Google Builds a Native PDF Reader Into Chrome

An anonymous reader writes "Google's latest Chrome 6 Developer Update comes with a few subtle GUI changes, but there is also a major update under the hood. As its ties with Adobe quite apparently grow stronger, there is not just an integrated Flash player, but also a native PDF reader in the latest version of Chrome 6. Google says the native reader will allow users to interact with PDF files just like they do with regular HTML pages. The reader is included in Chrome versions (Chromium) 6.0.437.1 and higher, and you can use the feature after you have enabled it manually in the plug-ins menu. That is, of course, if you can keep Chrome 6 alive — Windows users have reported frequent crashes, and Google has temporarily suspended the update progress to find out what is going on." The Register has some more details on the PDF plugin and a link to Google's blog post about it.

Comments

Awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me be the first to say, its absolutely awesome!

PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[Meshach]

The article contains this statement:

PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML

Does this mean that the PDF pages are translated into HTML pages then displayed? I always thought that one of the main strengths of PDF was that the author has 100% control over how it is presented. Or am I misunderstanding that feature?

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[Threni]

Hopefully it means people can drop this HTML crap and design pages which look how the author intended, always, everywhere, and not only if they have this or that version of a browser.

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Or am I misunderstanding that feature?

Saying "PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML" is not the same as "PDF files will render as HTML".

So, yes, I think you misunderstand.

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[iammani]

Actually google already has an excellent online PDF viewer, it seems to display PDFs as an image, but still manages selection of words, searching and copying. Here is a sample IRS PDF I wouldnt be surprised, if the same code was converted into a chrome plugin.

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[afidel]

Yeah, because a web page should look exactly the same on my smartphone as it does on my 1080p display....

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[ScrewMaster]

Yeah, because a web page should look exactly the same on my smartphone as it does on my 1080p display....

I don't think the OP understands the purpose of a markup language, a browser, or the idea the pages should render gracefully on different devices. And that's okay so long as he's not a Web developer.

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[xOneca]

I think web pages should adapt to the device, but if the pages comply with HTML standard, then they should render same on both devices, shouldn't them?

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[jcwayne]

There is an extension that automatically converts links to PDFs into links to the viewer version. It also handles PPT and "other documents".

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[maird]

There is a pretty big "seam" between clicking on a pdf link to it being usable as a document in Firefox (IE too I imagine). It wouldn't require conversion of the pdf to html to close that, just render it in-place, in-process using native pdf rendering code as is being described. Presumably it will also allow for tidy nested references to pdf documents in html where the pdf is rendered in-place. Heck, if google have form input support in their pdf code and provide some access to the field names and contents from the hosting html document's scripts then it might help with reproducible printed output in web apps without leaving the app, a topic that came up in a previous story today. To preserve the intent of pdf I suppose it would still have to be framed in those scenarios though.

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[afidel]

No, they shouldn't. That's the fundamental idea behind a markup language, separate data from presentation.

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[gbjbaanb]

perhaps they should. Things aren't the same as when the web was invented - where mostly text and a couple of inline images have been replaced with "content-rich" skillfully-designed layout. Ok, maybe you need to be a graphic design person to feel their pain here, but perhaps that web page *should* render the same on your smartphone as it does on your TV. Naturally, you'll be able to zoom in and out to make it readable (unless they offer 2 versions of the page, like high/low bandwidth versions, or single-column versions with fewer sidebars).

Ask yourself why a webpage should render differently on your phone (using exactly the same source). I could understand the same content being displayed differently using an alternative stylesheet (aka zengarden, which is remendously cool) but not that the same page be displayed completely differently yet still having the same wide sidebars on your phone.

I can't say that PDF is the answer however!

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[petermgreen]

No

The rendering of a html page depends on all sorts of factors. For starters there is window size, on a html page widths generally determine the flowing of the content unless a moronic web designer forces them to do otherwise. Then there is fonts. Heck there are web browsers that run on text terminals. Fonts are likely to be substituted depening on the platform and the particular install which will also affect the sizing of stuff.

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[twidarkling]

I would think that the point of HTML compliance would be so that the web page renders correctly for the viewing area used. I mean, I don't really need buttons for "forward" and "backward" to look the same, as long as I get the same functionality, so if someone uses a big honking button on the regular page, if I have a mobile device, it should be able to be dynamically replaced with something that indicates "this does X, this was placed here to improve functionality on this device." As long as a browser can correctly interpret where the headers, body, content, banners, etc. are, I don't know why that would be a bad thing. Well, besides "My artistic vision is RUINED!" cries from designers. (Sorry, I place functionality over pretty, so I'm kinda biased here)

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Ask yourself why a webpage should render differently on your phone (using exactly the same source).

Because my phone (N900) has a 3.5 inch 800x480 screen(and that's considered a lot for a phone), my computer has a 1600x1200 20 inch screen I view from about 18 inches away, and my TV has a 52 inch screen I view from ~7 feet away.

Any other questions?

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[afidel]

Exactly, my phone's got a paltry 480*360 display, trying to display the same presentation on that and a 1080p display is going to be either a complete waste of space on the 1080p or an exercise in frustration on the phone. Luckily we have css and it's a simple matter of using a mobile style sheet to make well designed pages display just fine on the phone. The tv has 12x as much screen realestate so it's pretty much impossible to make a functional design that takes good advantage of both devices unless you separate data and presentation which luckily is exactly what HTML does =)

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tried to view a regular webpage on a phone? Constant zooming SUCKS!

For comparison, upload some documents and look at these two sites:
docs.google.com
docs.google.com/m

They are a world apart. The first is an example of abject horror on a mobile phone.

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[AK Marc]

I always thought that one of the main strengths of PDF was that the author has 100% control over how it is presented. Or am I misunderstanding that feature?

I think you are. PDFs aren't read-only. PDFs aren't secure (well, unless you have some DRM package installed, and even then it's debatable). PDFs will, in the absence of anything else, present like the author wanted. But they are easily edited, modified, redacted, and such. I know people that think "If I send it as a PDF, they won't be able to just copy the text off it, and they can't just change a couple things in it and send it on to someone else like it was mine." Both are incorrect. So yes, you are misunderstanding that feature. It is so that you know they can open it, not that you know they can't modify it. Those are unrelated issues, and it just happens that most people don't bother to get programs that let them modify PDFs and they aren't necessarily easily modified, so they aren't modified regularly in practice.

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[iammani]

I myself use the FF extension. This has been my primary PDF/DOC/PPT viewer for awhile now.

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[Goaway]

And that idea has remained a pipe dream. You'd be hard pressed to find a website that actually manages to separate presentation and content.

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[commodore64_love]

>>>Hopefully it means people can drop this HTML crap and design pages which look how the author intended, always, everywhere, and not only if they have this or that version of a browser.

Actually PDF sucks for this purpose. It typically looks like a 8.5 x 11" page, which does properly fit onto a screen. In contrast HTML can "reflow" and display a readable page whether you're using a widescreen LCD, a standard shape CRT, or an old laptop with just 800x600 resolution. That is a strength not a weakness.

If HTML does not display across these three screen shapes I just described, then the web developer is doing a poor job (imho)
.

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[commodore64_love]

>>>Things aren't the same as when the web was invented - where mostly text and a couple of inline images

And that's a shame. The web was faster then, and cleaner as well. There's no need to fill a browser with a bunch of flashing images, sounds, and videos like a TV. The scifi.com site won an award (circa 1995) for being one of the best-designed websites, and I think it's still a hell of a lot nicer-looking than most of the overloaded BS that exists today.

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[commodore64_love]

LINK to scifi.com in 1996 - http://web.archive.org/web/19961124030947/http://scifi.com/

Fast loading (even on dialup). Clean. Easy to use
.

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right about that feature, the main purpose of PDF is to distribute documents which will display or print the same across many platforms. HTML is a markup language and cannot be used to accurately position graphics and text like that. They will just render the PDF graphics to the same display port as the HTML, but converting them would be a nightmare.

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[Kjella]

I don't think the OP understands the purpose of a markup language, a browser, or the idea the pages should render gracefully on different devices. And that's okay so long as he's not a Web developer.

Except that in practise they never do because you're mixing fixed size (images, banners, logos etc.) and dynamic size (text mostly) content and making sure that it always reflows well just doesn't happen. Of course you can blame the developers but it's a little like saying no buffer overflow is the language's fault, if all developers were perfect it wouldn't happen. Slashdot is one of extremely few sites that do it and it only works because slashdot is extremely simple, for example I just checked the five biggest online newspapers in Norway, 5/5 use fixed width. Anecdotally I would say that holds true for most complex websites.

Very often if you want it to work *well*, it probably can't be done automatically anyway. For example on these news sites, if you want to make a good mobile site you must make a narrower newspaper with less items side by side. You can somewhat do that with CSS trickery, but it won't look pretty because they mix on using 1/1, 1/2, 1/3 and 1/4th of the width and you would like to use a smaller version of some and to make sure each line fills up and so on. If sites did a few fixed versions and made sure they looked good you'd get 80% of the benefit with 20% of the headache.

Sometimes it just spirals way out of control. For example, i once had to deal with a calendar and users using IEs function to zoom text, it completely broke everything. Try making the days flow right in a dynamic way, but of course seven to a line like you expect and they need to align properly vertically despite numbers having different widths. Oh and it's in a sidebar that's fixed width, recode everything else too. Yeah right, in the end we took a screenshot of each day from 1-31 and made it out of images instead, that way you couldn't zoom it. Problem solved and nobody complained about the way it was solved. Fixed with is KISS, dynamic reflow is very hard and often for very little gain.

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[ChunderDownunder]

They translate PDF to html already - try opening a PDF attachment in gmail.

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[John Hasler]

> Then there is fonts. Heck there are web browsers that run on text terminals.
> Fonts are likely to be substituted depening on the platform and the
> particular install which will also affect the sizing of stuff.

Font sizes are also sometimes much larger than the 2pt that Web designers adore because some of us have less than perfect eyesight.

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[John Hasler]

I always thought that one of the main strengths of PDF was that the author has 100% control over how it is presented. Or am I misunderstanding that feature?

Yes. That is not a feature. That's a bug.

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[Anonymous Coward]

...IE ... in the end we took a screenshot of each day from 1-31 and made it out of images instead, that way you couldn't zoom it. Problem solved...

Saying "problem solved" when providing IE-only solutions this ghastly is just amazing. I (metaphorically) wish you misery and pain for as long as you insist on doing the work of a web developer without knowing how to be one.

Seriously, if this is the kind of problem-solving that being an IE developer promotes, then IE is even closer to the antichrist than I would have ever believed before. The list of cardinal sins you have just committed against the web: deliberately breaking browser UI functionality to control layout (if users were zooming, it's probably because they couldn't read your tiny text, you jerk!), coding for IE first without giving a damn about other browsers (you know that IE is the only browser that won't zoom images, right?), using images for non-decorative text (I am a Lynx user, you insensitive clod!), and more; oh, the humanity!

If dynamic reflow is too hard for you, then I posit that you're not a developer; you just like to draw. Developers solve problems, but you seem to think that's too hard. So what else are you doing, then, but drawing on the screen?

KISS is a fine principle, but remember: things should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[Anonymous Coward]

Images should always be resized based on intended dpi vs. actual dpi. Of course, that is the ideal world where stuff works, intended dpi is supplied by the image and the browser knows that dpi can change based on display.

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[pizzach]

Most people who are enlarging text don't give a shit if the webpage looks a little off with alignment. Why do web developers have such a problem understanding that? The page just has to degrade gracefully. It doesn't have to be perfect. That means set column heights with min-height instead of height.

I don't see why it has to be all or nothing. Reminds me of the article on slashdot earlier about names and validation of forms.

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[Anonymous Coward]

The new integrated viewer has the same flaws as Google's online offering though. No support for PDF features like forms, annotations, etc.

https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/eppkpcnpapjfdbcgbiknbppbkdmicaen

is a pretty big improvement over even the integrated offering.

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[grumbel]

Actually the separation of presentation and content is pretty good on most of the bigger sites, i.e. you can switch to "View/Page Style/Basic Page Style" in Firefox and things will look just "fine", they have all their <ul>'s and <h2>'s marked up properly.

The much bigger problem is that the presentation information itself isn't very flexible, instead it consists of ugly hacks and expectation of pixel-perfect exact rendering on every browser. If you change little details like the font-size almost all webpages will completly fail. Some will fail mildly (on Slashdot the Reply button will fall apart) while others will fail catastrophically (overlapping and thus unreadable text). CSS is simply extremely crappy when it comes to creating robust layout, as soon as some small parameter changes, it might result in an unusable webpage, which is why the user is left with the choice between no style at all and pixel perfect rendering as intended by the author, while most of the time you really would want something in between.

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[Kjella]

It worked, and continued to work just fine for any other browser and it passed W3C's validator which you don't see too many do - you'd see the alt numbers in Lynx and if you scale both images and text there was no layout problem. The calendar would be somewhat more blurry on other browsers because you'd be zooming an image and not a truetype font, but still usable. It's funny that you think I don't know about other browsers, the reason I don't talk about those is that all the others just work - Firefox, Safari and Opera did just fine while IE took a ton of hacks in addition to that one. The users were on a computer lab where some administrator had thought that forcing larger text as default due to monitor size would be a good idea, and I'm sure that for the main text it was fine but it completely broke everything that came out of the box on that CMS. Our job was to implement a CMS, not spend ten times their budget trying to rewrite it. But in the land of fairies and unicorns and clients with endless pockets I'm sure we would have... let me guess, you've defintively never done this for a living?

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[afidel]

A modern version of that using CSS instead of tables for layout would work well for 99+% of the web =)

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.

Dude, when are you going to replace that lame-ass sig?

