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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."

50 of 292 comments (clear)

  1. One request...please! by Singularity42 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Can I open a local file from a menu? Is that too much to ask???

    1. Re:One request...please! by Shikaku · · Score: 2, Informative

      Ctrl+O

    2. Re:One request...please! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yes and the way most people learn keyboard shortcuts is... by first seeing them in the application menu. Putting back the http:// protocol prefix and trailing slash on root directory index would be a good idea too.

    3. Re:One request...please! by OffaMyLawn · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yes, but you seem to be banking on the fact that non-technical people will remember shortcuts like that. I've had experience with this dealing with my parents.

    4. Re:One request...please! by nschubach · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

      --
      Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
  2. 7.0? Really? by SpryGuy · · Score: 2, Informative

    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
  3. Every 6 weeks by commodore64_love · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:Every 6 weeks by theaveng · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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?

      How is this a "troll"? Looks like an honest question to me. Are questions no longer allowed on slashdot??? Apparently people seeking information are now considered undesirables.

      --
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    2. Re:Every 6 weeks by zuperduperman · · Score: 2, Insightful

      What's the point of all these frequent releases?

      My theory is that they are trying to scare the bejesus out of Microsoft and even Mozilla into doing more frequent releases themselves. The main thing holding back Google's entire strategy is that browsers aren't good enough yet. They want to take over the whole business market by moving it into the cloud using Google Apps. But they can't because browsers suck. So they make Chrome - a browser that doesn't suck. It's been helpful but what they really need is to influence the other browsers, and one way to do that is to dispel the mythology that we should expect major improvements to our browsers just once every few years or so. One way to do that is to embarrass everyone else by showing that it's perfectly possible to release a new stable version every month or two if you do it right.

    3. Re:Every 6 weeks by DragonWriter · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

  4. can Chrome lose the HAL Simon mascot please? by circletimessquare · · Score: 2, Funny
    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
    1. Re:can Chrome lose the HAL Simon mascot please? by Beelzebud · · Score: 4, Funny

      Simon says: I can not do that, Dave.

  5. Re:7.0? Really? by The+MAZZTer · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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! :)

  6. Updated by neoshroom · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.
  7. AdBlock by Reason58 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:AdBlock by AndrewNeo · · Score: 5, Informative

      It's Chrome's fault because scripts can't run before page content is loaded.

    2. Re:AdBlock by Esospopenon · · Score: 2, Informative

      I use the AdThwart extention . Works good for me but your milage may vary.

    3. Re:AdBlock by Glith · · Score: 3, Informative

      Privoxy works very well for me.

    4. Re:AdBlock by JackieBrown · · Score: 3, Informative

      I don't see anymore adds with the default setting with Adblock for chrome than I do for adblock plus for firefox.

      Granted, this is just my experience and I am sure that you have many example that you could share but felt that there was no need to.

      I don't see any adds on slashdot, fox, cnn, gmail, sourceforge, rapidshare, imdb, etc in chrome.

    5. Re:AdBlock by thePowerOfGrayskull · · Score: 3, Informative

      I don't see anymore adds with the default setting with Adblock for chrome than I do for adblock plus for firefox.

      Granted, this is just my experience and I am sure that you have many example that you could share but felt that there was no need to.

      I don't see any adds on slashdot, fox, cnn, gmail, sourceforge, rapidshare, imdb, etc in chrome.

      Rest assured that although you don't see them, you are downloading many of them. And being tracked by them ;)

    6. Re:AdBlock by onefriedrice · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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 acknowledge that the Chrome plug-in has limitations by itself, but I personally find it much more than adequate because I also took a couple of minutes to write a cron script to to download and apply the latest hosts file. I never see ads; I can't remember the last time I saw a Flash ad, and my bandwidth isn't wasted on ads (or worse).

      The Chrome plug-in is only good enough for grandma and average users, but the rest of us have a multi-layered strategy anyway. Firefox is a great browser, but I liked it better when it wasn't so slow and bloated. I'm a happy Chromium user now, and there are no FF plug-ins I miss at all.

      --
      This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
    7. Re:AdBlock by Jugalator · · Score: 2, Insightful

      t's Chrome's fault because scripts can't run before page content is loaded.

      Chrome supports onbeforeload, but yes, there are some limitations remaining that are being worked on.

      --
      Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
    8. Re:AdBlock by Timmmm · · Score: 3, Informative

      Bullshit. Unless you're calling the Chrome Adblock author a liar.

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

      "New in version 2.0: Ads are actually blocked from downloading now, instead of just being removed after the fact!"

    9. Re:AdBlock by CarpetShark · · Score: 3, Informative

      Privoxy is far inferior: it's slower, it requires more setup, it's not as aware of all the different ads out there, being without adblock-like update channels, and it's not as interactive, being separate from the GUI.

  8. Bookmark sidebar by emgarf · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Have they figured out yet that many users want a bookmark sidebar/pane as an available choice?

  9. Answer to can Chrome lose the HAL Simon mascot? by neoshroom · · Score: 2, Funny

    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.
  10. 100% coverage is expensive by tepples · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:100% coverage is expensive by Ja'Achan · · Score: 4, Funny

      "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Donald Knuth

  11. Re:that's not fast by Monkeedude1212 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If IE took that version numbering manipulation from the start... Meaning a new IE version with every Windows Update... What would we be on? IE4000?

  12. Re:7.0? Really? by fermion · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.

    --
    "She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
  13. Re:Still Playing Catch-UIp by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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?

