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Google Rolls Out Chrome 7
An anonymous reader writes "Google on Tuesday released a new stable version of its internet browser, Chrome 7. The latest update is part of Google's promise in July to release a new stable version of Chrome about every six weeks. Chrome 7 comes with hundreds of bug fixes, an updated HTML5 parser, the File API, and directory upload via input tag. It is available in the stable and beta channels for Windows, Mac, and Linux. 'The main focus was the hundreds of bug fixes,' Jeff Chang, a Google product manager, wrote in a blog post."
Google chrome is the new kid on the block, but is already at version 7... that's fast...
Can I open a local file from a menu? Is that too much to ask???
Why isn't it 6.x? Does this mean in 6 weeks they'll give us 8.0? Whatever happened to using the numbers AFTER the decimal point, especially for releases that concentrate mostly on bug-fixes?
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
it works as written!
I don't see why google doesn't just jump to 8.0
Chromium and Canary 8.0 are pretty stable as it is.
So by the time we reach the end of 2011, we'll be on Chrome 16???
What's the point of all these frequent releases? Maybe I ought to give this browser a try... but Firefox and seaMonkey have served me well since I quit Mozilla Netscape, so I'm inclined not to change. ("If it ain't broke...")
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
HAL
http://www.google.com/images?q=hal+9000
Simon
http://www.google.com/images?q=simon+game
Chrome mascot
http://www.google.com/images?q=chrome+browser+logo
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I really start to get scared when a developer releases an update to a product and starts off by declaring that there are "hundreds of bug fixes". Just how the hell did such a bug infected version get released to begin with? Quality control obviously was not high on their list. I wonder how many hundreds of bug fixes will be incorporated into the next version?
Pigskin-Referee
Linux: Yesterday's technology, tomorrow
They probably just want to hurry up and get to 10 (i.e. 'X') and they can just stay there and be like Apple.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
Well they were doing 0.1 and 0.2, but then they jumped to 1.0. I think the prevailing theory at the time was that computer manufacturers didn't want to ship "beta" software, so Google simply removed the beta logo and bumped the version number. Problem solved! :)
I read this news item and said to myself "Oh, Chrome 7 is out. Maybe I should go get it."
Then I realized I already had it. It updated while I slept and I was reading the article in Chrome 7.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
Yet it still doesn't have an equivalent to AdBlock Plus.
And for the Chrome-heads who point out AdBlock, it is a good start but still nowhere near as effective. It lets many ads through, it still downloads and just hides a large chunk of ads, and it does not seem to stop flash ads at all.
I just wish Chrome had a bookmarks left-side sidebar. Then I could easily make it my main browser.
that's just version numbering manipulation to appear fast
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Have they figured out yet that many users want a bookmark sidebar/pane as an available choice?
Question: can Chrome lose the HAL Simon mascot please?
Answer: I can't do that Dave.
P.S. In all seriousness I don't like the default icon either as it was too distractingly colorful. I switched it to this one, called Chrome Z-Edition.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
No ones going to download it if it isn't a "new" version.
Just how the hell did such a bug infected version get released to begin with?
A test suite that guarantees 100% coverage is called formal verification. As I understand it, this is far too labor-intensive for commercial off-the-shelf PC software. So there's a trade-off: you can write a bigger test suite, not ship a product, and bring in no revenue; or you can fix defects and add them to the test suite as they are discovered. For decades, the latter has been sufficient for PC software used by the general public.
With how awesome google has been at making and updating the browser in such a short amount of time, i think that they deserve some bonus full numbers in their name considering how kickass their browser has become imho.
id like to see internet explorer go at the same pace but then they wouldnt really be internet explorer if they did, now would they?
RIP TRICERATOPS, YOU NEVER EXISTED
Is the placebo effect real? Yes, if you don't care how you achieve results. They'd call it Chrome Deluxe 2010 Ultra Extreme if that'd bring more users. Unlike many open source projects that are anti-marketing, not just neutral to it but actually opposed to using more "marketable" names.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
... 6 is already out. Several versions in fact.
They DO use 6.x. Updates happen silently in the background for Chrome quite a lot.
Major version numbers increase when certain milestones have been reached.
If anything, i'm glad they are throwing version after version out. Unlike another group i won't mention.
*cough* W3C *cough* Damn that is one nasty cough i have.
Feature-based updates > monolithic updates. They seriously should do this with HTML5, it is getting beyond a joke now.