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[BatsShadow]

You're misunderstanding his post. His point is that the document as the author created it should look the same to all viewers no matter what their device. The author has full, very specific, control over what the document looks like to the user. Compare this to the web where pages render differently on every device. He's not talking about security or whether or not users can edit the document.

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[Anonymous Coward]

I certainly have done this for a living, and still do. And It'll be years before I get to stop supporting IE6 (the vast majority of in-service screen-readers are IE6-only).

But you never mentioned what you did for any other browser. It is now rather clear that you know what you're doing. So I apologize for some of what I said without the information now supplied.

Still, you give everyone else a sub-standard experience so that it "works" with IE (tried it since IE7?). It should be the other way around for the broken browser. Wrap the images in conditional comments (and better, make them imagemaps with the text as block elements for IE users with image rendering turned off; they're probably used to reflow problems but really, really need the text to be a little bigger).

Complete alt-text and W3 validation are commendable (actually, it's to be expected from any real developer, but they are much rarer than you'd think on an internet with billions of pages), but you don't meet, for example, any level of WAI-WCAG (any version).

Arguing about budgets is fine for a hack (which is what you produced), but a professional takes pride in their work.

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The main strength of PDF" is still in direct conflict with "rendering as seamlessly as HTML".

Pick one.

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[thebjorn]

> Then there is fonts. Heck there are web browsers that run on text terminals. > Fonts are likely to be substituted depening on the platform and the > particular install which will also affect the sizing of stuff.

Font sizes are also sometimes much larger than the 2pt that Web designers adore because some of us have less than perfect eyesight.

The designer we used almost cried when I changed his proposed 9px Arial to 13px Verdana ;-) I used the MUM test... if my mum had to put on reading glasses, the font was too small...

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[loufoque]

Except that in practise they never do because you're mixing fixed size (images, banners, logos etc.) and dynamic size (text mostly) content and making sure that it always reflows well just doesn't happen.

Indeed. The reason it doesn't happen is because CSS doesn't allow to specify sizes in mixed units.
Something like 43px+1em for example.

There is, however, a proposal for that if I recall correctly.

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[Threni]

I do understand, and I have an Android phone (Desire), so yes, I want stuff to look the same wherever. With an option to reflow text when I zoom in. I dont' care about fonts being exactly the same, as long as I can read stuff (I tend to override fonts whenever I'm on Ubuntu/Windows/Whatever anyway, so I don't care whether some obscure font is supported or not). Stuff can be wysiwyg and still degrade gracefully - ie it'd be a crap browser that didn't display any text because the exact font wasn't available. Obviously if you've got a nice graphic but all the hardware can display is shitty 8bit jpegs (remind me - why are we stuck with this 8 bit crap in 2010? ) then you display shitty 8 bit graphics.

You're damn right I'm not a web developer - it's thick client all the way for me. If I need a precise font it gets installed with the app, but i've never done that; let the user choose the font.

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[Anonymous Coward]

Font sizes are also sometimes much larger than the 2pt that Web designers adore because some of us have less than perfect eyesight.

The really sad thing is that the designers always choose 2px, so that everything remains the same size relative to the graphics. Therefore those with good eyesight that have high resolution screens, e.g. 15" Notebooks with 1920x1200 or the legendary IBM T221 are screwed.

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ironic that syfy.com of today is one of the worst websites on the entire Internet.

That 1996 page won't load on Chrome for me, so I can't see what it was like.

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[drinkypoo]

Actually PDF sucks for this purpose. It typically looks like a 8.5 x 11" page, which does properly fit onto a screen. In contrast HTML can "reflow"

Properly-made current PDFs have "reflow" information built into them that tells mobile devices how to reflow their text intelligently.

Tools allow you to reflow existing PDFs before display.

If Google doesn't reflow PDFs for small screens, they have already failed. But it's quite possible to do with PDF.

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[Goaway]

Actually the separation of presentation and content is pretty good on most of the bigger sites, i.e. you can switch to "View/Page Style/Basic Page Style" in Firefox and things will look just "fine"

That does not mean content and presentation are separated. Those pages will still contain a ton of divs that are there only to support the presentation. And neither will it be possible to make another radically different presentation for those pages, because those would need a different content structure.

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[grumbel]

That does not mean content and presentation are separated.

If it renders properly in Basic Page Style or in Lynx they certainly have done something right.

Those pages will still contain a ton of divs that are there only to support the presentation.

A few more <div>'s aren't really that big of a deal, when you not use them in the CSS, they are simply invisible. Also in pre-HTML5 there is just no proper way to markup some structures, HTML5 fixes that a bit with its <nav>, <article>, <aside>, etc. tags. But most lists these days I encounter really are proper <ul>s, not just some <div>s with decoration. The webpages that are just build out of <div>s are really shrinking quite rapidly.

The basic problem however is simply a different one, just look at http://www.csszengarden.com/, its clean HTML, allows complete restyling in CSS and completly fails when you browse with 200% text size. As a normal user you gain almost nothing from clean markup, as it doesn't result in a flexible page layout, in fact it makes things worse, old table style layouts where far more robust then CSS. But as CSS doesn't offer a way construct logical relationships between elements (this div is below that div, this one is left from that one), people have to resort to things like absolute positioning and such that just can't deal with changes in font size.

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[lxs]

Whoops, mistakenly modded this insightful.
The whole point of pdf files is to have consistent layout, just like the whole point of html is that layout can adapt to the output device. Both formats are equally useful in different circumstances. That the formats have slowly cross-bred to form bastard children is a shame.

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[larry bagina]

Things aren't the same as when the web was invented - where mostly text and a couple of inline images

When the web was invented, it was text only. Inline images weren't around until 1993 or so. NCSA Mosaic only supported gifs -- clicking a jpeg would launch a separate viewer (assuming you had it set up correctly).

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[Goaway]

If it renders properly in Basic Page Style or in Lynx they certainly have done something right.

They have done something right, certainly. They have not, however, necessarily divided presentation from content. All they have done is made two particular presentations work with the same content, to some limited extent.

A few more div's aren't really that big of a deal, they are simply invisible.

Yes, they are. The fact that they are invisible when not styled is beside the point. The fact that they were required in the first place is the problem. And the further problem is that if you want another presentation, you probably need another set of divs than what you have right now. Thus, your content is still interlinked with your presentation.

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[DougBTX]

They mean "seamless" as in, not having to download the PDF file then open it in another application, or waiting for an ActiveX control to load, or once it has loaded, to have different toolbars and graphic styles from the browser, and so on. None of these things are "the main strength of PDF", so there is no conflict at all in removing these "seams". Try looking at a PDF in Safari on OSX some time, it already does all this, PDFs load up just like HTML pages.

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[SanityInAnarchy]

render it in-place,

Yes.

in-process

No. Remember, this is Chrome, where the contents of a given tab use a separate process from other tabs, and all of the tabs use a separate process from the tab bar and URL bar itself...

Why would you want the PDF rendering to happen in the same OS process?

using native pdf rendering code

Maybe. Why does it have to be native?

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[grumbel]

And the further problem is that if you want another presentation, you probably need another set of divs than what you have right now.

To a certain extend, yes, as you can't reorder div's with CSS, you have to arrange them in your HTML to fit your planed CSS layout. But that is really not the fault of the web designer, as CSS just doesn't offer any tools to do a better job. Considering what HTML/CSS allow, many webpages do as good as a job of separating presentation and content that is possible.

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[Anonymous Coward]

until WPF and XAML came along! /mod this funny

Re:PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML?

[AK Marc]

His point is that the document as the author created it should look the same to all viewers no matter what their device.

Then I would argue that the author is wrong. If they are creating a PDF for the purpose of being viewed on the web, then they are broken. PDFs are essentially a printer language. They weren't invented for "looking the same" when displayed. They were made so that I could make something on a UNIX system, send it to a Mac or PC and have them print it without needing my fonts, my editor, or anything else. So you use Microsoft Word on the PC, Wordperfect on the Mac and LaTeX on Unix and be able to print those documents on all the others without issues.

But to take a print-only design and try to show that on an iPhone is silly. The screen won't show what needs to be shown in the sizes it needs to be shown. You might be able to read it, but it's certainly not the best way to display it. So I'd argue that there is no intention be the author for how it is "displayed" only printed. Otherwise, the author doesn't understand what a PDF is and what it was designed to be used for.

So yes, I may not have fully addressed the point of the OP because I wrongly assumed that he understood what PDF was. Perhaps it's because I was around before PDF was created and loved the idea of a format that was "portable" so you could email a document for someone to print without regard to their system and still see it in the light of its original purpose. Or perhaps its because they wrongly assume something about PDF. But I wouldn't assume PDF is designed to "display" (as in a monitor) a document, and perverting the document to display it doesn't violate the printing layout or anything else, protecting the "PDF" nature of it. My screen isn't 8.5/11, so I must, without fail, violate the author's wishes when viewing it. But it prints fine.

Chrome, you're losing me!

[Anonymous Coward]

I started using Chrome because it was an improvement over the other browsers. It was faster, it used less memory, and it was more crash-resistant. But I have not been impressed with the latest versions.

Everyone knows about them removing http:// from the URL bar already. Their reasoning was, to put it politely, complete horseshit. That was a change they never should have made.

Embedding Flash natively is good for YouTube, no doubt, but bad for everyone who doesn't want to support or use something that is so shitty and proprietary.

One of the last things I ever wanted was native PDF support in my browser. Just like with Flash, I go out of my way to avoid PDFs.

As much as I dislike proprietary software, these recent Chrome developments are driving me to Opera. Opera is faster than Chrome, manages memory better, and never crashes. While their code isn't open source, at least they embrace open and truly free standards. Until the Chrome developers get their acts together, I'm done with it.

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[asvravi]

Whether you like it or not, use it or not, have a choice or not, the fact is both Flash and Adobe Reader will be there anyway on 99% of the PCs. Google is to be appreciated for taking them under its fold so to speak - instead of leaving them as separate addons that never get into the final browser build testing and regression testing. Integrating these and testing and deploying it as a whole package is certainly better for stability as well as security.

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[Nerdfest]

From a security point of view, I'd feel better if Google wrote their own PDF implementation. Far be it for me to read TFA, but I get the impression that this code comes from Adobe, whose software generally makes me nervous.

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you people make up your mind? On one hand, you continually tell us that it's a bad idea to have Seamonkey-style applications that contain all sorts of functionality. You proclaim that it's not modular enough. So we create minimalistic browsers that can be extended via extensions and plugins. But now you're telling us that it's good to include unnecessary functionality within the core browser? Please, just make up your mind. Don't tell us that modularity is essential, only go turn around and advocate absolutely non-modular implementations like this.

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[Anonymous Coward]

Until the Chrome developers get their acts together, I'm done with it.

While not in this particular instance, I share your sentiments.

For example, there's a long thread in their issue tracker about proper proxy support, where the developers alternate between telling users it will happen sometime in the far future, when they implement a new http stack, and not going to happen because of their policies. Currently Chrome uses the operating system's proxy settings and there's no way to implement an extension like FoxyProxy.

Another thing that irks me is their inability to implement proper buffering of videos. They claimed it's too hard to know how to convert between bytes downloaded and time buffered. I don't really understand how they can play the video without understanding and demuxing the stream... I hope this gets better now that they got to design their own media container, but somehow I doubt it.

By now I'm anxiously awaiting webkit2 to mature and get picked up by qtwebkit or webkit-gtk so I could write myself a comparable web browser in a couple weeks and stop getting frustrated.

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[bunratty]

I started using Chrome because it was an improvement over the other browsers. It was faster, it used less memory...

Faster perhaps, but less memory? Many tests show it uses more memory than other browsers.
http://lifehacker.com/5457242/browser-speed-tests-firefox-36-chrome-4-opera-105-and-extensions http://dotnetperls.com/chrome-memory
http://www.whoisandrewwee.com/browsers/verdict-on-google-chrome-memory-hog/

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[ScrewMaster]

From a security point of view, I'd feel better if Google wrote their own PDF implementation. Far be it for me to read TFA, but I get the impression that this code comes from Adobe, whose software generally makes me nervous.

I tend to agree. Whether or not you like Google's corporate policies, the fact is that most of their software releases are competently executed. The same cannot be said for Adobe. I've had to use their libraries in the past, and had to contact their developer support (I use the term loosely.) The responses I received were usually along the lines of "the function call operates as intended according to the documentation." The fact that it did no such thing didn't seem to make much difference. That was a few years ago though, so possibly they've improved.

But yeah. I'd rather Google had handled it.

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[an unsound mind]

There's more than one person amongst the geek community. People can have differing opinions even when identifying under a common label. Shocking, I know.

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[ScrewMaster]

Can you people make up your mind? On one hand, you continually tell us that it's a bad idea to have Seamonkey-style applications that contain all sorts of functionality. You proclaim that it's not modular enough. So we create minimalistic browsers that can be extended via extensions and plugins. But now you're telling us that it's good to include unnecessary functionality within the core browser? Please, just make up your mind. Don't tell us that modularity is essential, only go turn around and advocate absolutely non-modular implementations like this.

Ha ... people's opinions on this subject do seem a bit schizoid at times. The problem is that sometimes you want something to just be there so that it's consistent for everyone, other times you want extensibility and in all cases you want performance and security. It's called "having your cake and eating it too."

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[Anonymous Coward]

If they "just want it to be there", then why not include it as a bundled extension, so it's there by default, but let those of us who don't want to deal with shit like Flash and PDF disable it easily.

Web browser performance is already a lost cause, by the mere fact that JavaScript is involved. Your system is only as fast as its slowest part, and JavaScript is by far that part. At least Chrome is mostly a native browser, unlike Firefox which uses JavaScript for too much of its UI.

