Adblock for Chrome downloads the ads, then blocks them. I don't know how you could not notice this, the Chrome ad-block solution is half-assed at best.

Re:Vertical tabs?

[mugurel]

It's not that absurd. Having a widescreen monitor (as is common nowadays), my experience is that there is very little vertical space for web content after subtracting space for tool/status/menu bars. At the same time, there's lots of empty horizontal space. Because of that, I switched to vertical tabs in Firefox recently and am pleased with it.

Re:Correction

[somenickname]

Actually, you don't. You just need to "sudo apt-get install google-chrome-stable". They setup their packages in a sane way so that it removes the beta for you (and presumably would do the same if you downloaded it from the website and did a "sudo dpkg -i").