Hell, screw version numbers, just release features when they are completed, version numbers for something like HTML is ass backwards.
Chrome gained 7 major versions while Firefox still at 3.x. Version number matters? Is not "winning" because getting up faster, look at windows version number in all its history.
Probably will change versioning naming scheme in not very long... at this rate will have numbers higher than the full year this decade.
In the other hand, is still a young product, probably will slow down new versions rate as its feature set stabilizes.
This is not to say that Google is not catching up fast, just that they are focusing on version numbers in their add copies, while primarily fixing bugs in actuality.
Compare this to firms that are actually trying to deliver a useful feature set to customers, rather than just focusing on metrics that have long been shown to be meaningless. Firefox is happy at 3.6 Safari is happy at 5. Opera, which may have been around longer than google itself, is only at 10.63. These are people who deliver useful browser.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Damn. At least it would have been if I hadn't ditched Opera for Chrome 7.
But even if there was a Chrome X 10.whatever, the other browser Opera 11 will still "beat" them. ;-)
And poor seaMokney is only on 2. ;-)
That must be a lousy browser.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Windows marketing has nothing to do with its success. Look at the prevalence of Vista during the huge backlash of "GET THIS FUCKING SHIT OFF MY COMPUTER" "Sorry we can't, you don't have a license." This was a key factor in the rise of MacOSX use.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Finally a version I can run on Windows 7
But my Chrome updated silently... I thought it was supposed to either ask me or let me know an update is available. Surprising.
Really, can someone convince me that asking for this feature is asking too much after all these Chrome iterations? What's really wrong with this feature that makes it unappealing to implement? Come on Google!
I've been trying to use Chrome since version 4 with Interwoven TeamSite. It doesn't work at all and I posted an issue[1] on the bug message board. So far no comments, no help and it still fails. The same application works great with firefox 3 and IE 6-8. So something is wrong in chrome.
[1] http://www.google.com/support/forum/user?hl=en&userid=08026626638604946631
Chrome is okay, but I hate the minimal control you have over things like cookies. It's either all or none with Chrome. Then you have the lack of a sidebar for bookmarks and the bookmark interface itself is very unintuitive at best. There are other gripes as well, but those can mostly be solved with using various extensions.
Other than that, I like Chrome for its speed.
Is Chrome considered "open source" like firefox, or "closed" like Opera? I'm confused. It's owned by Google so I'd think closed but not sure.
Windows NT 6.1 is called "seven" on the packaging Chrome 6.1 or Chrome 7.0 version numbering really means little.
IMHO
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
Why isn't it 6.x? Does this mean in 6 weeks they'll give us 8.0? Whatever happened to using the numbers AFTER the decimal point, especially for releases that concentrate mostly on bug-fixes?
Did you ever wonder at how arbitrary such numbering schemes are? To the end user, a new version is a new version. They either have to download an update or they don't. (Mac or Ubuntu take the version numbering to extremes by giving new versions get fancy animal names. Not a bad idea, really...)
There are multiple bug reports regarding this - using the scrollwheel and moving the mouse while the cursor is in anything but 'arrow' state causes that state to be fixed, and breaks all hover events.
http://www.google.ca/support/forum/p/Chrome/thread?tid=2f248d3b34ed33a2&hl=en
It appears to only affect Linux versions, but is still present in my 8 dev version, and has wontfix on Chromium.
If I had a clue where to start digging, I'd fix it myself, but afraid that's not my area of expertise. Any help on this appreciated!
Interesting, Debian has chromium-browser (the brand-stripped chrome that lacks some of the phone-home features) in its experimental repository as 7.0.544.0~r61416-1 while Google's apt repository is featuring 7.0.517.41-r62167 as both beta and stable (unstable has moved to 8.0.552.5-r62886). Unless I'm mistaken, those version numbers are composed of [version]~[VCS revision]-[package version] and chromium-browser's versions are pinned to their equivalent google-chrome version. That makes the current versions rather peculiar since Debian's (older) 544 is higher than Google's current 517 while the Debian's VCS revision 61416 is (as expected) earlier than Google's 62167.
What am I missing?
(The Debian chromium-browser package info page for developers is http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/chromium-browser.html)
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
I just installed, and I think it made Chrome my default browser without asking me.
Did anyone else have this occur?
There is an actual bug tracker too, maybe try there also.
chrome is closed... chromium is open. The difference? Branding.