As for security, it'd be best if they did implement it as a sandboxed extension that could be disable. The only way to properly secure this is by disabling it.

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[hkmwbz]

So you like the SeaMonkey approach, then? No need for slim browsers with few features (by default)?

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[nacturation]

From a security point of view, I'd feel better if Google wrote their own PDF implementation. Far be it for me to read TFA, but I get the impression that this code comes from Adobe, whose software generally makes me nervous.

Bingo! I was about to post the exact same sentiment. I don't get why people are so against PDF... it's a freaking document format, for crying out loud. That said, one of the downsides is that Adobe's implementation is typically bloated and full of bugs. Had Google gone and wrote their own PDF renderer, that would have actually been very cool and likely way more secure.

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[Zarel]

Everyone knows about them removing http:/// from the URL bar already. Their reasoning was, to put it politely, complete horseshit. That was a change they never should have made.

Erm... why not? Please, enlighten us. Personally, I find it great. If I'm at the Google.com homepage, I should see "google.com" in the address bar; everything else is just unnecessary and distracting. I don't really need "http://" there to remember that it's a web site; the fact that I'm using a web browser is kind of enough.

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[Zarel]

From a security point of view, I'd feel better if Google wrote their own PDF implementation. Far be it for me to read TFA, but I get the impression that this code comes from Adobe, whose software generally makes me nervous.

I've read it for you. The code doesn't come from Adobe, Google wrote it themselves. It also uses Google's new sandboxed plugin API, so it would be less of a security concern even if it did.

(I'm surprised you got two replies who also didn't RTFA.)

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[Anonymous Coward]

From a vulnerability point of view, this is a non-concern. Just like with Flash before it, the PDF plugin can be disabled in the options menu. "Integration into the browser" is FUD spread by people unfamiliar with Chrome because of their anti-Google and anti-Adobe sentiments.

From a security point of view, this is a step forward. For the last 12 years, 90% of users had Flash and PDF versions that weren't updated, ever. With Google's Flash bundling, this was solved at last -- it now silently updates on its own. Adobe's PDF reader has its own semi-manual (!) updater program, but IME most users don't allow it to run.

I don't think this is Adobe's implementation. If it were, it would be too fucking slow to use. But this is only a guess of mine.

As for Google's new PDF plugin, I'll probably leave it disabled. I don't feel that a PDF has any business being rendered inside a web browser. OTOH, all stand-alone PDF reader products suck. So I will probably use a Google-Docs-convert extension, or a PDF-Block extension with click-to-enable.

(BTW, when will people learn? Google isn't an idealist-run company like some perceive Apple to be. From their Flash promotion, to H264 codec inclusion, to Java Android SDK, and bare-bone web services, it's apparent that Google only cares about the end result, and not about the quality of what sits in-between.)

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[mystik]

From http://dotnetperls.com/chrome-memory:

Google Chrome posted the highest maximum memory usage when all chrome.exe processes were summed, reaching 1.18 gigabytes, while Firefox posted the lowest maximum memory levels of 327.65 megabytes. This means Firefox used 73% less memory during peak periods.

Their methodology is flawed. The operating system will share identical unmodified memory pages between processes once in memory. So if they simply summed @ the total memory usage for each process, they could be counting the same piece of memory multiple times.

In Firefox, the single-process model makes it easy to measure the memory use of the process, but brings with it all it's flaws, (much easier to take out the whole session with a bad plugin)

Measuring memory usage of a multi-process application requires figuring out many pages are uniquely mapped amongst all processes, then summing that figure

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[Randle_Revar]

>So we create minimalistic browsers that can be extended via extensions and plugins.
Mozilla was extensible via extensions (and plugins, but those don't count, because IE and NN had those a bajillion years ago) before FF was a gleam in what's-his-name's eye

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[Hortensia Patel]

First, this isn't Adobe Reader, thank Zod. It's Google's own implementation.

Second, I have (entirely speculative) doubts that the bundling of Flash is happening on its own merits. I suspect a quid pro quo was agreed, whereby Google bundles Flash and offers moral support against Steve Jobs, and in return Adobe extends Flash to support the new WebM video format. This extends its reach to (most) users of IE and Safari, neither of which will be adding native support.

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a bundled disable-able plugin, you retarded fuck. Ditto with Chrome's included Flash support. Do you idiots read anything beyond the 8-word article title?

Let's see if I can make you feel even more stupid. From TFA:

• To further protect users, PDF functionality will be contained within the security “sandbox” Chrome uses for web page rendering.

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[king neckbeard]

Google did write it themselves, but they have shown interest in implementing 'embedded media' supported by Adobe Reader. I DO NOT want a SWF in a PDF, or support for running arbitrary executables (which is part of the official PDF spec). I understand supporting PDF in the browser, but I don't want the features that are just bad practice and have no real world use besides infecting my machine.

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[icebraining]

Firefox from 3.6 compiles the chrome's JavaScript to native code if it's used enough, so it shouldn't be a problem, right?

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[ma1wrbu5tr]

Just because it's already there on X% of PCs, does NOT mean it's a "good thing". By the way, UPS is trying to deliver a package to you, but is unable. Please open the attached PDF.

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[Goaway]

Go to about:plugins, click "Disable" twice, and you are done.

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually SeaMonkey is presently slimmer than Firefox, and is modular (at least on Gentoo), so you don't need to install anything but the browser.

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[Anonymous Coward]

The same cannot be said for Adobe. I've had to use their libraries in the past, and had to contact their developer support (I use the term loosely.) The responses I received were usually along the lines of "the function call operates as intended according to the documentation." The fact that it did no such thing didn't seem to make much difference. That was a few years ago though, so possibly they've improved.

Allow me to dispel your illusions: Adobe's C++ Boost-accepted Generic Image Library (or GIL)

But who knows. I don't. This may be Adobe's only noteworthy library.

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[icebraining]

In Firefox, the single-process model makes it easy to measure the memory use of the process, but brings with it all it's flaws, (much easier to take out the whole session with a bad plugin)

I don't find that to be true: when the VLC plugin locks up in Chrome, it locks even other windows (besides tabs).

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[gtall]

While I agree I do not care about native PDF support in my browser, if you are a scientist, just about all the papers you need to obtain to learn what others are discovering will be in PDF. Those, I can download, I need them rather in soft searchable content. Failing that, I'll take them as images. I think that is the proper use of PDF for scientists. I occasionally find a reference within a PDF as a hotlink useful. However, with adequate references, I can track it down myself. I also find that manufacturers' documentation on their widgets is useful in PDF. I do not want to rely on the cloud, i.e., I am supposed to rely on it being accessible now and in years time when I find a use for it, any more than is absolutely necessary. The cloud will be controlled by Business School Product. They have no use for utility unless it contributes to their progression up the corporate ladder.

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[king neckbeard]

You've got the reasoning wrong. Google doesn't really care about Flash or Adobe. However, Google cares about security and users care about flash content. In order to please users, they bundle Flash, so it's there and it's up to date. Flash is one of the biggest security holes in a browser, and they've taken a step to minimize this hole.

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[thegarbz]

It was faster, it used less memory, and it was more crash-resistant.

Everytime I read a post like this it always seems to come back to the same thing. "I like browsers that don't have features" Well I'm sure I can still send you a copy of an early beta for Chrome if you want.

It's always the same. Half of the world wants the browser to be a complete window to the online world. Then a newcommer enters the market with a browser that is lacking a lot of fundamental features and half the users complain "It has no adblock plugin" or in my case "it has no colour management". The other half love it. Naturally as the product matures you end up with comments like yours. If you want a browser as fast and lean as Opera, then use fucking Opera, don't come and complain to the world that Chrome is losing it's roots. It never had any to begin with.

By the way complaining about a change they made and have since reverted several versions ago is another nice touch.

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[Anonymous Coward]

Had Google gone and wrote their own PDF renderer

They did.

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[kdrive113]

Franklin, Franklin, Benjamin Franklin

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[bcrowell]

The built-in PDF feature isn't available on the linux version yet.

Some questions that I had that weren't answered by TFA:

1. Is the PDF renderer fully open source and available under the same license as everything else, so that it can be included in nonproprietary builds of Chromium?
2. TFA says: "The plug-in doesn't do everything that the Adobe Reader does. It can't handle, for instance, certain embedded media[...]" This is probably a good thing, IMO. The $40,000 question is whether it supports javascript embedded in PDFs, which is the huge security nightmare in Adobe Reader. If it does support it, I hope it's turned off by default. Since I run linux, I can't test this. Can any slashdotters try it and find out?
3. Same question as #2 for embedded flash. I assume they haven't implemented it, hope they never do.
4. What is the patent situation with the implemented and nonimplemented "embedded media," and how does this affect fully nonproprietary builds of Chromium?

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[Anonymous Coward]

And what about, say, HTTPS and FTP?

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[John Hasler]

> ...the fact that I'm using a web browser is kind of enough.

Real browsers can do more than "http://". "file://", for example. Or "ftp://". Or "gopher://".

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to wait a little as I'm sure the Opera will get their act together, that is stabilize the product, at the coming 10.60 version. Though the 10.5x series where quite stable, there where some annoying little UI rendering bugs (like the white box on the top of the UI) and the like..

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a long, fuzzy line between "the developers don't have their act together" and "this program lacks two obscure features I want". If you can write a browser comparable to Chrome in two weeks, I will personally eat my hat, puke it up, eat it again, and set myself on fire while singing American Pie.

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[QuantumBeep]

Those are shown in the address bar (colored green, no less) when they're there. Just plain HTTP is the only thing that's hidden.

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[Anonymous Coward]

Is the https:// telling you you're on a secure site also distracting?

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[jibjibjib]

Why should they be inconsistent? Why should HTTP be hidden but HTTPS and FTP and other protocols be shown? I've never found the protocol being displayed in my browser to somehow "distract" me or reduce my productivity. Is this seriously a concern?

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[surveyork]

lrn2OutOfProcessPlugins (Firefox 3.6.4 and up)

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[LordLimecat]

Embedding Flash natively is good for YouTube, no doubt, but bad for everyone who doesn't want to support or use something that is so shitty and proprietary.

It may interest you to know that theres an way to disable specific plugins in chrome-- about:plugins. Im sure that theres probably a commandline switch to disable some of them as well.

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[Zarel]

Why should they be inconsistent? Why should HTTP be hidden but HTTPS and FTP and other protocols be shown?

I've never found the protocol being displayed in my browser to somehow "distract" me or reduce my productivity. Is this seriously a concern?

It reduces your productivity because there's more to read. Instead of being able to look to the leftmost side of the address bar to see the domain, you have to look to the leftmost side, then scan right until you find the domain. It's really minor, but it's there.

I also like to resize browser windows sometimes. Especially since Chrome makes it easy to drag tabs into new windows, I often drag a tab out, and then resize it into a narrow sidebar I can refer to while doing something else. In cases like that, I'd much rather see "google..." than "http://g..."

The inconsistency of still showing "https://" is actually helpful. It's a lot easier to see the difference between nothing and "https://" than between "http://" and "https://". Since http is most common, it makes sense that a departure from that protocol should be easily visible.

And there's also the "Why not?" I haven't really heard any reasons why http should be kept.

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[Anonymous Coward]

It used less when Firefox was having horrible memory leak problems if you kept it open for more than a day.

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[afabbro]

> ...the fact that I'm using a web browser is kind of enough.

Real browsers can do more than "http://". "file://", for example. Or "ftp://". Or "gopher://".

But, alas, not archie://

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[csrjjsmp]

It's not "I like browsers that don't have features," it's "I like browsers that don't have extra features," where 'extra' means anything I don't need. We'd love for developers to read our minds and make their software with everything we want and nothing we don't, but failing that, it'd be nice to have some degree of customizability. It's part of why firefox is so popular.

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[shutdown -p now]

I think you're missing the point of Chrome. It's not supposed to be the Geek's Lightweight Browser - and any similarity that may be there noew is purely coincidental.

Nah, I think Chrome aims to become the "it just works" for the Web. From that perspective, features such as integrating Flash and PDF make perfect sense. Even more so if you also consider ChromeOS.

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if Adobe gets their act together, which it will happen now since they must try surviving apple and html5, coupling a browser and a pdf viewer is a bad thing security wise because it's a monoculture.

Currently I could be watching pdfs with okular, xpdf, evince, acrobat reader. An exploit has less potential to succeed.

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[Kilrah_il]

Since you are talking about new features like embedded Flash and PDF, I assume you use either the beta or dev build of Chrome which are obviously less stable than the regular release, especially the dev version. Comparing dev Chrome to stable Opera is unfair.
i use the dev version and I find it very stable, I can only assume that the regular version is less crash-prone.

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[bunratty]

Firefox 1.5 used less memory than the versions of IE and Opera that were out at the time. The same was true of Firefox 2. Firefox was using less memory than others browsers before Chrome ever existed. There were some memory leaks in Firefox 1.5, but most were fixed by the time Firefox 2 came out, and they didn't cause Firefox to use more memory than other browsers. See http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=468525 for details.

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[thetoadwarrior]

People do actually use PDFs and I rather have Google build a lighter and hopefully more secure PDF viewer rather than me having to taint my system with something from Adobe. Reader has been consistently shit for ages now. The more competition the better.

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[ZosX]

I've read it for you. The code doesn't come from Adobe, Google wrote it themselves. It also uses Google's new sandboxed plugin API, so it would be less of a security concern even if it did.

(I'm surprised you got two replies who also didn't RTFA.)

I'm not. Who actually reads articles here?

Re:Chrome, you're losing me!

[ScrewMaster]

Franklin, Franklin, Benjamin Franklin

Send me a few Franklins and I'll spout any opinion you want.

Yay?

