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."

Comments

Still Playing Catch-UIp

[Pigskin-Referee]

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?

Re:Still Playing Catch-UIp

[Waffle Iron]

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".

Can you name even a single large software product (other than ultra-expensive avionics) that provably doesn't have hundreds of bugs?

Re:Still Playing Catch-UIp

[pclminion]

No, but that doesn't mean you talk about it. At a previous job one of the lead developers was responsible for writing the release notes. At one version, he bragged in there about how "over 200 bugs" had been fixed in that release. Not long after letting it out the door, we started getting a barrage of emails from angry customers demanding to know "why your software has hundreds of bugs in it."

The reality is that software has bugs. The reality is also that most users will never be impacted by all of them. Touting the number of bug fixes as if it's some kind of badge of honor just confuses people and makes them panic.

He no longer got to write the release notes after that.

Updated

[neoshroom]

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.

AdBlock

[Reason58]

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.

Re:Lots of versions

[smallfries]

It would nice if it improves Youtube playback. It worked at some point, but then after some mandatory sneaky update it broke. For those of you that haven't experienced Youtube breakage: you get a completely incorrect error message and no video. Not only on the main site, but also the 90% of internet video that is just an embedded Youtube player. It can't be diagnosed or fixed and there are thousands of complaints out there on forums about the problem. If you randomly hit then there is no fix.

Then that started working again (was it with 5.0 or 6.0, I forget). But now anything above 480p stutters like crazy. It is a real shame because Chrome is a nice browser, but if they can't even maintain compatibility with one of the largest sites on the web (which they own FFS) then they have issues. Every other browser on my machine can play the same video though the same drivers without a problem.

At this point I might go back to the bloated piece of crap that Firefox has become on the mac....

Chrome is okay, but...

[Smooth and Shiny]

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.

Re:7.0? Really?

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

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...)

Baby steps

[MrBippers]

Chrome just got the print selection option (which I didn't realize was silently added until just now).

Re:Baby steps

[bogaboga]

Where is it? Which version are you referring to? Can't wait to see this much wanted feature in my case.

Re:One request...please!

[nschubach]

Eh, as much as I agree that it's "standard" operating procedure, I've been tricked by some apps that have different meanings for CTRL+D (Delete or Duplicate line) that can really screw with the user.

Besides, it's nice to tell someone new to a PC who may be flipping through a menu trying to find a way to do it.

Re:Every 6 weeks

[DragonWriter]

Wouldn't a +0.1 iteration have the same effect?

Artificially dividing feature releases into major and minor feature releases makes sense only if you have preplanned major and minor releases. Chrome does not. Chrome has a regular release schedule. The features that are ready for stable release at the time for the stable release go into the release. All of these get a major version number. You don't have a long process building to a 3.7 release that gets renumbered 4.0. You get a short cycle between stable feature releases, each of which has a major version number.

Re:7.0? Really?

[BigCatRik]

Blender -- current version is 2.49b (after 12 years) and the complete rewrite with new interface will be 2.5x, not 3.