As for version numbering. Marketing companies killed them. They once had a meaning and its something that should be followed as it tells you a lot about whats going on. x.x.x major.minor.bugfix this tells you that if x.x.2 comes out you should probably get it as the features don't change but something that wasn't working right should now be working correctly. minor being adding some features. and major being pretty close to a complete overhaul of the UI, feature set, and all. This doesnt matter to most people but if followed those of who have any support responsibilities would be able to tell what was going on just by the number instead of reading a change log.
Because its a regularly scheduled, feature-adding release. Which, under Chrome's version numbering scheme, is a major version. Chrome's release schedule isn't built to incorporate time for dithering over whether the number and significance of the particular features in a particular feature-adding production release are major enough to warrant a (x+1).0 release or smaller so that they warrant a x.(n+1) release when the prior version was x.n.
Yes, this was already covered when we discussed this when Google announced their new release schedule for Chrome going forward.
This is not a bug-fix release, though (like every release) it incorporates bug fixes. A bug fix release doesn't incorporate, e.g., new APIs.
Chrome uses a release plan where there are, essentially, two kinds of releases:
1. Releases which do add new features, which occur on a fixed schedule and include whatever is ready.
2. Releases which are bug fixes.
The former are major versions, the latter are not (the only change from the old Chrome release plan is the change to fixed schedule for the feature-adding releases.)
Some other software uses a less-lean approach that involves more effort in planning which features will be in which feature-adding release, evaluating the significance of the release, and deciding whether its a major or minor version bump based on that. This kind of release planning tends also to feature longer gaps between feature-adding releases of any scale, and also to feature delays and re-evaluation of whether particular releases scheduled as major releases should be relabeled minor or vice versa. Google's approach eliminates these forms of waste.
Perhaps I am being a paranoid security freak, but directory upload sounds like a dangerous feature.
NT 6.1 was that way for compatibility reasons with broken apps, it's irrelevant.
And google chrome is open (see Chromium).
Still no.
Maybe that's because you didn't specify how the method's being called, or offer suggestions as to how it's supposed to behave. Is it actually a bug in Chrome's implementation of Javascript? Maybe the TeamSite app has some broken browser detection.
Can you supply a unit test that only fails on Chrome? It might be a coincidence (or just copied unspecified behavior) that the other browsers work.
Without more information, it's not clear at all if there's even a bug, let alone where it might be. There are more pressing bugs, with more useful reports. They'll get priority.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Why isn't it 6.x? Does this mean in 6 weeks they'll give us 8.0? Whatever happened to using the numbers AFTER the decimal point, especially for releases that concentrate mostly on bug-fixes?
They already are. They sometime issue security fixes (and, more rarely, urgent bug fixes) as only bumping the build number.
As for the 6.0/7.0/8.0, well, it's simply Google's way of doing it. For what it's worth, Google use to refer their releases as "milestones".
I don't think they look at version numbers as you do.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I'm confused, are you saying the lower (version #)/(number of years out) a browser is, the better? Are you saying Chrome isn't a useful browser?
I don't primarily use Chrome, but I respect it as a browser and consider it fully functional/useful.
I love Chrome's snappiness, but until they change their plugin/extension architecture so that AdBlock can block mid-video Flash ads, Firefox is still the winner in my book. Also: 7.0? Really? Not just 6.1?
I said this before and I will say this again. Google, just like MS, is playing the version game so they make an immature browser seem equal to other browser, at least to the unsophisticated portion of the customer base.
How is Chrome immature?
Google's explanation is that shorter development cycles mean that they won't have to wait as long if some new feature missed the feature freeze.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Chrome just got the print selection option (which I didn't realize was silently added until just now).
The core bits of chrome are open source (Look at the chromium project, of which i am a user). Chrome itself also has some proprietary bits (updater, crash reporter, flash & pdf support built-in, etc).
-- Seq
Is Chrome considered "open source" like firefox, or "closed" like Opera?
"Chromium" is like the "Darwin kernel" (MacOS X), which is open source, where Apple contributes and receives contributions, while creating their own environment on top (the rest of the OS) that is closed source.
"Google Chrome Browser" is a modified and closed adaptation of Chromium that adds google's branding and datamining-ware --I think it also added that Mozilla-dreaded H.264 decoder or some other licensed software that can't be open sourced.