[Anonymous Coward]

PDF is actually a useful standard when it comes to reproducing printed or printable documents. The worst thing about PDF is Adobe's Reader implementation. Hopefully, this is a clean implementation, not based on Adobe's lousy, slow, insecure Reader code. I know they say its sandboxed, but still.

Anyone using Safari or Firefox (extension here) on the Mac has been able to do this for some time; PDFs are a lot better without the Adobe plugin.

Re:Yay?

[icebraining]

In Linux, I used Mozplugger to embed evince, but now I just open them externally.

Re:Yay?

[jbengt]

I agree that pdf is a useful standard, but I don't want it rendering within my browser. I want to open it in the viewer (or editor) of choice, not in the browser. I especially hate the way navigating is a muddled mix of browser and viewer controls

Re:Yay?

[Anonymous Coward]

The part of PDF that is needed to reproduce printed or printable documents is useful. The part that executes code from the page on the machine opening the PDF really doesn't need to be in there at all.

PDF plugin, OK. PDF built-in? Not so sure...

[erroneus]

I'm not fully qualified to comment on this since I will never be a Chrome user until someone forks off a "stainless steel" release where a group of people have poured over the source code to ensure there is no Google data collecting going on and then compiles it themselves for distribution.

But when I hear someone teaming up with Adobe and inserting Adobe's PDF reader directly into a browser, I sense that nothing good can come of this. Adobe has exceeded the purpose of PDF by adding scripting language code into it. It was supposed to be a portable document format... says so right in the name. Now it's grown well beyond that and it's not a good thing... it's a horribly exploitable thing and the user has a lot less control and, unfortunately, a lot more trust of PDF than other document formats.

If it was a Google implementation of PDF that removed potentially harmful content? I'd be apt to believe in that, but this is something else and it's guaranteed to be bloated as hell. Has anyone happened to notice how HUGE Adobe Acrobat reader is?

Re:PDF plugin, OK. PDF built-in? Not so sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not fully qualified to comment on this since I will never be a Chrome user until someone forks off a "stainless steel" release where a group of people have poured over the source code to ensure there is no Google data collecting going on and then compiles it themselves for distribution.

No, I think what you want is the "tinfoil hat" release.

But seriously, it's called Chromium. It's the fully open source project that feeds into Chrome, and it's free of all Google branding and such. For what it's worth though, there's nothing in Chrome that does anything remotely close to what you're afraid of. Feel free to run it for a couple of weeks through a debugging proxy to watch what it does (I have).

PDF is fat

[bzipitidoo]

We'll never be able to interact with PDF like any other web page, not when it takes so much more space. Strikes me as an appallingly inefficient format. I don't know exactly why PDF is so bloated-- it does have the actual text embedded in the format. I know PDF has embedded fonts, but that shouldn't take much room, should it? What are they doing that converts something that would be a 10K ASCII file into a 500K PDF monstrosity? Mere appearances shouldn't take up 90%+ of the bits. Can't LaTeX handle it?

About the only thing worse than PDFs are raster scans of documents, and those typically aren't served, they're used as an intermediate step towards porting to a more useful format. OCR isn't done just because it's fun. It's done because it's a lot easier for computers to search text documents. And it saves lots of space.

Re:PDF is fat

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly, you have no clue.

Re:PDF is fat

[hedwards]

The problems with PDF started for the same reasons that DOC problems started. The party responsible for the format decided that hey, wouldn't it be cool if... And after that you got document formats with embedded programming features. No good will ever come of doing such a thing. If you need to do more than just display, then there are ways of handling that. Allowing such things to be embedded in every document without providing a sane way of determining which do and which don't prior to opening causes tons of trouble.

Re:PDF is fat

[abulafia]

PDFs tend to bloat for at least two reasons - one is the inclusion of tons of rasters and other embedded objects, and that's a problem between chair and keyboard - the resultant documents are just was was asked for. The other is that PDF is (a superset of) a subset of Postscript. Some combinations of software and the drivers that generate PDFs, can do insanely redundant things that cause massive documents. One neat workflow I saw several years ago was placing raster images into Illustrator objects, then through a DTP program to be rendered to PDF. That particular software stack/combination of transformations managed add something like 400x bloat compared to the same document produced in a different way.

Generating non-insane Postscript used to be a solved problem, but it appears to come back every so often.

Also, changes in the PDF happened some time back that had big size advantages. Documents generated by old PDF renderers are going to tend to be larger than those generated by newer ones. (I don't really recall the details, but some of it was how embedded objects are stored.)

Re:PDF is fat

[bonch]

PDF viewing is very fast on OS X, and Safari has natively displayed PDFs for a long time. I blame Adobe's reader.

Re:PDF is fat

[petermgreen]

I know PDF has embedded fonts, but that shouldn't take much room, should it?
Embedded fonts can get pretty big if the software doesn't subset them or a lot of glyphs are used. DeJavu sans for example is over half a megabyte! Some fonts are much bigger (pan-unicode fonts and CJK fonts for example)

What are they doing that converts something that would be a 10K ASCII file into a 500K PDF monstrosity?
PDFs will always be a bit bigger than plain text because they control the positioning of stuff exactly and that takes information. It shouldn't be a factor of 50 though unless images are involved.

Once images are involved the sky's the limit, a single large image can make a pdf huge (and remember images can be inserted at any resoloution so a huge image can display small!)

One of the things about pdfs is always embeds images and usually embeds fonts. This is a mixed blessing, on the one hand it makes the file far more portable than something like html but on the other hand it means you re-download stuff like logos with every pdf you grab.

Can't LaTeX handle it?
LaTeX has it's place but afiact it was never designed to be a distrubution format. A typical LaTeX document involves a load of files that become figures in the document and many use LaTeX add-on packages that may or may not be installed.

About the only thing worse than PDFs are raster scans of documents, and those typically aren't served, they're used as an intermediate step towards porting to a more useful format.
That has not been my experiance with large digitisation projects i've seen the output of (e.g. http://ethos.bl.ac.uk/ ). In my experiance they do OCR for searchability but the accuracy isn't good enough to do a full conversion so they produce pdfs with the image visible but OCR text for copy/paste/search.

It's done because it's a lot easier for computers to search text documents.
Afaict this is the main reason for doing OCR at least in large digitisation projects.

And it saves lots of space.
It does if you throw the originals away. But only an idiot would do that without careful proofreading of the OCRed text and careful proofreading costs a LOT more than storing the original images does.

Re:PDF is fat

[gad_zuki!]

How exploitable is/was doc? MS's implementations usually asked you if you wanted to run macros and had macro settings. I can't think of any trojans or botnets that scaled to huge numbers by exploiting doc. Adobe reader? Yes, lots. Adobe's Reader out of the box runs js without even a warning. Its one of the largest exploitable apps on the internet today and most people have its plugin running in their browser.

Unfortunately, scripting in documents isn't going away anytime soon. In the meantime, can't I get some sane defaults?

I hope all the major browsers start implementing their own PDF reader just to balkanize the PDF market. At least this will hurt the Adobe monopoly and hopefully force them to compete on security and not unsecure features.

Re:PDF is fat

[Anonymous Coward]

PDF viewing is very fast on OS X, and Safari has natively displayed PDFs for a long time. I blame Adobe's reader.

Aye, I don't bother viewing PDFs in-browser. My Macbook is set up so that if I click on a PDF link, it just downloads it an opens it up in Preview. That way if I'm viewing a journal article on campus, I don't need to worry about not having a subscription to Phys Rev or whatever when I get back home. It's just really handy to have a copy of all the PDFs I've ever opened in my downloads folder. Plus Preview is damn fast and supports spotlight text searching which is great in ebooks.

I've not used Adobe Reader in a long, long time. It's on my Windows desktop and I've never had too many problems with it however, it got a lot faster after about version 9 (I think).

Re:PDF is fat

[Yaa 101]

I think you don't really know the history of PDF, it's a variant on a programming language called Postscript, Postscript is a Turing complete programming language that makes extremely accurate page description.

http://www.adobe.com/print/features/psvspdf/

Re:PDF is fat

[Draek]

What are they doing that converts something that would be a 10K ASCII file into a 500K PDF monstrosity?

A terrible job.

With LaTeX, I've got a 12K text file here that along with two images (16K and 24K respectively) turn into a beautiful 72K PDF. Another, text-only, from a 32K file to a gorgeous 48K PDF. The only case where it has a noticeable overhead is in a math-heavy document I've got which is 4K in plain text and 28K as PDF, but considering two-thirds of the document are mathematical equations I don't think it's that bad, and would probably be less if the document was longer.

Sure, not all programs will be as efficient as LaTeX, particularly dummy-friendly WYSIWYG ones, but still. If your software turns a 10K plaintext into a 500K PDF, drop it and for the love of God get something better. Or learn LaTeX. Though I guess you already do since you advocate using LaTeX source-code as replacement (a terrible idea by itself), which raises the question of why the hell are you using such an horribly inefficient program for your PDFs when you have a much better tool available already.

Re:PDF is fat

[im_thatoneguy]

Because PDFs are more than just a word presentation format.

The reason PDF succeeds OVER something like a .txt file are all those features. You can mark it up. You can draw on it. You can add comment bubbles. You can embed images and video. You can even embed 3D models. You can use it for slide presentations.

PDF is a full fledged media presentation format.

The fact that it can also embed fonts and just provide a reliable, cross platform and consistent presentation system without worrying about how it looks on another computer is just one portion of PDF's usefulness. And often when I create a PDF which is just text formatted it's still pretty small.

Re:PDF is fat

[butlerm]

PDF is not a variant of Postscript. Postscript is intrinsically a Forth like programming language with rendering commands. PDF is intrinsically a list of objects to render. Of course more recent PDF implementations have Javascript style scripting, but that has little or nothing to do with the rendering process. The link you refer to is mostly a bunch of marketing hype, unfortunately, but this sentence is relevant:

A PDF file is actually a PostScript file which has already been interpreted by a RIP and made into clearly defined objects.

That is not completely accurate (there is no Postscript when the conversion process is complete, nor is Postscript required to produce a PDF file), but you get the idea. You can get more information about the technical details of PDF here and here (PDF).

Re:PDF is fat

[butlerm]

In part, that is because Apple intentionally adopted a PDF style rendering model in Quartz. Not actual PDF, mind you, but very similar at a low level. Less translation required, and the translation is more accurate. It is too bad Apple and Adobe don't get along very well anymore. Apple probably wouldn't exist if it weren't for Adobe, and possibly the reverse as well.

Re:PDF is fat

[perryizgr8]

and even more disgusting are the pdfs which have a graphical scan of a document. wtf?

Re:PDF is fat

[shutdown -p now]

How exploitable is/was doc? MS's implementations usually asked you if you wanted to run macros and had macro settings.

I think it only started to do that since Office2K or so; pretty sure that there were popular releases which already had scripting, but no user control over when that starts executing once the document is opened. Most certainly, viruses written in VBA ("macroviruses" was the word for that) costituted a hefty chunk of popular virus registries back in late 90s.

Re:PDF is fat

[Cochonou]

Well, scripting is only part of the problem. If you look at the history of PDF exploits, many of them come from buffer overflows which aren't really related to scripting. So it looks like exploits are as much related to parsing as anything else. Of course, this could mean that Adobe developpers don't know how to code, but some of these exploits also surfaced in Foxit - which means these errors are quite common when parsing PDF. So maybe what we would need is a PDF reader written in a language/framework with systematic bounds checking, or something like that.

Re:PDF is fat

[Anonymous Coward]

The other is that PDF is (a superset of) a subset of Postscript.

Every set is a superset of a subset of every other set, since the empty set is a subset of every set and every set is thus a superset of the empty set. Please stop using words from set theory.

Re:PDF is fat

[Anonymous Coward]

> MS's implementations usually asked you if you wanted to run macros and had macro settings

Not in Office 97 and earlier

Re:PDF plugin, OK. PDF built-in? Not so sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't noticed the size of Acrobat in a long time. I switched to foxit reader so that the reader opens and I can view the PDF before I die.

Re:PDF plugin, OK. PDF built-in? Not so sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not fully qualified to comment on this

but I will anyway.

Fixed that for you.

Re:PDF plugin, OK. PDF built-in? Not so sure...

[ronocdh]

I will never be a Chrome user until someone forks off a "stainless steel" release where a group of people have poured over the source code to ensure there is no Google data collecting going on and then compiles it themselves for distribution.

Ever try Iron? There's also a Chromium-based browser actually called Stainless, as you suggest, but I believe it's Mac OS X only. Iron is Windows only.

Old technology

[Pascal Sartoretti]

For years, GMail or Google Documents have been able to render PDF documents in HTML.

Maybe Google simply took this server-based code and put it into Chrome...

Re:Old technology

[iPhr0stByt3]

But Chrome is not converting anything. It's more like a plug-in that's native. This is the same way Chrome reads HTML5 natively... it doesn't first convert it to HTML4. It won't look any different than the Adobe's plug-in or FoxIt's plug-in, but you don't have to install it separately. And most awesomely, you won't have to update it separately. Of course this makes Chrome natively a little more vulnerable too... but oodles more secure than Adobe's plug-in.

Re:Old technology

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if for some odd reason you allow PDFs to be automatically rendered by Chrome. Why the fuck would you do that? Anyone with half a clue will be installing the first PDFBlock extension.

In fact, now I wonder if this plugin will work for embedded PDFs at all. Is there any reason, at all, for embedded PDF support?

Re:Old technology

[QuantumBeep]

The Big Two browser plugins on this planet are Flash and Adobe Reader (or some other PDF viewer). Now a big chunk of Chrome users won't have to download any plugins at all, ever.

Re:Old technology

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of us with 3/4s of a clue actually like PDFs. They serve a purpose and do it well. Embedded PDF support is great for letting you view documents, online! Who would have thought?

