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Google Cast Is Now Baked Into Chrome, No Extension Needed (trustedreviews.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The Google Chrome 51 browser now includes a built-in 'Cast' option within the drop-down settings menu, which can also be accessed from right clicking in a tab. This will then cast the current tab to the appropriate TV or monitor. Previously, if you wanted to cast content from your computer to your Chromecast-equipped display, you needed to download a Chrome extension. Along with the new changes, Google has removed the ability to tweak settings for resolution, bitrate, and quality when casting a tab, so Chrome itself will now control such parameters automatically. Chrome 51 is now available as a stable version, and the Cast option should be rolling out to users now. This casting ability will also be baked into Chrome OS. The report points out several new related features coming in Chrome 52, such as the ability to cast to Hangouts. You will be able to push Chrome tabs to your contacts within an open video Hangout, which may be useful for remote meetings. In addition, the Cast to Hangouts feature will also retrieve your calendar information to find such scheduled Hangout meetings to make quick sharing easier.
Whoops! Better watch out for that one...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
A browser doesn't need to be a calculator, a word processor, a typing instructor, a device manager, etc.
It also doesn't need spyware or curb feelers.
Bake it in real good so to own me and my kind!
More reasons for people to stop and think: move back to FF, or to a third-party (probably FF fork) alternative. More code = less secure. Chrome is already the slowest and most painful of the bunch and only growing. This reminds one of the time FF wanted to include a security suite for CCTV cameras.
Will it cast to a miracast supported device like a Roku or only to a chromecast supported device? My Nexus 6P will only cast to the latter when it comes out of the box. You have to root the phone to restore the miracast functionality.
They would get a right kicking on slashdot for implementing another non-relevant feature for the masses!
On another note, people here don't seem to realise that browsers are super hard and uber complex, and approaching the territory of operating systems. And mozilla in this battle is a tiny non-profit charity working for the good of the masses (first with getting everyone to care about standards and w3c against IE, and now fighting for privacy and developing the latest HTML5 / CSS4/ ES6 standards) and trying to stop a take-over by multi-billion dollar corporate empire like Google, who can pump virtually unlimited funding towards Chrome. And yet, people still have the audacity to bitch about Firefox, who have a miniscule and limited amount of funding, as let's face it, hardly anyone donates to!
Thus, I don't blame Mozilla if they implement something like Pocket, which is a tiny api that has no effect on memory or performance.
Just like if Mozilla implemented sponsored tiles, which doesn't effect the privacy of individuals.
And if you're still of those complaining about the australis UI and using that as excuse for people to switch to Pale Moon - please, go and install "Classic Theme Restorer" like the rest of us.
Thank you for this interesting article..
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Criticism isn't bitching. Bitching would be "you fucking suck pansies pants!!!" Saying "stop putting irrelevant shit you know will make your own codebase less secure into the browser" is totally valid and serves as a necessary bit of discipline/feedback that they would have long ago been well advised to heed (rather than continuously ignore and hemorrhage their core userbase--Mozilla grew by recommendations of those people, guess who isn't recommending Mozilla shit anymore?) p.s. too many of their engineers have leaked what's going on inside Mozilla to believe they're all merits and nice and well-meaning and shit.
Excessive features on a tiny budget DOES impact privacy, security and performance as inevitably they will have security bugs and mistakes. Mozilla either needs to learn to tighten focus and just make a damn good browser without the bloat or just die already, trying to be everything to everyone is a moronic approach from them.
I don't use Hangouts, but 51.0.2704 has an option "Enable casting to cloud based services like Google Hangouts"
FUCKING BLOAT. that is all
you can disable it. it's listed as "Media Router" on the flags page: chrome://flags#media-router
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Erm, so tell me genius, where do they get the money from?
You know, cash that people (devs) need to live and buy food and have a house to live in?
Certain sponsored content is necessary for the mozilla project to live, otherwise they would have died many years ago, since no one ever donates to the project!
You can't continue adding the latest browser standard in every revision if all your devs are working on other projects, and after their full-time job, come home to their family while still having time and energy to contribute something meaningful to the project.