You can definitely choose Chromium for the sake of privacy, but it's not as nice to pronounce so your friends can hear about it. Google's proprietary update daemon is also nowhere in the Chromium code.
I'm more excited about "Facebook Disconnect", the new Chrome extension from Google. I'm hoping that a similar extension follows for Firefox and the other browsers.
Well to be fair Chrome isn't just going from 6 to 7, it does have all sorts of dots and stuff in it's version number.
Like the version I'm running (the one I recently upgraded to after reading this news post) for example is: 7.0.517.41 that's a whole segment more than your example of major.minor.bugfix example!
Admit nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.
Does anyone else have a problem with the ugly fonts in Chromium in ever since Ubuntu Lucid came out? It was the same in recent Chromes, which is why I have the version pinned to 5.0.342.7-r42476 .
The problem is that recent Chromiums seem to not use the specified font (DejaVu sans or serif), and instead have a really thin, unreadable font which you have to Ctrl++ many times to be readable, which then widens the web page beyond the browser width.
Anybody else encounter this?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Unlike many open source projects that are anti-marketing, not just neutral to it but actually opposed to using more "marketable" names.
Ah, another user of phlegm v2.3E-2
Chrome auto-updates, there's no need to try and trick people into downloading anything.
And by extension CentOS 5 users. Sure the argument can be made that an OS from 2007 is too old and thus not worth going ofter (as the Chromium devs do in this bug report http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=15984). But it seems to me that if you want to compete with Firefox in the Linux browser arena you should match the list of compatible distros. Firefox, Thunderbird and Seamonkey all work great in RHEL5.
"major.minor.bugfix" was never any kind of universal standard. As far as I know, only Unix programs used to use that back in the day. Others mostly used major.minor.
The base for Chrome, chromium, is open source. I'm not sure how much, if any, code is proprietary in the Google Chrome binaries, but from using builds based on the open-source code there does not seem to be much difference. Opera, AFIAK, is mostly, if not completely, closed-source. Firefox is open-source, but Mozilla has strict rules on branding of builds not compiled by them (the reason for "IceWeasel" in Debian).
The difference between Microsoft calling NT 6.1 "seven" is that it is pure marketing. The version number that the kernel announces is 6.1.XXXX and this is for compatibility reasons. Microsoft tells developers that point releases should not break compatibility or at least have a very small impact. Software written for Windows 2000 (NT 5.0) generally works with XP (NT 5.1) and 2003 (NT 5.2). However, there is a good chance it will face compatibility issues with Vista/2008 (NT 6.0) or 7/2008 R2 (NT 6.1). Firefox has a similar versioning system related partly to extension compatibility. They do a X.Y.Z version, with changes to Z having nearly no impact to extensions, changes to Y having possible impact, and changes to X potentially completely disrupting compatibility. Unless Google has a stated policy for versioning, they can call it Chrome 6000.50 and it really won't matter.
Said, "It's just like dice but it's got more sides And it tells me who lives and who dies"
Does it still use the broken Windows Crypto API for SSL on Windows? If so, not interested.
What Google is doing is applying Lean Software Development principles to eliminate waste and deliver useful features more quickly to customers.
Where is the MathML (the official W3C mark-up language for mathematics) support?
Firefox has rendered MathML quite well for years now. Google's explanation was that "we will support MathML when webkit does". This was an annoying response, since a $200 billion dollar corporation with 20,000 geniuses as employees could certainly contribute the resources to webkit to add MathML in short order. But now webkit has got MathML implemented! And we have a new release of Chrome! So where is the MathML?
I have always found it ironic that the web was invented at a physics laboratory (CERN) specifically to publish scientific information (originally) but included no standard (not any mechanism) for displaying scientific formulas. All they had to do was add a tage (or something similar) to HTML so that conforming browsers had to render Tex (the code was freely available). To this very day people basically have to include pictures of formulas on web pages.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
In Chrome 5 it was Resolving Host, and in Chrome 6 it became Sending Request and Uploading 0%. Same bug, different message. It turns my otherwise lightning fast browser into a relic of the 28 baud modem era - waiting literally minutes for a website to load. Annoying as heck.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
The version number is invisible to end users unless they dig for it in an About box and Google's automatic updates are totally transparent to end users.
It's not about inflating version numbers, it's about people having a browser that's updated like a web app, transparently and without user intervention.
Chromium (the underlying engine powering Chrome) is open source, Chrome (built on Chromium) is not.