Re:Old technology

[iPhr0stByt3]

I share your sentiment - I dislike the format, but, like many other dislikable things, it's ingrained now and unavoidable. And Adobe sure hasn't done anything to make the format any better. In fact, the Adobe reader plug-in is often considered the #1 security threat of a browser, and I agree. But that's not the format's fault itself and PDF does have some advantages. So it's good to see it included in a (hopefully, most likely) safer way. And I hate Adobe for screwing up Macromedia's awesome stuff... so suck on it Adobe.

Re:Old technology

[Anonymous Coward]

Who said anything about totally removing PDF support? The purpose of a "PDF blocker" is to prevent automatic loading of the plugin through a user-clickable overlay. Only dumbasses allow Flash & other historically insecure plugins to run at will.

You seem to confuse embedded (inline) PDFs -- or a PDF inside a HTML page -- with embedded (plugin) PDFs. The latter usage no longer has meaning and will go away, just as embedded SWF files or MPEGs mean inlined renderings and not browser-rendering capability. I'm not sure I have ever seen a legitimate website that attempted to display a PDF inside an iframe.

Re:Old technology

[Anonymous Coward]

That's great. Now what does that have to do with the GP post? Do you even know what FlashBlock is?

Re:Old technology

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, this part seemed to have incurred some amount of confusion, so I will explain. I didn't mean blocking PDF support entirely. Doing that would entail disabling the plugin, not installing an extension. I meant installing an extension that allows you to choose when to load a PDF, so that the browser is not susceptible to drive-by attacks on the PDF viewer. Similar techniques are commonly done for Flash/Silverlight/Java Applets.

But if Google's PDF plugin cannot render PDFs inside of an iframe, there is no purpose for such an extension. A PDF in that case must be manually opened in a new page/tab.

Re:Old technology

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, Google hasn't done "inline" PDFs. I don't know where you got that idea from.

Re:Old technology

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah I would rather potential venerabilities like any fully functional PDF viewer (code execution from a document?) not be built into the browser, I was wondering if the addition of the PDF renderer and the mystery crashes they were talking about are actually two separate issues.

Re:Old technology

[Anonymous Coward]

You have personally tried this? I'm pretty sure Adobe's PDF plugin allows iframed PDFs. I don't have either installed on this machine to test it out.

Page from 2000 showing inline PDF elements.

Re:Old technology

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes and yes, but if you are looking for an awful, featureless and non interactive pdf plugin, mupdf is for you, no need of press conferences and/or blog bacterial infection to get it.

Why?

[rudy_wayne]

From the article:

"The plug-in doesn't do everything that the Adobe Reader does."

"Google says the PDF rendering quality needs some improving,"

So Google has written their own PDF plugin that's even crappier than Adobe's. What exactly is the point of this?

Re:Why?

[siride]

It's the first pass at it. You expect it to be perfect? This is still the development version. Will you freetards get over yourselves for $DEITY's sake?

Re:Why?

[hedwards]

That Google wrote it and not Adobe. Adobe either doesn't hire qualified programmers or somehow manages to thwart any from getting work done properly. I'm not sure what exactly the problem is, whether there's too much interference from people without foundation or perhaps they just don't provide the resources to do it correctly in the first place.

Re:Why?

[rudy_wayne]

Adobe either doesn't hire qualified programmers or somehow manages to thwart any from getting work done properly. I'm not sure what exactly the problem is, whether there's too much interference from people without foundation or perhaps they just don't provide the resources to do it correctly in the first place.

Adobe's big applications (Photoshop, Premier, etc) are quite good. The problem with Adobe PDF is not a lack of resources, skill or competence on the part of Adobe programmers. The problem is that a PDF reader/creator should be a small simple program, but some pointy haired boss somewhere constantly demands the addition of more and more "features" that are inappropriate, make the program ridiculously bloated and frequently lead to numerous sercurity flaws.

Re:Why?

[Simmeh]

What exactly is the point of this?

#1 An open source PDF plugin implementation (with all the benefits that entails) #2 You don't need to install Adobe's plugin #3 Seriously who marked you up?

Re:Why?

[afidel]

The reason they add new features to the free reader is to drive sales of the paid creator client, must give the customers a justification for upgrading. Most of it is bloated crud that noone really uses, but some of it is really cool like collections that they added with version 9. Collections enable you to export a folder structure and keep all the relevant metadata intact, we used them with the built-in functionality to have people archive their Lotus Notes email and then had legal redact the results using existing tools and workflows. It saved us almost $500k on a separate archiving product and drastically reduced the workload for our legal department probably resulting in as much or more savings.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you used Google Search/Docs PDF-to-HTML converting ability? It's similarly limited. And yet it's 500000x better than Adobe's shit.

Re:Why?

[king neckbeard]

Less features doesn't necessarily mean crappy. Most PDF readers do less than Adobe Reader, but the subset they use covers virtually all sane, practical usage.

A look inside chrome://plugins/ reveals:

[v1x]

Google's PDF plugin:
C:\Users\#########\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\6.0.437.3\pdf.dll (MIME type: application/pdf)

Adobe's PDF plugin:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Acrobat 9.0\Acrobat\Browser\nppdf32.dll (MIME types: application/pdf, application/vnd.adobe.pdfxml, application/vnd.adobe.x-mars, application/vnd.fdf, application/vnd.adobe.xfdf, application/vnd.adobe.xdp+xml, application/vnd.adobe.xfd+xml)

The files themselves appear to be quite different, and handle different MIME types, so hopefully this is not simply Adobe's stuff packaged within Chrome.

Re:A look inside chrome://plugins/ reveals:

[koreaman]

I don't think the filename and MIME types are enough information to tell you that the files are "quite different".

Re:PDF plugin, OK. PDF built-in? Not so sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh that's a shame because I'm totally using Iron here in Arch Linux.

Re:PDF plugin, OK. PDF built-in? Not so sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Iron that doesn't actually change anything, just rebrands the browser and reaps ad revenue?

http://chromium.hybridsource.org/the-iron-scam

While I have an instant dislike for the author of the article, because he appears to be a massive douche, that's the only independent audit of Iron's source I could find.

Chrome is not an application, it's a widget.

[Lord Kano]

Let me known when they figure out how to add a menu bar. Until then, I'll be sticking with Firefox.

LK

Re:Chrome is not an application, it's a widget.

[Again]

Let me known when they figure out how to add a menu bar. Until then, I'll be sticking with Firefox.

LK

This. I moved from Firefox to Chrome for speed and from Chrome to Ephiphany for a menu bar. I've lost a lot of features in the moves but now I have a fast, stable broswer with a menu bar.

Re:Chrome is not an application, it's a widget.

[siride]

What do you need the menu bar for that the two menu icons in Chrome can't provide?

Re:Chrome is not an application, it's a widget.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you one of those ultra orthodox special people who can't operate software unless it meets deprecated UI standards?

Re:Chrome is not an application, it's a widget.

[tycoex]

Do you want me to let you know when you gain the ability to match words to pictures like 6 month old toddlers can as well?

Re:Chrome is not an application, it's a widget.

[Lord Kano]

What do you need the menu bar for that the two menu icons in Chrome can't provide?

Those two icons do not provide a menu bar. It's been a standard part of a GUI for 25 years.

LK

Re:Chrome is not an application, it's a widget.

[Lord Kano]

It's not that I can't, it's that I won't.

I'm a heterosexual, that doesn't mean that I can't have sex with another man. It means that I don't want to and I won't.

LK

Re:Chrome is not an application, it's a widget.

[siride]

Why do they need to provide a menu bar? To be perfectly honest, I'm not convinced that a menubar is even a good UI design in the first place. Chrome and IE7+ are just doing what should have been done a while ago: get rid of a space-wasting and confusing widget.

Re:Chrome is not an application, it's a widget.

[Lord Kano]

I'm an adult, I prefer to read.

Maybe you still wear your garanimals, but I choose my own clothes.

LK

Re:Chrome is not an application, it's a widget.

[Lord Kano]

Why do they need to provide a menu bar?

Because some people want it.

To be perfectly honest, I'm not convinced that a menubar is even a good UI design in the first place. Chrome and IE7+ are just doing what should have been done a while ago: get rid of a space-wasting and confusing widget.

IE7 and the new Opera make the menu bar optional. That would even be fine. Chrome completely omits it. I won't use it.

LK

Re:Chrome is not an application, it's a widget.

[surveyork]

Firefox 4 is shedding the menu bar. Don't remember if they offer it as an option, though.

Re:Chrome is not an application, it's a widget.

[Lord Kano]

If it's not optional, I'll be sticking with FF3.x. It'll be like all of those people who still use IE6.

LK

Re:Chrome is not an application, it's a widget.

[surveyork]

I'm pretty sure someone will come up with a hack, an about:config or an extension that will enable the menu bar. BTW, I'm using Firefox 3.6 with no title bar, no menu bar and 'smart' status bar. Feels Chromey, man.

Re:Chrome is not an application, it's a widget.

[FrankieBaby1986]

Why use a confusing picture (Wrench and Piece of paper?) when perfectly clear text can be used.

Similarly, should I have all my mp3's in one folder, or should I have subfolders by artists and albums, or some other criterion for example?

Anyways, that's why I like the traditional "file edit view history bookmarks tools help" interface. Faster and more organized IMHO

Re:Chrome is not an application, it's a widget.

[Kalriath]

They're replacing it with a ribbon. Firefox developers are mad.

Re:Chrome is not an application, it's a widget.

[drinkypoo]

Those two icons do not provide a menu bar. It's been a standard part of a GUI for 25 years.

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When all you have is a menu bar, then you put them everywhere. Today we have other GUI idioms to work with. On most machines I use Compact Menu 2 when I use firefox, so that I can collapse the menu bar into a single toolbar button, because I want that screen real estate. Chrome and friends do this by default, probably in recognition of the fact that the average computer is now more likely to be a laptop and the average laptop has shrunk. The only features I'd go to the menu for often would be javascript blocking, RSS, flash blocking, autopager, and adblock, all of which have an icon on the toolbar (two of which I added additional extensions to get the GUI.) Consequently I only need to go to the menu for configuration changes. So why do you need a menu bar, again? Tradition is never sufficient justification to do a thing.

Re:Chrome is not an application, it's a widget.

[drinkypoo]

Why use a confusing picture (Wrench and Piece of paper?) when perfectly clear text can be used.

The wrench has been a universal configuration icon as long as we've had icons. In fact, using a wrench to denote the storage of tools predates computers considerably. The truly crafty would drill holes in a crappy wrench, add standoffs, and use it as the handle for a tool drawer. Windows 7 includes a wrench icon for configuration on most notifications. Similarly, a picture of a document has been the symbol for document manipulation as long as we've had icons as well; and further, it has long been present on toolbars.

Or, short form, if you are confused by a wrench and a piece of paper, you are a pathetic tool user. Get off my lawn, if you can manage to walk in a straight line.

Similarly, should I have all my mp3's in one folder, or should I have subfolders by artists and albums, or some other criterion for example?

It's not similar. And BTW, if your filesystem doesn't suck, and your player has decent metadata support, it doesn't matter how you store your mp3s as long as you use a naming convention that supports them all being in the same place.

Anyways, that's why I like the traditional "file edit view history bookmarks tools help" interface. Faster and more organized IMHO

But you're wrong. It's slower and less organized. Menus are piles of functions loosely grouped. Chrome's interface is designed to show you the controls you commonly need. Do you really need to go to the edit menu for copy/cut/paste? Everyone I know knows the keyboard shortcuts, even my artist/chef lady love has managed to get those down, and when she forgets them, she uses the context menu, which is the second place you should go. The menu is a distant third (largely because it is distant) and you don't need to go there except to change encoding or report a bug, two things done very infrequently. I use the wrench menu slightly more often because I like to mess with extensions, but everything commonly used in there has a keyboard shortcut or an interface button... except the bookmarks button, for which you need an extension.

Re:Chrome is not an application, it's a widget.

[SuperKendall]

The wrench has been a universal configuration icon as long as we've had icons.

And it's been less usable this whole time than the menu. I never use the icon, only the menu...

Because it's faster for me to always go to the system standard menu location for application preferences for me to scan the whole toolbar to figure out where they put the wrench, and then additionally for my brain to process that whatever abstract shape the icon designer has chosen is in fact a wrench, and then to hover over the icon to verify (by waiting for the WORD to pop up so I can read it).

Id say it's rather a pathetic tool user who cannot read, given the human race moved out of caves and beyond simple images many thousands of years ago. Move back to ancient Egypt where you belong.

Re:Chrome is not an application, it's a widget.

[drinkypoo]

Id say it's rather a pathetic tool user who cannot read, given the human race moved out of caves and beyond simple images many thousands of years ago. Move back to ancient Egypt where you belong.

I'd say it's rather a pathetic slashdot user who can't use <quote> while they piss and moan at the same time.

Re:Chrome is not an application, it's a widget.

[Lord Kano]

On most machines I use Compact Menu 2 when I use firefox, so that I can collapse the menu bar into a single toolbar button, because I want that screen real estate.

Which is all well and good, you have the CHOICE to do that.

Chrome and friends do this by default, probably in recognition of the fact that the average computer is now more likely to be a laptop and the average laptop has shrunk.

My problem isn't that it's the default. My problem is that it's the only option, which I find unacceptable. I have two 20 inch monitors on my desk. I don't need that extra quarter of an inch.

So why do you need a menu bar, again? Tradition is never sufficient justification to do a thing.

Because I like it. That's the only justification I need.

LK

Re:PDF plugin, OK. PDF built-in? Not so sure...

[bunratty]

If you don't trust Google, why would you trust the makers of Iron?

Google Policy on Automatic Updates

[CuteSteveJobs]

> if you can keep Chrome 6 alive — Windows users have reported frequent crashes, and Google has temporarily suspended the update progress to find out what is going on.