  14. Re:7.0? Really? by commodore64_love · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
  15. Chrome 7 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Finally a version I can run on Windows 7

  16. Re:Lots of versions by smallfries · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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....

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  17. Re:Still Playing Catch-UIp by pclminion · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  18. Where is print preview for God's sake? by bogaboga · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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!

    1. Re:Where is print preview for God's sake? by Late+Adopter · · Score: 2, Informative

      On Linux, Chrome uses the native (GTK, I believe) Print dialog, which includes a Print Preview button.

    2. Re:Where is print preview for God's sake? by PCM2 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You should not be printing web pages; the website should provide you with a document to print if information is actually needed in dead-tree form.

      Right, so you've never printed a page from Google Maps?

      --
      Breakfast served all day!
  19. Re:I don't know about everyone else... by k_187 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The biggest problem that Chrome has is that there's no way (that I am aware of) to turn off the auto-updates. personally, it doesn't bother me that much, but I can understand if it does bother someone else. There should at least be the option to ask (which again there may be, but I couldn't find it).

    --
    11 was a racehorse
    12 was 12
    1111 Race
    12112
  20. Chrome is okay, but... by Smooth+and+Shiny · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  21. Re:7.0? Really? by thePowerOfGrayskull · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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...)

  22. Baby steps by MrBippers · · Score: 2, Interesting

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

    1. Re:Baby steps by bogaboga · · Score: 2, Interesting

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

  23. Re:Lots of versions by hairyfeet · · Score: 3, Insightful

    And THIS is the kind of cancer that turns many off of FOSS right here. A user says they have a problem, and what happens? I don't trust you, you're a liar, you're a shill, etc. Why not instead ask USEFUL questions, instead of thinking everyone is out to get you? I would ask: What kind of system, what hardware, what OS, can you post screencaps or a video showing what is going wrong? If you don't know how to do that, ask us and we'll tell you how.

    You see THAT is how you try to get down to what is causing a problem, basic troubleshooting 101. Why FOSS users want to be paranoid instead of helpful I don't know, but I just don't see that behavior on proprietary apps. With those if you say "I have a problem" one generally assumes if the post isn't "Your product suxorz!" that they are generally having a problem. Just because YOU don't have a problem doesn't mean it doesn't exist, so why not try to help the guy out? It could be a conflicting program, hell it could be the program prefers one CPU over another (with Intel rigging their compiler this is a possibility) or a combination of factors. Let us try to be helpful instead of paranoid, okay?

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  24. Re:7.0? Really? by DragonWriter · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I said this before and I will say this again. Google, just like MS, is playing the version game

    What Google is doing is applying Lean Software Development principles to eliminate waste and deliver useful features more quickly to customers.

  25. Re:Lots of versions by amorsen · · Score: 3, Informative

    The Linux version listens to DBUS events, so it knows whether the system thinks it is online or not.

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  26. Re:I don't know about everyone else... by DerCorny · · Score: 2, Informative

    I think there is one: Navigate to "chrome://plugins" and deactivate the "Google Update" plugin.

  27. Not parading versions by dagus2020 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  28. Re:Lots of versions by hairyfeet · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Exactly. It is this "our product is ALWAYS the bestest!" crap that I'm sure turns many off of FOSS apps. I work on PCs every single day and I've found that an app that works beautifully in one setup may be total shit on another. Does that make the app shit and is a reason for blind defense of it? No, of course not. There are only so many hours in a day and OSes and apps are extremely complex chunks of code now. A MUCH better attitue would be to simply ask a couple of questions and help the guy out. Not only does that build general good will but it is simply nice to help out a fellow human being. I've seen first hand how frustrating having a problem can be when you don't know how to solve it, and assholes calling people shill and insulting them helps NO one.

    Notice how he called me names for daring to politely point out that bad attitude doesn't help FOSS? This kind of rampant foaming at the mouth fanboi crap helps NO ONE. it doesn't help promote the app or its adoption, because any user that has a problem will be turned off and drop it. And it certainly doesn't help the one who first told his problem, who has been insulted, nor the insulter, who is quickly coming off as a horse's ass and more than a little paranoid.

    As for the "file a bug report" suggestion by the rude poster? How exactly does that help him using the product now. I've seen outstanding bugs in both FOSS and proprietary apps stay unfixed for years. And who says it is a bug and not a conflict? How does the user tell, especially if he/she isn't familar with the software and its possible quirks? I say when you have tech guys like us, who have been in the trenches and done this sort of the thing before, the best thing you can do to further adoption of a piece of FOSS software is to try to be polite and helpful if you can.

    As I seem to be the only token Windows guy around here, I'll be happy to ask questions from the Windows view and he is welcome to write here or email me and I'll be happy to try to help. Are there errors in Event Viewer? When the stuttering occurs are you able to launch other apps? If so, can you launch task manager and tell what the CPU usage is? What are the specs of the hardware? which version of Windows? All these things would help to quickly narrow down the source of the error, and I'm not even a Chrome guy. I just think a little civility and decency is something many have seem to forgotten here, especially with regards to software that attracts fanbois. Notice you never see that with boring software? It is never "Quickbooks rock! Eat shit Quicken lover!" or any of that crap. Its just tools folks, not ballclubs. Paranoia and fanboi attacks help nobody.

    --
    ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
  29. Re:7.0? Really? by BigCatRik · · Score: 4, Interesting

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