Your argument would be completely valid, if it wasn't for a few things that you completely left out or didn't think of:
1) Unlike Mozilla, Microsoft, Apple and Opera, Google is actually not hyping new releases by calling it "the new Chrome 7", etc. They just say a new version is out. When you go to the Chrome site, it just lets you download Chrome. No special version. Just the latest. So for your argument to be valid at all, they would have to gloat about every new version.
2) As far as browsers go, it's actually better to tell a person that his browser version 5 is greatly outdated rather than saying that 5.000.052 is now available over his old 5.000.015. That will likely get more people to update their stuff.
3) I just installed version 7. It didn't say "welcome to version 7" or anything. In fact, if I hadn't read this news, I'd not notice the update and Chrome would do it for me without even telling me. Yet again, no gloating about numbers.
Last but not least, since when is a number supposed to define how much is in the software? And why the hell should anyone even give a crap if Chrome is at 1.94 or 7.0?
Full Tilt
Which is something I've been wondering for awhile: WTF is up with FOSS projects and God awful names? do they have some sort of contest to see who can pick the shittiest name or something? I mean look at LibreOffice and The Gimp. After Pulp Fiction having ANYTHING named The Gimp is just asking for it, and LibreOffice? that's the best they could do? A name that a good 70% of the public will have NO clue what it means? Hell knowing the average public they'll probably think it means liberal and think it is some sort of political tool.
I mean seriously, what is wrong with having a good name for your project. look at Chrome, thinking of Chrome you are gonna think sleek and shiny, it is a GOOD name. Firefox, Photoshop, these are good names that help to "sell" your product, so why the horrible names? Hell if you can't think of one have the user send suggestions, I'm sure they'll think of one better than LibreOffice or The Gimp. or Beagle or Clam, etc
As for Chrome, while I wish them all the luck I simply can't let go of my FF extensions. Whoever invented those needs a raise and a new car, because they are the best lock-in tool since IE6 locked companies into ActiveX. I know Chrome is starting to support extensions but last I looked they didn't have but a few that were similar to what I use, and I NEED my extensions! Besides Firefox already loads pages as fast as my cable will go, so what good would a slightly faster JavaScript engine do me?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Because discriminating against people with bad eye sight is fun.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Google Chrome doesn't parade versions all over the place like Opera, IE, and Safari. Users shouldn't really care what version they have, just that they are running Chrome. Likewise, web developers shouldn't need to care what version of Chrome users have, just that they have Chrome. This is a revolution in browser freshness.
This is a dealbreaker. Software should not updated without your consent or knowledge.
My chrome just updated and I have no idea when, and have not opened chrome in weeks yet it is up to date. It is installed to my userprofile so I get no UAC prompt to let me know, and apparently I don't have to open it for it to update. The fact that this option cannot be disabled is pathetic.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
Their release schedule was announced back in July, so it's not like they're hiding their intentions:
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/07/23/2114230/Google-Schedules-Chrome-6-7-and-8-For-This-Year
And of course they're doing this. It doesn't cost them a nickel, and the average computer may indeed compare version numbers of competing products (even if they shouldn't).
I don't know what you're on about. I've been using Chromium exclusively for over a year now (2 years? time goes by quickly) - since beta versions of 5.
Sure, the versioning is marketing. That doesn't change the fact that Chrome/Chromium actually is fairly mature software, at this point. It's at least on par with Firefox and Opera (being superior and deficient in different areas, but mostly - IMO - superior), and miles above Safari.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
+5 insightful? Seriously?
If the difference between chrome 8.0 and chrome 7.0 were as big as that between firefox 3.0 and firefox 2.0, or between opera 10.0 and opera 9.0, then you'd have a point. But they're not.
I am trolling
Frameset have long been unfashionable but, hey, they do have legitimate uses. Think a documentation bundle with a navigation panel on the left and the actual content in the right frame. Such framesets have worked fine even in ancient versions of Netscape and Konqueror/KHTML. So, you'd expect they will work in Chrome, right? Well, if you load a frameset from a local drive, they don't: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=47416 Because some moron thought this would make the browser more secure.
Well to me it's really just an issue of inconsistent versioning schemes across the software industry. Lots of developers create "betas" that are not feature complete and "release candidates" that are never candidates for release. For Microsoft Windows, I believe both Windows 2000 and Windows XP were considered part of v5 (5.0 and 5.1, or something like that). Apple has kept their OS at version 10 for several years and through entire architecture changes. Meanwhile, Google is updating Chrome whole version numbers every few months for changes small enough that I never even notice.