I've experienced Chrome crashes too - more frequently than IE or Firefox. And that's a big problem with Chrome: You can't turn off Automatic updates(*). You will find several hundred meg vanishing from your download quota. I guess the Google developers with their top-of-the-line hardware forget that us regular folks care about things like bandwidth, disk space (it leaves the downloaded files sitting on your hard drive - multiple versions) and quotas (because I don't want to go over my peak quota because some punk program won't take directions). It also jumps up and starts downloading and installing even if you're in the middle of something.

I'd rather schedule my own updates to fit my own schedule - I don't want some program stuffing up when I'm in the middle of something. Chrome has some nice features - it's fast and it doesn't waste the screen space or have the memory bloat that Firefox or IE do, but Chrome crashes a lot and in the end I figured Firefox was best because it at least gives you some control over your PC. Chrome doesn't.

* = Google do provide a way for Enterprise users to modify the groups policy because (as described in their faq) 'enterprises should be able to schedule their own updates'. But Joe Public doesn't get that luxury, and there's no checkbox to turn it up like every other software is decent enough to provide. BTW don't try the REGEDITS; they don't work. Google know about all this because there are many posts complaining about it (search for 'disable chrome automatic updates'), but in the usual corporate arrogance won't even acknowledge the problem: pesky customers! Google think they know what's best.

http://www.google.com/search?q=disable+chrome+automatic+updates

Re:Google Policy on Automatic Updates

[Webz]

Where are you that you need to keep an eye on your bandwidth?

Re:Google Policy on Automatic Updates

[bertok]

Where are you that you need to keep an eye on your bandwidth?

Where the hell are you that you can't even imaging having to worry about bandwith? Can I move there?

Over here in Australia, internet connections with 1GB quotas per month are not unusual, and most mobile 3G accounts are even more restricted.

Re:Google Policy on Automatic Updates

[ihavenospine]

These Crashes are in the developement version which is completely opt in. Just like the beta. I don't see a major issue there. But I agree at least on the bandwith part. I like to turn off automatic updates for everythin when I'm using the laptop with my 3G connection. A notification about avalaible updates would be good and let choose the user when to update.

Re:Google Policy on Automatic Updates

[hoggoth]

1GB per MONTH?! I use 1GB on a good evening.
My weekly backup over the net is 4GB.

Re:Google Policy on Automatic Updates

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because your operating system doesn't have a built-in app store, and frankly, I enjoy watching you suffer.

Re:Google Policy on Automatic Updates

[jopsen]

I agree with GP, in what places on earth, apart from what I assume is a farm in the middle of the desert in Australia, is quotas an issue ? :) I've seen 10 GiB qoutas on 3G here (Denmark)... But who would survive on 3G only, I'd admit I haven't tried it, but I can't imagine that it's stable or fast (yes, it might give you 5Mb/s on a sunny day, but what about ping times...
I have 5Mb/s down for about 25 USD/month no quotas... Looking a gnome-system-monitor I downloaded 2.1 GiB over the past two hours or so... Internet radio/last.fm, youtube and random stuff...
If I look at my provider I can get 50Mb/s for about 80 USD/month, still no quotas... However, my ISP doesn't give me much up-speed... But my parents have fiber in their door, they can get 100Mb/s up and down for a quite reasonable price...

This is Denmark, and no you can probably not move here :(
- Sorry...
But since some idiots voted for the Danish Public Party (National Socialist) immigration have become very hard... Maybe, if you marry someone older than 24, or find a job, have a good education and is willing to learn Danish...
Otherwise, try Sweden their immigration policy is not as hard, and their internet connections are better... Plus their privacy is better protected against organizations such as **AA...
Hmm... I supposed the only thing wrong with Sweden is their alcohol taxes, so remember to bring you own beer :)

Re:Google Policy on Automatic Updates

[dogmatixpsych]

I too have experienced a lot of Chrome crashes but on OS X. I switched to Chrome a couple months ago and loved it; it had everything I needed to leave Firefox. However, it started crashing, a lot. A lot more than Firefox did and Firefox crashed a lot on my computer. Chrome also was terrible with memory usage; I've seen it using well above 1GB of RAM with only 10 tabs open. Finally I got fed up with it and switched to Safari. It's been much more stable and usable.

Re:Google Policy on Automatic Updates

[Anonymous Coward]

First. If you don't want updates, use chromium. Same thing. No updates.
Second. Chrome NEVER jumps up and starts updating while you're doing things. Ever. So either you made that up or you're just way off base. Firefox does that, chrome does it in the background only when you're idle.
Third. Are you using dev channel? Chrome 6 is going to dev channel users, which is known to be much crashier because it's designed only for bleeding edge users. Use chrome stable channel. There's like six warnings that dev channel is unstable.

Re:Google Policy on Automatic Updates

[cbhacking]

Home Internet connections in north America (I'm in the US, but it's the same in Canada) almost never have bandwidth caps, although Comcast will put on a soft cap (throttling) past 20GB or some such. 3G connections are typically soft-capped at 5GB. Don't know about Europe, but Aus and NZ are the only places that I've ever heard *everybody* has bandwidth caps.

Re:Google Policy on Automatic Updates

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm on fucking satellite you insensitive clod!

200MB per day or else...

Re:Google Policy on Automatic Updates

[Clarious]

Dude, I live in a 3rd world country and I only have to pay 13$/month for unlimited internet access (3 mbps ADSL). And unlimited mobile 3G is around 15$.

Re:Google Policy on Automatic Updates

[Anonymous Coward]

Where I live (generic west European country) no ISP has download/upload quota any more, at least not for landlines. Mobiles, well that's a different story. And if ISPs promise X MB/s, that's kind of an average - I get wildly varying speeds from about half what it should be to about four times as much. I think that may have something to do with how congested the network is.

Re:Google Policy on Automatic Updates

[isilrion]

I agree with GP, in what places on earth, apart from what I assume is a farm in the middle of the desert in Australia, is quotas an issue ? :)

Cuba. My quota used to be 170 Mb/month, and I had one of the highest quotas in the university (I was the sysadmin, and I was authorized to increase my own quota, and ask for permission later, if I needed). In practice, though, I never reached that ammount... 1mbit/sec shared by 10000 users didn't make it easy, but there were professors in the 50-70 Mb/month range that had a hard time by the end of the month.

The very first thing we had to teach users was to disable automatic updates (instead we would download new versions once and publish then internally). We really couldn't afford one program taking all the available bandwith for several hours while everyone's instances were being updated.

Sadly, that situation won't change until the Cuba-Venezuela cable is finished, if it ever is.

Re:Google Policy on Automatic Updates

[surveyork]

I lived in Canada. I had an internet connection with Cogeco, cable, 11 MBits, capped more or less reasonably. Moved to another house, ADSL 5 Mbits with Sympatico (I think), also capped reasonably. Moved to Spain. Have a 1 Mbit ADSL (countryside, far from nodes), no caps. AFAIK, higher speed connections do not have caps. Mobile Internet has caps, but I think they are getting better each year. Perhaps they'll even implement a mobile internet flat rate.

Re:Google Policy on Automatic Updates

[Mad Merlin]

Home Internet connections in north America (I'm in the US, but it's the same in Canada) almost never have bandwidth caps....

Hah! Oh dear god, I wish that was true. No, in Canada, none of the local phone/cable monopolies even offer an bandwidth capless plan, at any price. Furthermore, in most areas, you have no other choice than the local phone/cable monopolies, and that's if you're lucky.

Re:Google Policy on Automatic Updates

[mgblst]

In Australia, 3g gets you 1gb for $30, 2gb for $40 on Optus pre-paid. I don't see this issue with most internet users though, and I have not heard of any regular users having a 1gb limit,that is bullshit.

Still, if i only used 3g, I wouldn't want to waste it with chrome updates.

Re:Google Policy on Automatic Updates

[jonwil]

What part of Australia are you in? All the major ADSL ISPs these days (including Telstra) offer plans with generous quotas. The closest I could find to a 1GB ADSL plan was a 2GB plan from BigPond and even then, you can get a better plan from someone else for the same amount of money.

As for wireless, all of the big boys have plans with multi-gigabyte quotas.

Anyone who is on a plan with 1gb is either living somewhere where wireless is the only option available (and is too cheap to buy a plan with more quota) or has been duped into buying an ADSL plan with VERY poor value for money. Or possibly they are on an older grandfathered ADSL plan and cant or wont switch.

Re:Google Policy on Automatic Updates

[lucas teh geek]

Telstra used to offer a "super fast adsl2+" (about 20mbps) that had only 250mb of quota. i dont know if they still do, I would hope the ACCC reamed their asses for such dodgy practices. 1GB quotas havent been common in many many years, and even back then it was only common on cable (which has always been ruled by shitty monopolies)

Re:Google Policy on Automatic Updates

[gedw99]

wow that amazing.

i rememebr in cuba i needed my passport to get into the capital building to use the internte. thats was about 7 years ago.

Amazing place.

Re:Google Policy on Automatic Updates

[perryizgr8]

that really, really sucks!!1
even in a crappy 3rd world country like india, almost everyone has unlimited quota (with speed throttling after 25-50gb) or hard limits of usually 25-30gb for a ~2mbps connection. 3g accounts are very expensive and all of them are pay per mb.

Re:Google Policy on Automatic Updates

[perryizgr8]

it seems to me that something is seriously wrong with your computer. firefox has maybe crashed 1 time in the past 6 months on my vista laptop and chrome has never crashed. once the flash plugin crashed but not the browser.

Re:Google Policy on Automatic Updates

[Kotoku]

The USA is where I am.

1GB a month is so laughable I couldn't handle it. I stream more than that in a low usage week. How do you watch 720p video online?

I always used to feel bad for Australians because of their ridiculous lack of net freedom with unseen blacklists running the background, but I guess I have another reason now.

Re:Google Policy on Automatic Updates

[Tim C]

He could easily be using a 3G dongle to get mobile broadband on a laptop or netbook, you can get some quite restrictive transfer allowances with them especially if you go for a relatively cheap plan (and having read the out of plan tariffs for some of them, with charges of up to 1GBP per MB, you do not want to go over your limit)

Re:Google Policy on Automatic Updates

[Anonymous Coward]

If the automated updates bother you then just download a nightly build. Hell it doesn't even require an install or admin privileges to load.

http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/waterfall/console

As for the crashing I have to agree but it's not that often and depends on the build but neither Firefox or Chrome are nearly as stable as IE 8 at least.
I'll take that inconvenience right now for the speed and quality.

Re:Google Policy on Automatic Updates

[Anonymous Coward]

> if you can keep Chrome 6 alive — Windows users have reported frequent crashes, and Google has temporarily suspended the update progress to find out what is going on.

I've experienced Chrome crashes too - more frequently than IE or Firefox. And that's a big problem with Chrome: You can't turn off Automatic updates(*). You will find several hundred meg vanishing from your download quota. I guess the Google developers with their top-of-the-line hardware forget that us regular folks care about things like bandwidth, disk space (it leaves the downloaded files sitting on your hard drive - multiple versions) and quotas (because I don't want to go over my peak quota because some punk program won't take directions). It also jumps up and starts downloading and installing even if you're in the middle of something.

I'd rather schedule my own updates to fit my own schedule - I don't want some program stuffing up when I'm in the middle of something. Chrome has some nice features - it's fast and it doesn't waste the screen space or have the memory bloat that Firefox or IE do, but Chrome crashes a lot and in the end I figured Firefox was best because it at least gives you some control over your PC. Chrome doesn't.

I'm not an Enterprise user and I do have control over my PC and don't got any of these problems: I can schedule my chrome updates when I want, my disk doesn't get filled up with old update files, chrome doesn't crash for me and I'm not running windows.

Re:Google Policy on Automatic Updates

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in sweden I have a data cap of: 100 MBit/second * 3600 seconds / hour * 24 hours/day * 30.5 days / month ~= 2.64e14 bits / month

Re:Google Policy on Automatic Updates

[Anonymous Coward]

giving users control over the browser is bad for the internet and people who are trying to make money off it.

Mozilla made a study on why people don't upgrade their browsers when they are given the choice: http://blog.mozilla.com/metrics/2010/04/21/why-people-don%E2%80%99t-upgrade-their-browser-%E2%80%93-part-iv/

Re:Google Policy on Automatic Updates

[mxs]

Now think about the flip-side, please. The big problem with browser security, zombie computers, botnets, malware, etc. is non-updated software once security holes are found. People are either lazy, ignorant, or incompetent when it comes to timely updates -- and I mean people as a big, large blob of people, not anyone in particular like you.

Much like automatic updates in Windows, Chrome automatic updates actually attempt to prevent problems stemming from outdated, insecure software. It's not at all perfect (in either implementation), but IMHO it's a whole lot better than the alternative (even bigger botnets, even less trustable computing).

In my experience, Chrome does not eat up hundreds of megabytes for updates per month. Please don't use hyperbole. It undermines you.

Any implementation can be improved of course -- including leaving old files around or not. Maybe a constructive post about that particular bug would be useful, in the Chrome Google Groups -- or perhaps on the Chromium development lists.

Re:Google Policy on Automatic Updates

[Anonymous Coward]

Bandwidth is irrelevant. There should always be a way to disable automatic updates. I don't want stuff updated without my knowledge.

Re:Google Policy on Automatic Updates

[Jorl17]

Out of curiosity, in here, in Portugal, my family started out with a 1mb/s connection that had 1GB international traffic limit and 20GB national. By staying with the company for around 6 to 7 years, we've progressively managed to get a 16mb/s connection with unlimited traffic for a lower price than the original 1mb/s traffic-limit-based connection. Yeah, it seems that keeping with your providers really is a good thing. (Oh, did I mention we got free TV and phone added in this promotion?)

