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Google Confirms Chrome GPU Acceleration

Posted by timothy on from the browser-as-taskmaster dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Google is already experimenting with GPU acceleration in its latest Chrome developer builds. Chrome 7 can separate different layers of a webpage into CPU and GPU processes and combine those layers using the GPU as long as the browser is now launched with certain switches. Chromium 7 has also a new Labs feature that reveals that Google is thinking about moving tabs from the top of the browser to the left side. It seems that Chrome will be catching up with Firefox 4 and IE9 in terms of hardware acceleration soon."

16 of 186 comments (clear)

  1. Tabs on the left make sense by RichMan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    These days most screens are wider than they are taller. And text still reads better vertically.
    So the height is valuable real-estate while there is side space to waste.
    My desktop has the application bars hide on the left/right.

    The more vertical space the better.

    1. Re:Tabs on the left make sense by dave420 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Don't you have a scroll wheel? Are you a time-traveller from the past?

    2. Re:Tabs on the left make sense by Shin-LaC · · Score: 3, Funny

      Try using that little wheely thing between your mouse buttons. You're welcome.

    3. Re:Tabs on the left make sense by DragonWriter · · Score: 5, Insightful

      These days most screens are wider than they are taller.

      Most screens have been wider than tall since well before the first web browsers.

      And text still reads better vertically.

      Text reads better in columns narrower than most screens are wide at the typical viewing distance, but its often convenient to have more than one block of text on the screen. Tabs take up more room on the side than on the top, and do more on the side to hurt the ability to have more usable windows on the screen.

      Tabs on the side are useful for some people in all circumstances, and for other people in certain circumstances, and (I suspect) for some people in no circumstances. So, if Chrome allows the user to move the tabs to the side, that's good.

      If Chrome just moves the tabs to the side, thats bad.

    4. Re:Tabs on the left make sense by Sancho · · Score: 4, Funny

      I did this on my netbook, but it made it really hard to type.

    5. Re:Tabs on the left make sense by TeknoHog · · Score: 3, Funny

      Back in the day, we had these arrow and page up/down keys that you could use for scrolling a page. Nowadays, many laptops don't even have dedicated pgup/pgdn/home/end, they are only available via the Fn key. Apparently, nobody uses the keyboard any more, since the mouse is so much easier for everything. I predict that future computers will have no keyboard, but instead the mouse will have about 100 buttons for typing.

      --
      Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
    6. Re:Tabs on the left make sense by Bert64 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Not only are screens now much wider than they are tall, but a lot of websites are designed to be in a fixed width strip down the middle of the screen so they look pretty stupid on a widescreen display with huge blank areas either side.

      --
      http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
  2. Tabs on the left side by Shin-LaC · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Tabs on the left side work very well for people who use tabs intensively and keep many pages open at the same time. The main advantages are:
    • you can display many more tabs while keeping the titles visible
    • you save precious vertical space and use horizontal space instead, which is often wasted (a side effect of monitors being wider than they are tall while pages are taller than they are wide, and also of the fact that most pages don't benefit from being given more width past a certain point - the extra space is left empty, or the lines of text are too long)
    • you can organize tabs into a hierarchy by simply indenting them (when I use Firefox, I use the excellent Tree Style Tabs extension for this.)
  3. Re:Let me see if I've got this right... by dreamchaser · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You know, I keep hearing this, how Flash keeps crashing browsers. I use quite a few Flash sites ranging from casual games to management applications for security appliances, and I think I can count on the fingers of one hand how many times I've had a Flash related browser issue over the last couple of years.

    I think it's either a tired meme or some people just don't know how to setup and maintain a stable system.

  4. Vertical tabs by The+MAZZTer · · Score: 4, Informative

    Have been in there a long time, hidden by the --enable-vertical-tabs switch, so this isn't a new idea. Try it out yourself if you want (about:labs page isn't in yet so you'll need the switch).

  5. Re:Finally ... by sznupi · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Nah, just keeping the tradition of taking stuff from Opera; life as usual. ;)

    --
    One that hath name thou can not otter
  6. Re:Let me see if I've got this right... by mikael_j · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The problem is that in order to keep Flash from crashing you pretty much need to run flashblock or noscript which cripples your browsing experience and unfortunately there are sites out there that actually try to obfuscate their javascript and Flash content to trick you into loading their annoying ads.

    Basically it's a pain in the ass to keep Flash from hogging resources so most users just don't do it even if they know how to.

    --
    Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
  7. Re:Let me see if I've got this right... by DevConcepts · · Score: 3, Funny

    Your wife/girl friend (LMAO! A /.er having one!) or maybe a sister playing those god forsaken, crappy, waste of time, Zinga games on facebook. You will know when it crashes (after hours and hours of playing) by the scream that sounds like someone is having their finger nails pulled out. Slowly. And you will have to fix it because you can always fix it. Last time I had to fix a flash game I turned her computer off. I still sleep on the couch.

  8. Re:Let me see if I've got this right... by mpcooke3 · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's true flash is a lot more stable these days, particularly with the release of flash 10.1

    Just the odd browser issue here and there:
    Like it causes IE to crash very frequently on some computers
    http://forums.adobe.com/message/2925919?tstart=0
    and Firefox to crash very frequently on some computers
    http://forums.adobe.com/message/2962506#2962506
    http://forums.adobe.com/message/2920257#2920257
    and then of course there was the Safari crashing problems
    http://fairerplatform.com/2010/08/flash-10-1-crashes-safari-how-to-remove/
    and it crashes some computers with hardware acceleration enabled (the default setting)
    and it causes all browsers to crash on some computers when you try to activate a webcam
    http://forums.adobe.com/message/3031253#3031253
    and of course it crashes chrome a lot too on some computers (also remember the Adobe flash uninstaller doesn't work on chrome now, so need to uninstall in two ways)
    http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Chrome/thread?tid=461f66d507a8d884&hl=en

    But I'm sure your right, I haven't for instance seen anyone complain of flash crashing safari on the iPhone. oh wait....

  9. Quick way to speed up your browser by Animats · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you want to speed up your browser, just block the following domains:

    *.doubleclick.net
    *.polldaddy.com
    *.quantserve.com
    *.google-analytics.com
    *.scorecardresearch.com
    *.gravatar.com
    *.247realmedia.com
    *.likeme.net

    If you block the top 10 ad services, browsing speed improves substantially. Firefox BlockSite is useful for blocking, or you can edit HOSTS.TXT. This alone will make Slashdot pages load twice as fast. AdBlock isn't enough; it still loads the data, but doesn't display it. There's too much ad code out there which stalls page loading until the ad is served. So you get to wait for the ad servers. Sequentially.

    1. Re:Quick way to speed up your browser by tburke261 · · Score: 3, Informative

      AFAIK adblock has been able to stop even loading data from blocked domains for a while.