For commercial software, whole version numbers usually have a specific purpose: to signal to customers that it will be a paid upgrade. However, developers of free software can be a little more flexible. It makes sense to me to have full version-number changes when an update goes far beyond bug fixes, including new major features and UI redesigns. However, I recognize that it doesn't matter all that much.
I'm serious. I just tried clicking print from Chrome and it said "No printer found. Please install a printer."
Maybe it doesn't work with network printers? Or maybe it just doesn't work in 7. I don't know. Here at work all I have is a network printer. At home I have a printer attached to a central server. I'll have to try that when I get home.
Yes, the printer works in every other program I've tried. I print Google Maps directions every once in a while from Seamonkey.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
Does this mean in 6 weeks they'll give us 8.0?
Yes, actually. And in a year they'll be working on Chrome 17. Get used to it.
So I've been running a buggy browser? Crap, I want my money back.
Perhaps I'm trolling, perhaps I'm not.
>>>NT 6.1 was that way for compatibility reasons with broken apps, it's irrelevant.
Ehhh.... Disagree. Seven and Vista are really the same OS. It's just that one works; and the other does not. So the +0.1 iteration was an appropriate numbering, but the market label was not. It should have been called Vista Enhanced or Mohave. What MS did is akin to calling Windows 3.1 as "Four".
I wonder what Microsoft will call NT 7.0 when it eventually gets released?
"The REAL Seven"? Like the Real Ghostbusters? (shrug) Time will tell.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
We'll see the truth of this when they reach 10 or so. Once they realize that new versions of Chrome aren't generating any news any more because they are just incrementing from 16 to 17 and the whole world says "meh" even though they rewrote half the freakin browser I'd bet good money we'll get some kind of "Chrome 2.0" rebranding.
No, then Google would just be coding faster.
The differences are smaller and the releases tighter (than even Opera or Firefox regular minor feature -- as opposed to bugfix -- releases) because they are taking a lean approach, which involves not bundling up more changes at once, so that you don't have as many things that need to happen before a release happens, and so that if a feature gets bumped to the next release, its not that significant, because the next release is right around the corner.
I know Chrome is starting to support extensions but last I looked they didn't have but a few that were similar to what I use, and I NEED my extensions!
You conveniently left out the names of the FF extensions you NEED, saving me the trouble of pointing you to their Chrome versions. The Chrome community has come a LONG way in extension development.
(**You may now go look for extensions not available for Chrome, so that you can explain that THOSE are the ones you were referring to...**)
Well all you had to do was ask, I just figured nobody would care. here you go, and I consider most of these, if not all, MUST HAVE apps, as they make my web SOO much nicer..FEBE (automated backups of everything from prefs to bookmarks) Downloadhelper and downloadstatusbar (places downloads into folder by extension, makes downloading videos easy to automate), Cookie Culler (automates which cookies I keep/toss) Firefox Sync (multiple PCs in multiple places ALL with the same bookmarks and prefs, nice) forecastFox (weather here can get dangerous quick, the early warning is a must have) iMacros (automates web data entry, easy peasy with NO programming knowledge required) ABP and NoScript (protects from drive by malware and keeps ads from sucking up my cap, so ads must NOT be downloaded and then blocked!) and ImgZoom (helps when my elderly relatives come over with their bad eyesight)
I'm not a fanboy, and I didn't look at chrome extensions so I frankly don't know WHAT they have, as I quit playing with it when I saw how much data it was sending off. But if you can find extensions that will do all of the above (I'd be happy to post a screenshot of both my XP and Win7 machine if you want to see my extensions list) and works with a non phone home version of Chrome like SWIron? I'd be happy to give it another go. I just started playing with Comodo Dragon which has the better privacy and less phoning home, but frankly I haven't had time to really see what is available. But if you know of replacements for those extensions, especially ABP and NoScript, I'd certainly think about giving it to some of my clients.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Blender -- current version is 2.49b (after 12 years) and the complete rewrite with new interface will be 2.5x, not 3.
The only difference is that there is no tax attached to google, unlike Apple or (usually) MS,
I'm confused, are you saying the lower (version #)/(number of years out) a browser is, the better? Are you saying Chrome isn't a useful browser?