Re:Google Policy on Automatic Updates

[Anonymous Coward]

My hat is off to you dear sir! You have a bandwidth restrictions that tight you waste it reading Slashdot?

Kudos! you have earned yourself the geek-of-the-month award!

Re:Google Policy on Automatic Updates

[StuffMaster]

I use the development version and set the Google Update service to manual to stop the automatic updates. Evil ablated.

Seriously Google, stop being evil about that.

Re:Google Policy on Automatic Updates

[jopsen]

okay, that's amazing... I hope you have a local copy of wikipedia...
I can't imagine high school without internet, let alone university... When searching for new information on a topic I easily download a few hundrede megabytes in pdfs alone...

Re:Google Policy on Automatic Updates

[isilrion]

okay, that's amazing... I hope you have a local copy of wikipedia...

I do. Well, I did - I don't know if they've taken it down since I left (or, more likely, if the server died and there wasn't another to replace it). I hope not. I started a "meta-project" (me and a couple of other professors, and with a canadian university helping out with the supplies) which goal was to make available as much as possible in the intranet, so that students (the weakest link in that chain - they had the most restrictions on internet access) could get at least some access. Wikipedia was the first step. We would ask our professors to bring as many papers and documents as possible to store locally, when they came back from their travels. Unfortunately, the project wasn't very popular among the other professors... they had to do extra work (uploading, cataloging the files if they were not full-text), as it was too much for my small team of volunteers to do it all.

I can't imagine high school without internet

I also tried to kickstart another project for secondary schools and high school students. Most of our high schools barely have computers, most of them are not networked, and if they are, its purely adhoc, no servers. I wanted to at least give them the wikipedia (full, not the CD/DVD with manually selected articles). The static dumps were way too big, I tried to use the compressed dumps + a parser and distribute that on CDs/DVDs. But that project never got the support it needed, and I already had my hands full (real job, fake job, paying job, studies, thesis and my "volunteer meta project") to actually fight for it. In hindsight, it would've been better to drop the meta project in favour of this one.

Re:Google Policy on Automatic Updates

[magus_melchior]

If you're using Windows, get the version from PortableApps.com. The only way that can ever update is if you download a new version.

This doesn't work quite as nicely on Linux or Mac, but then, those builds don't crash quite as often for me (never saw Chrome crash, on any platform). YMMV.

Re:PDF plugin, OK. PDF built-in? Not so sure...

[rudy_wayne]

Ever try Iron [srware.net]?

Iron!! LOL!! Take Chromium source code Change all instances of "Chromium" to "Iron" Disable three user-configurable options and remove from the Options menu Modify source code comments (to try and hide how little was changed) PROFIT!!

Re:PDF plugin, OK. PDF built-in? Not so sure...

[nacturation]

[...] where a group of people have poured over the source code...

FYI:
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pore_over
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pore#Verb

Flamebait article?

[Anonymous Coward]

The news here is that google adds pdf support and that's about it. I thought I was bleeding age using Chromium 6.0.417.0 (Fedora), but the article is complaining about a development version just few days old. The summary is so inflammatory, I have no ideea what's doing on slashdot in the first place. Next thing I'll be reading about kernel regressions in RCs on a daily basis.

Re:Flamebait article?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought I was bleeding age

Are you a ten-year-old girl? It's "edge!"

Weird chrome problem

[British]

Any reason why Chrome for Linux has so many problems reaching Gmail? I have to try over & over again to reach it, yet it works just fine everywhere(OS & browser-wise) else.

Re:Weird chrome problem

[Nemilar]

Are you using a beta version? There was a bug like that a while back, but it's been fixed for a while now. I have no problems with 5.0.375.70

Re:Weird chrome problem

[grege1]

I use Gmail exclusively on 4 different Ubuntu based Linux boxes and notebooks and Gmail, Google Docs and all other things Google all work as expected in Chromium. I use the Chromium daily builds via the Ubuntu PPAs. I have also used Chrome Beta under Debian SID and gmail worked flawlessly. I would rename your "/home/yourname/.config/Googel Chrome" or "/home/yourname/.config/Chromium" to savedchrome or whatever, then start a clean Chrome and try again.

Re:Weird chrome problem

[drinkypoo]

Clear your cache. I've had this problem with numerous versions of Chrome and Chromium. If that doesn't work do what the other guy said and delete your profile, which sucks.

Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully it's not like the Chrome plugin that lets you use Google Docs to view them. Because that plugin sucks. You can't rotate or zoom or use the hand tool.

6 already?

[Junior J. Junior III]

Geez, it seems like I was just upgraded to 5 last week.

Re:6 already?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its seems the last I remember is to v2, because chrome has always autoupdated and the UI has been completely consistent between updates since v2.

Re:6 already?

[eulernet]

And version 7 is expected next week ;-)

Re:6 already?

[Anonymous Coward]

Geez, it seems like I was just upgraded to 5 last week.

It's all about catching IE. Version 6 has so bad sound to it so I'm sure we'll see Chrome 8 or 9 this year.

Re:6 already?

[sco08y]

Geez, it seems like I was just upgraded to 5 last week.

At least it's out of beta...

Re:6 already?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently you're using the stable channel (5.x) and any stability issues with the dev channel (6.x) don't concern you.

I'm on 6.x and don't experience much crashing whatsoever, but if I did, I probably wouldn't whine about it in public how that mean ol' bleeding-edge software had the gall to break on me.

Re:PDF plugin, OK. PDF built-in? Not so sure...

[Mashiki]

Tip: Poster is probably Canadian or speaks UK English. Poured over is a common phrase in both countries.

Which is exactly why you should be ignored

[Rix]

Yeah, a 1GB data cap sucks, and is completely unreasonable. My cell phone gives me 5 times that bandwidth. The needs of the average person who doesn't really understand why they need to upgrade their browser or even that it's an issue vastly outweigh your odd little corner case.

You can download the source and build a non updating version. Or you can get a real ISP like the rest of the world.

Re:Which is exactly why you should be ignored

[perryizgr8]

data cap!=bandwidth

You did not RTFA either

[Anonymous Coward]

because TFA doesn't explain that google wrote it themselves. Heck, even the google blog announcement doesn't explain that google wrote it themselves. Guess what, it turns out google did not write it themselves, they're using libpdf.so which is libpdf

Re:You did not RTFA either

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you have the wrong library. There is no way Google used an unknown, anonymous, 9-year-old C library. Even a newbie hacker could likely exploit that with little effort.

Re:You did not RTFA either

[Zarel]

because TFA doesn't explain that google wrote it themselves. Heck, even the google blog announcement doesn't explain that google wrote it themselves. Guess what, it turns out google did not write it themselves, they're using libpdf.so which is libpdf

I was referring to the Google blog post, which is linked from the Slashdot summary and thus counts as "TFA".

It says "Currently, we do not support 100% of the advanced PDF features found in Adobe Reader, such as certain types of embedded media" and "We would also like to work with the Adobe Reader team to bring the full PDF feature set to Chrome using the same next generation browser plug-in API", which I took to mean that:

1. it clearly isn't being written by Adobe, and
2. even if Google didn't write it, they are maintaining and improving it, so they "wrote it" in the same sense that Apple "wrote" WebKit.

As for the "libpdf.so", part, I assume you're looking at the part of the code that says

#if defined(OS_WIN)
            cur = cur.Append(FILE_PATH_LITERAL("pdf.dll"));
#elif defined(OS_MACOSX)
            cur = cur.Append(FILE_PATH_LITERAL("PDF.plugin"));
#else // Linux and Chrome OS
            cur = cur.Append(FILE_PATH_LITERAL("libpdf.so"));
#endif

Which means that they're using a file called libpdf.so on Linux. As another one of your replies points out, this is doubtful to be the 9-year-old unmaintained incomplete C library you link to, and judging from the Windows and Mac filenames, this is nearly definitely a library written (or at least maintained) by Google.

Re:You did not RTFA either

[tyrione]

<quote>

<quote><p>because TFA doesn't explain that google wrote it themselves. Heck, even the google blog announcement doesn't explain that google wrote it themselves. Guess what, it turns out google did not write it themselves, they're using <a href="http://src.chromium.org/svn/trunk/src/chrome/common/chrome_paths.cc">libpdf.so</a> which is <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/libpdf/">libpdf</a> </p></quote>

<p>I was referring to the Google blog post, which is linked from the Slashdot summary and thus counts as "TFA".</p><p>It says "Currently, we do not support 100% of the advanced PDF features found in Adobe Reader, such as certain types of embedded media" and "We would also like to work with the Adobe Reader team to bring the full PDF feature set to Chrome using the same next generation browser plug-in API", which I took to mean that:</p><p>1. it clearly isn't being written by Adobe, and
2. even if Google didn't write it, they are maintaining and improving it, so they "wrote it" in the same sense that Apple "wrote" WebKit.</p><p>As for the "libpdf.so", part, I assume you're looking at the part of the code that says</p><p><tt>#if defined(OS_WIN)

&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; cur = cur.Append(FILE_PATH_LITERAL("pdf.dll"));
#elif defined(OS_MACOSX)

&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; cur = cur.Append(FILE_PATH_LITERAL("PDF.plugin"));
#else // Linux and Chrome OS

&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; cur = cur.Append(FILE_PATH_LITERAL("libpdf.so"));
#endif</tt></p><p>Which means that they're using a file called libpdf.so on Linux. As another one of your replies points out, this is doubtful to be the 9-year-old unmaintained incomplete C library you link to, and judging from the Windows and Mac filenames, this is nearly definitely a library written (or at least maintained) by Google.</p></quote>

Apple forked WebKit and rewrote it from the ground up. The tarball blobs back to KDE ended that moment. Sorry, but WebKit is a massive project that doesn't live off of KDE's legacy.

Re:PDF plugin, OK. PDF built-in? Not so sure...

[nacturation]

Tip: Poster is probably Canadian or speaks UK English. Poured over is a common phrase in both countries.

Was that a subtle attempt at humour? If not, "pour" is not the British spelling of "pore".

MOD PARENT UP!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

MOD PARENT UP!!!!

I've been running the dev-channel

[Anonymous Coward]

for a while now since they released the built-in flash. At the time I couldn't get it to function on Linux correctly (that may be fixed now). I just checked and chrome auto updated to the newest version, and I tried the PDF viewer. It does a pretty good job at pulling the PDF up correctly and quickly. No need to wait for the flash plugin to load up. Also, I haven't had the Chrome Dev crash on me once yet (have been running it on Windows for a few months), other than the occasional Flash crash, but that was using the Adobe plugin version at the time.

NoPlugin...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well just installed Chromium 6.0.437.3 for linux (which this post says comes with this) and there is no native pdf viewer, no new plugin avail to be activated

OP lies!

I really hope it's poppler

[Rix]

And not that abortion from Adobe.

I already hava a PDF Viewer

[devent]

I already have an excellent PDF viewer, thank you very much. It displays my PDFs wonderful and is separated from any browser and don't even use any library that have anything to do with the internet (as far as I know). And I like it that way.

Internet is a highly dangerous place and it's very hard, if not impossible, to secure the browser only for HTML, CSS, JavaScript and DOM. But now Google makes the same mistake like MS with the IE (with ActiveX) and includes PDF in the core browser? PDF is a monstrous standard; the hackers can even hack a stand alone PDF viewer to run code on your computer and now you want to include it in the core Chrome? What's next, ActiveX?

Leave it in a additional Addon for that people who just can't just download a PDF and open it in the stand alone PDF viewer.

Re:I already hava a PDF Viewer

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Internet is a highly dangerous place and it's very hard, if not impossible, to secure the browser only for HTML, CSS, JavaScript and DOM. But now Google makes the same mistake like MS with the IE (with ActiveX) and includes PDF in the core browser?

Umm, they built it using their new "secure, sandboxed plug-ins" API. Including it by default improves security because it means fewer people will end up downloading Adobe's terribly insecure PDF reader app or plugin, because the functionality will already be there in a much more secure way.

Re:I already hava a PDF Viewer

[devent]

Adobe's PDF reader is so terrible because they including every stupid feature in their viewer instead on concentrating what people expect from a PDF viewer: View PDFs. Last security fiasco was because of the running scripts in a PDF.

But with Chrome you have now a combination of the two most insecure technologies in the I.T. industry: PDFs and the Web. Either Chrome will just download the PDF and show it in their separated application or I'm looking forward to a lot of fun on Slashdot.

Re:PDF plugin, OK. PDF built-in? Not so sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

I will never be a Chrome user until someone forks off a "stainless steel" release where a group of people have poured over the source code

And what fluid do you expect them to pour over it?

PDF

[helix2301]

I am glad to see Google doing things like this PDF support is a big thing in the corporate environment people freak if they can't open PDF files.

This annoys me.

[CosaNostra Pizza Inc]

I recently made Chrome my default browser. I like it because its fast, has a small memory footprint and has a simple, intuitive UI. I'm not interested in useless additions that might turn it into bloat-ware. There are plenty of PDF readers out there already and there's no reason to integrate one into the browser.

Re:This annoys me.

[Degro]

It's a plug-in, just don't enable it...

Re:PDF plugin, OK. PDF built-in? Not so sure...

[surveyork]

Try Chromium or ChromePlus.

Big Deal

[tyrione]

OS X has PDF system-wide.

using a browser to display documents?

[Punto]

using a browser to display documents with complex layouts, fonts, images, etc? What a novel idea, I don't know how nobody thought of this sooner. Seriously, the main reason why I hate PDF is that I need a separate program to open them, when they're just a glorified webpage.

I wonder why they don't just build this as a native client plugin, and use it on-demand when a pdf shows up, instead of making a big deal about how it's "built in".