I believe he's saying that the version number is irrelevant to determining the quality of the browser.
No, then Google would just be coding faster.
The differences are smaller and the releases tighter (than even Opera or Firefox regular minor feature -- as opposed to bugfix -- releases) because they are taking a lean approach, which involves not bundling up more changes at once, so that you don't have as many things that need to happen before a release happens, and so that if a feature gets bumped to the next release, its not that significant, because the next release is right around the corner.
Surely that development model is orthogonal to issue of which version number they pick, though?
Releasing every six weeks (or whatever it is) makes a difference, but calling them 5.0, 6.0, 7.0 doesn't make any technological difference compared to 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, does it?
is orthogonal to issue of which version number they pick
Damn, to the issue. Sorry, more coffee required...
Chrome 7 has been released with serious regressions from version 6. In particular, Flash/Javascript integration no longer works. Not at all. This breaks a large number of sites, but apparently the Chrome people didn't think this regression was important enough to hold the release for.
The scary thing is the auto-update policy. If the browser auto-updates to new major versions, nothing can stop carelessness like this from bringing mission critical applications to a halt. If Microsoft did this they would be shot.
Firefox Sync (multiple PCs in multiple places ALL with the same bookmarks and prefs, nice)
Chrome/Chromium has a sync tool of some sort (Options>>Personal Stuff>>Sync). Don't know how it compares to Firefox Sync, I've used neither.
ABP
AdBlock
Supports EasyList. Download blocking is in the options, but it warns that the feature is still in beta.
NoScript
NotScripts
The only real usability difference for me is that you use a pyramid icon in the address bar instead of an S logo in the status bar. And something about having to create a password in a certain config file for security reasons (limitations in Chrome prevent the extension from editing it directly.)
No wonder no one uses it. :) You think they would learn after 12 years but no.
Sent from my desktop computer
I just tried to print to my printer loaded with A4-papers. It worked! Finally. This has not worked until now (forced letter). This is very common with software developed in the US, they seem to forget/not care/not being aware of that there are other countries in the world.I think most countries in the world use A4.
Can you just push sync without a password and it work? because what is nice about Firefox Sync is they have NO access to your data thanks to encryption. They even warn you on first setup to write down the password you create because if you lose it there is NO way for them to help you recover, the only way is to delete the account and start anew. My GF lives 250 miles away round trip (we both have elderly parents we don't want to be far from so we try to trade off driving to each other on weekends) and being able to input my password on her machine and have ALL my bookmarks, prefs, password, etc, all lined up and ready to go is REAL nice. I'm sure Comodo Dragon has the same, I'll be sure to check it out.
As for the ABP and NS replacements: do you know whether they block BEFORE the data is downloaded, or after? This is important because I'm in one of the test markets for the new "tiered Internet" ala caps (when it gets there, trust me, it sucks the big wet titty) and anything I can do to save bandwidth for things I actually care about is a good thing IMHO. The only other I'd say I can't live without if needed to is ForecastFox, because as I said weather here can get dangerous REAL fast and when I'm busy working I REALLY don't want my only warning of an approaching tornado to be the warning klaxon. ForecastFox gives a pop up alert on watches and warnings, which lets me know to keep an eye on the built in radar and be ready to seek shelter. If you live in an area with dangerous weather it is really a must have IMHO.
But thanks for the links, I'll be sure to give them a try. As I said I'm not into this "product yay!" fanboyism we see so much around here, to me it is a tool and I use what works best for me. So far that has been Firefox but I know for my customers on slower DSL or that use a lot of JavaScript heavy sites like FB that might not be the best tool for the job, hence the Comodo Dragon on my desk. Thanks again for the info, I'll certainly check them out.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I said this before and I will say this again. Google, just like MS, is playing the version game so they make an immature browser seem equal to other browser, at least to the unsophisticated portion of the customer base.
IE is 15 years old and "only" at version 9. Chrome is already at 7 after only 3 years in existence. I'm no MS fanboi, but how does it compare?
I was of course wrong, when I got to the printer I noticed that ugly orange led flashing and the display saying "load letter"..
Many of us have work Linux PCs running RHEL. It would be good to have a simple tar.gz package which does not require root to install. Firefox does that, I wonder why not chrome?
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
Really not the same OS. Hundreds of changes and new features. Both work (Vista after SP1 is just fine). It's a technical thing.