I swear I'm not trolling :)

[FrankieBaby1986]

That's funny. I'm posting from chrome now. (not my fav browser, but it's not bad) Are you using windows or mac? Because on Ubuntu I only ever get updates to chrome when I hit the update button on Synaptic. 8-)

But ya, at my university they have download and upload limits per week, and having updates push you over pisses people off all the time. (I used to work at the desk that was involved in assisting the users and handling bandwidth issues) I'd I'd say they definitely need to fix that.

Re:PDF plugin, OK. PDF built-in? Not so sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, I would find it completely awesome if "Chromium" were renamed "Tinfoil". Methinks it time for a fork.

Re: Mod up

[Anonymous Coward]

This post should be modded up. I think the GP missed the original point.

Chrome or Chromium? HD is yours!

[yorrany]

This is just the beginning, read, write and edit PDF is only part of the Chrome OS. I'm fascinated by the organization of working process in which Google operates, well-organized steps (step by step), plays realistic (such as security), lightweight design (as seen in all its applications), finally, That each application (product) is lovely (as is the case with the browser chrome). Open the browser code for Chromium is just an aquarium of ideas for enjoying the Chrome OS, this is the new version: Mac vs. Windows / Chrome vs. Windows. Apart from the question "owner" Chrome OS is the new windows. See how it prepares to Sony: PS2 (popular) x PS3 (top line) going to PS3 (popular) x PS4 (top row) .. This is how it works!

Re:PDF plugin, OK. PDF built-in? Not so sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

Works for Linux distros...

I'm just sayin'.

Frequent crashes?

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you expect? It is Beta after all.

well javascript

[Anonymous Coward]

well javascript allows the addition of a 'reload' feature, which adobe refuses to include although its been high on the request list on their blogs for years. this is a somewhat tricky thing possibly, but other linux pdf viewers have the feature without any issues.

the trick is with auto reloading, as when a latex file is used to generate a pdf file. if the pdf file is incompletely generated when acrobat attempts to read it, problems might be expected, and indeed the linux programs with this feature might show a corrupt graphic flash momentarily (i've seen this). on the other hand a reload button is pretty simple, and adobe refuse to implement the feature.

luckily someone figured out how to do it with the javascript engine. so thats some justification for a pdf viewer being probably over 100meg now (over 70meg a few versions ago).

as for the question of why i continue to use acrobat? well it has more complete support for the annotation features and better utilizes subpixel rendering than say evince or okular. ultimately producing a smoother rendering on my lcd.

Australian Real ISP

[CuteSteveJobs]

I'm with TPG who are probably the best value ISP in Oz, but cheap as they are for a big downloading plan you're still looking at $50 a month. Too much and it was adding up. Their basic plan is $30 a month for 12 Gb (4Gb peak and 8 Gb off-peak) which I can get by with. That 4Gb Peak I use it carefully so I don't go over. Last thing I want is near the end of the month when I'm hovering below some greedy program to update itself needlessly and push me over the edge!

Re:PDF plugin, OK. PDF built-in? Not so sure...

[BrentH]

Wow, way to miss the point. Iron's 'developers' clearly state their only point it to rip any google-tracking code from chromium, nothing more. Which they do, and they have to rename it to avoid Googles legal team.

Reading any love for Adobe is a bit much

[gig]

If displaying PDF is showing love for Adobe then Apple must want to marry them, because the OS X graphics subsystem is PDF. You're looking at a PDF when you look at the display of an iPhone or iPad or iPod or Mac. And PDF's you view with Safari or Mail are displayed as easily as HTML, right within the browser or email message.

How Google could ship Chrome OS without PDF viewing, I don't know.

PDF is an open standard, in stark contrast to Flash. Every operating system should be able to view it natively.

won't somebody think of the children?

[Hognoxious]

allow users to interact with PDF files

Quick, citizens, bring pitchforks and flaming torches! And don't forget the badly written plackard's!

Re:PDF plugin, OK. PDF built-in? Not so sure...

[bunratty]

You can just download Chrome from Google and change the preferences for the same effect. The whole point of having Iron is that Iron developers get revenue from the ads on their site. I visited the site once with AdBlock Plus disabled, and wouldn't want to repeat the experience.

Re:PDF plugin, OK. PDF built-in? Not so sure...

[trooperer]

"Iron: The Browser of the future" I lol'd

Re:PDF plugin, OK. PDF built-in? Not so sure...

[surveyork]

I'm with Gramps. I think the claims that Iron is a scam are grossly exaggerated. I'll make a list, not because a list of points means that I'm right, but because I find it easier to explain my thoughts this way. Please bear with me, or not, as you prefer.

1. Iron's home page is full of intrusive ads - Nothing that adblock or similar can't fix. You can also get Iron from other reliable sources. No one forces you to go to their website. It's annoying, sure, but no reason to claim "scam".
2. They change the branding "Chrome" to "Iron" - Duh! Seriously duh! And Firefox's mods change the branding from "Firefox" to [Random Element] + [Random Animal]. We see that Google is very annoyed with the Iron folks and are suing the crap out of them for such a vile felony. The FSF and EFF are also pressing charges.
3. They make changes to the comments in the code - Yeah, such cheats. Hang them! Specially since so many users care to check the code.
4. They remove Chrome's most questionable functionality - That's the whole point of Iron's existence.
5. They remove some of Chrome's innocuous functionality - Another capital crime. Questionable decision perhaps, but most people won't notice / won't be aversely affected. I can't remember now if they explicitly stated they'd get rid of it.
6. They add some search engines by default - Last time I checked, they added Google.de plus some other engines. Such an act of treason, since it's so difficult to add engines or set whatever one you want as default in Iron.
7. To add insult to injury, they have grammar mistakes and typos in the English version of their page. This is intolerable in the age of automatic spelling correctors.
8. They are German! And therefore, inherently evil or prone to evil deeds.

Also, SRWare makes Iron as a side project. They may get some money for beer from Iron, but they earn their beans with different projects.

If these are all the complains against Iron, I think there's no case here or it's extremely weak.

In any event, people can always use Chromium, ChromePlus or whatever other Chrome mod that comes up, or try Midori or plain WebKit.

tl;dr: The claims of Iron bein a scam are moot. Sorry for the text wall.

Re:PDF plugin, OK. PDF built-in? Not so sure...

[bunratty]

You're missing the main point. The changes made to Iron do not give you any additional privacy that downloading Chrome from Google and making a few configuration changes will give you. The point of offering Iron software is to drive visitors to the SRware site, which contains ads that give the developers revenue. The whole point was just a money making scam from the start, as The Story of Iron illustrates.

You can install Iron and never visit SRWare's site

[surveyork]

I'll just focus on the following point:

You can install Iron and never visit SRWare's site again. Where is the shady money-making scheme driving users to SRWare's site?

Iron might take you to SRWare's site on first run. Duh! Like dozens of browsers do. Then you click the little X and that's it. You are free to browse whatever you want. IIRC, when you upgrade Iron it doesn't take you to its site again, only the very first time you install it.

Also: Iron does not install GoogleUpdate.exe. Some people don't mind about this fact, others take it as another positive feature over Chrome.

Protip: Compare Iron's "shady" behavior to those of ChromePlus, Palemoon or any other browser mod.

tl;dr: Iron does not drive users to its site.

You're confusing PDF with "proprietary".

[SanityInAnarchy]

Just like with Flash, I go out of my way to avoid PDFs.

Flash is theoretically open, though I'm skeptical how much of the spec is open, and what the quality of that spec is, given that there are no workable replacements for it yet. So I'm with you on that -- Flash is not open, and I avoid it when I can, and I consider it a threat to the open Web.

It's also trivial to remove.

PDF, however, I happily view with Okular, and KPDF before that, and gv before that. I wish Chrome would embed Okular instead, but I have to ask, what's your problem with PDFs? They've long since stopped being Adobe's baby and have become an open standard.

Re:PDF plugin, OK. PDF built-in? Not so sure...

[corerunner]

Try SRWare Iron. That's what I use when Firefox doesn't work.

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

Re:You can install Iron and never visit SRWare's s

[bunratty]

As you can see from The Story of Iron, the whole point was to make ad revenue from users coming to the site to download it. You can make up all the stories and excuses you want, but that was the entire point of making Iron from the beginning.

Thank you

[SuperKendall]

I'd say it's rather a pathetic slashdot user who can't use

while they piss and moan at the same time.

I didn't expect you to be so easily tricked, but it's long been recognized that the person who resorts to the Ad-Hominemem first automatically loses the argument (and whatever dignity they may have possessed). So thanks for the moral victory over you, which usually requires a little more effort on my part to achieve, and maintains my spotless record of argumentative victory.

Come back to Slashdot when you have something more to talk about than formatting tags.

REM-EM

Re:Thank you

[drinkypoo]

I didn't expect you to be so easily tricked, but it's long been recognized that the person who resorts to the Ad-Hominemem first automatically loses the argument (and whatever dignity they may have possessed). So thanks for the moral victory over you, which usually requires a little more effort on my part to achieve, and maintains my spotless record of argumentative victory.

Wow, you really are a stupid fuckbag waste of carbon. I'm willing to take the karma hit to say that, too. You say "Id say it's rather a pathetic tool user who cannot read, given the human race moved out of caves and beyond simple images many thousands of years ago. Move back to ancient Egypt where you belong." and when I respond in like kind you act like I'm the only douchebag in this thread? Welcome to my foes list, troll. On the plus side I've made some space in there by removing everyone from my friends list that made you their friend. I don't need to see posts from mac fanboy trolls. Nice bit of racism in there, too, by the way. Slashdot doesn't need hypocritical, racist people like you on any basis.

Re:PDF plugin, OK. PDF built-in? Not so sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not fully qualified to comment on this since I will never be a Chrome user until someone forks off a "stainless steel" release where a group of people have poured over the source code to ensure there is no Google data collecting going on and then compiles it themselves for distribution.

Actually, it's called "Iron" not "Stainless Steel". You should check it out. Chrome, but without anything that google could use to identify you (including no automatic updates, no search suggestions, etc)
http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php

Re:PDF plugin, OK. PDF built-in? Not so sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

Iron is Windows only.

Actually, it's winodws and linux

It's a matter of priorities

[Rix]

They can't accommodate you without leaving behind people who don't understand the need to upgrade. If a few 10s of megabytes are really critical to you, then you're very much an edge case.

As I said above, download the source and change it to meet your needs. Or pay someone to if you can't.

Re:You can install Iron and never visit SRWare's s

[surveyork]

OK. His intentions are recorded in the IRC log that everyone can, and should, check.

Did he deliver a product that works as advertised along the way? Yes, he did.

So he's evil because...? His actions are immoral because...? He broke the law when he...? And here's where I get lost. The product works "according to spec", it's not malware nor a defective product. People dig in (tinfoil-hatters and Germans, mainly). He gets some ad revenue, good publicity and some extra sales of his other products. That's evil because...? Delivering something that works and people like, getting some bucks along the way is bad because...? And let's not forget that Iron is freely available in literally dozens of freeware/FOSS sites and P2P networks that report exactly $0 to Iron's developer. Crap! This sites have their own adverts and get ad-revenue from offering his product. Gosh! The evil scheme to become a billionaire through ad-revenue had some flaws!

Iron's differences with Chrome even appear listed on Wikipedia. There's nothing to hide. Iron does what it promises to do. "Yeah, but you can do that with options and hacks and stuff". So what? The point of Iron is deliver a crap-free browser, with no Google ID, no RLZ, no GoogleUpdate.exe, etc. from the start. No need for any hacking, deleting, configuring. "Yeah, but you can't turn off some of the settings" - According to spec. Just as stated in Iron's site. If you wanted those options active you probably wouldn't be using Iron, in the first place.

I sense butthurt because this chap managed to get a decent ROI (not a millionaire yet) with a really simple idea and almost no coding at all. He delivered. Damn! This guy is so evil!

Again: Compare Iron's premise with other mods' (CometBird, ChromePlus, PaleMoon...): A more-or-less dead simple modification of a FOSS browser. Deliver some functionality which the original browser doesn't have. Get something in return: bucks, kudos, good PR. Pure evil.

Re:PDF plugin, OK. PDF built-in? Not so sure...

[timnbron]

ChromePlus

Absolutely swear by it! Comes with added Selenium and Zinc. Just ask your pharmacist.

Re:PDF plugin, OK. PDF built-in? Not so sure...

[surveyork]

LOL. I tried SRWare Iron first, and I still like it, but ChromePlus has really nice built-in features. Version 1.4 for Windows should be released soon, based on Chrome 6, if I'm not mistaken. Anyway, more info on ChromePlus' site. Improve your browsing diet with metals.

PDF Viewer

[voxner]

I hate Adobe Reader but in certain situations like docs with two columns of text I prefer it over evince. When I copy text, I expect text to be copied from only that particular column, evince however likes copying from both columns giving me a senseless garbage of text, so I am stuck with Adobe Reader because I happen to clip text from a lot of academic papers for my references. Hope this native PDF Reader takes these nitty-gritties into account.

Re:You can install Iron and never visit SRWare's s

[Anonymous Coward]

And let's not forget that Iron is freely available in literally dozens of freeware/FOSS sites and P2P networks that report exactly $0 to Iron's developer.

Original AC here.

There's also another problem. I don't think any independent packagers actually build Iron from the source (since it's provided in a ginormous, seldom updated archive). So you can't really tell if you're getting a binary of the published source, or something with malware in it.

Regardless, Iron doesn't actually offer you anything over Chromium, it offers you less because it's not as frequently updated, and I'm just tired of people claiming it's better.

PS. The only thing I'm butthurt about is their forum being so tightly moderated my post asking about a source repository didn't get through.

Does NOT work on linux

[oernii]

hmm, not that I liked a plugin anyway.