I said this before and I will say this again. Google, just like MS, is playing the version game so they make an immature browser seem equal to other browser, at least to the unsophisticated portion of the customer base.
This is not to say that Google is not catching up fast, just that they are focusing on version numbers in their add copies, while primarily fixing bugs in actuality.
Compare this to firms that are actually trying to deliver a useful feature set to customers, rather than just focusing on metrics that have long been shown to be meaningless. Firefox is happy at 3.6 Safari is happy at 5. Opera, which may have been around longer than google itself, is only at 10.63. These are people who deliver useful browser.
Chrome updates automatically in the background, unsophisticated users actually don't even know this is happening. The numbering system is really for, well, numbering and it's smart of Chrome to have an excuse for a quick blurb about them every couple of months to let more sophisticated users know what features have been added (most are invisible unless you look for them). I'm sorry this bothers you in some way.
However, just because Chrome is only 2 years old, does not mean it is not a useful browser. The strides it has made in those 2 years have been pretty big. Extensions, syncing, speed improvements and cross platform support have all come since launch. Most of the other browser you mentioned don't even have all these features, even though they have been around for more than twice as long, which brings me to my final point:
Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera and IE all have different goals. For what Google is trying to do, they have done an incredible job in such a short time, and I could give the fuck how they number them.
See that Mozilla? and Firefox is only at version 3.6! Google really showed you, 7 is always better.. Just like IE7
Ah, that explains why I was getting dozens of firewall access requests from Google Updater earlier this week.
Opera sucks.
Not entirely. If you use that development model where you have frequent, small feature releases rather than a mix of less frequent, larger (compared to Google's model) "minor" feature-set releases and even less frequent, even-bigger, "major" feature-set releases, then it doesn't make sense to label the feature releases you do have as "minor" version releases, since you'll then never have a "major" version release. So, essentially, your major version number becomes noise.
Admittedly, Google arguably has a related problem with chrome versions in that the minor version number is irrelevant, since every release -- AFAIK -- is x.0.m. But this is perhaps desirable given the common perception in looking at version numbers that feature releases bump either the major or the minor version number, so Google dropping the .0. minor version so that bugfixes were simple x.m releases might lead to confusion that bugfix releases were feature-change releases.
Actually, that might explain another reason for Google bumping the major version consistently -- since some of the feature releases will contain changes of the kind that other products would restrict to "major" versions (and since the features for a particular stable release may not ve fixed until shortly before the release so that you don't want to have a version number re-evaluation at that point), consistently bumping the major version rather than minor version with the feature releases may avoid the problem of people making assumptions based on traditional version numbering that certain types of changes are not being made and that they don't need to check the changelog.
In summary, while the development model doesn't dictate the version numbering approach, there are certainly reasons why it is reasonable for it inform the version numbering approach.
Oh, for f***'s sake.
"Google releases Chrome 32687..."
Why can't they use normal version numbers like everyone else?
"What the fuck does that mean?!?! PC LOAD LETTER?!?!?"
Last I checked, there was a bit of code (something to do with rendering graphics, I think) that didn't want to compile as position-independent code. They fixed it so it could on 64 bit, but said it would take too many registers and thus hurt performance on x86 32 bit. I was pleased with performance before they made that change. While I'm happy about any improvement, since they made the change the whole program been incompatible with my (hardened) system.
I know it's kind of a long shot, but does anyone happen to know if Google has introduced a toggle for those of us who would like to compile with low-performance PIE, or of a third party patch to do this?
Isn't W3C finalizing parts of the HTML5 spec when they're done so that it can just be implemented? That doesn't mean HTML5 is done, just that they reached some milestones that allowed them to actually finalize these features... Much like software having new features added in a new version.
I am not devoid of humor.
Can you just push sync without a password and it work?
Dunno. Like I said, I haven't used it. It does seem to require a Gmail account, but that's all I know.
As for the ABP and NS replacements: do you know whether they block BEFORE the data is downloaded, or after?
There's an option in the AdBlock preferences that says:
Block most ads from even being downloaded, instead of just hiding them. (Beta)
Note that Chrome doesn't fully support this, so a few resources might still be downloaded and hidden if you're on a fast computer.
The only other I'd say I can't live without if needed to is ForecastFox, because as I said weather here can get dangerous REAL fast and when I'm busy working I REALLY don't want my only warning of an approaching tornado to be the warning klaxon.
Here is a ForcastFox for Chrome, though I don't know how it stacks up against the original.