Maybe mozilla should just go towards the dark-side like Google and Microsot, and start collecting and selling personal data?
no idea, but going down the bloatware/borderline malware route doesn't give them long term viability, it gives them short term money and an early grave as people abandon them.
They would get a right kicking on slashdot for implementing another non-relevant feature for the masses!
What makes you think Chrome won't? The only two upmodded comments right now is a comment on how to disable it, and one titled BLOAT.
Slashdot is an equal opportunity hater on useless crap. Your pet project is not being treated any differently.
On another note, people here don't seem to realise that browsers are super hard and uber complex, and approaching the territory of operating systems.
Indeed. Complexity is driven by the standard requirements. .... So which standard requires that I be able to "cast" my tab to a proprietary device hooked to a TV? Which standard requires my browser save my tabs via a proprietary service run by a 3rd party which has no business being an integrated part of an open source project?
And mozilla in this battle is a tiny non-profit charity working for the good of the masses (first with getting everyone to care about standards and w3c against IE, and now fighting for privacy and developing the latest HTML5 / CSS4/ ES6 standards) and trying to stop a take-over by multi-billion dollar corporate empire like Google, who can pump virtually unlimited funding towards Chrome. And yet, people still have the audacity to bitch about Firefox, who have a miniscule and limited amount of funding, as let's face it, hardly anyone donates to!
Yeah it's almost like they should focus on making a good browser if they are under-resourced. On that note how do I donate to the efforts of that browser? I mean without my funding being stripped away and put towards making a mobile OS, getting in bed with proprietary vendors, etc.?
Thus, I don't blame Mozilla if they implement something like Pocket
I do
Just like if Mozilla implemented sponsored tiles, which doesn't effect the privacy of individuals.
I still do
And if you're still of those complaining about the australis UI and using that as excuse for people to switch to Pale Moon - please, go and install "Classic Theme Restorer [mozilla.org]" like the rest of us.
Ahh yes the old why not use a plugin to fix something the original project stripped out for no good reason which no one wanted. ... Actually you just gave me a good idea of who I should donate money to. Turns out there are some people out there who are interested in what users want.
On another note, people here don't seem to realise that browsers are super hard and uber complex, and approaching the territory of operating systems
There is more code in Chrome than in the entire FreeBSD base system. Slightly less than in the FreeBSD base system plus X.org. They long since passed the complexity of operating systems.
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And if you're still of those complaining about the australis UI and using that as excuse for people to switch to Pale Moon - please, go and install "Classic Theme Restorer" like the rest of us.
Been there, done that, turned my nose up at the T-shirt. Classic Theme Restorer may give back access to old themes, but the post-Australis browser configuration experience sucks balls. THAT is why I switched to Pale Moon. Plus, I wanted to be part of the message to Mozilla that they need to stop ignoring the desires of the majority of their user base if they want to maintain relevance and grow their market share. Australis was just the last 'Fuck You' that came my way from Mozilla before I sent back one of my own. Yes, I understand that browsers are horrendously complex and need to change in the face of changing standards, innovations, and technical requirements. That's no excuse for many of the changes in FF, nor is it an excuse for the way they've treated their loyal supporters. So, Pale Moon it is. If Mozilla should ever decide to get its head out of its ass and try to regain market leadership, they could do a lot worse than take their cues from Pale Moon.
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This is just more bloat at least if it were an extension I'd have the option to not install it
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Chrome on Android does not support Adblock so I use Firefox on Android.
If I use Firefox on Android I might as well use it on Windows and Linux.
So I stopped using Chrome.
so nice. thanks
The government is now providing self-driving cars so you don't need to get one yourself. These cars automatically obey speed limits and will never drive on any unauthorized road.
Manually driven cars have been outlawed.
*To be honest, the extension is still there... for now. Eventually it will go the way of --disable-new-avatar-menu like everything else that doesn't fit the narrative.
I use Chrome to, oddly enough, browse the internet on a seemingly leaner browser. Are there any slimmed down versions of Chrome that don't include Chromecasting or Hangouts or Facebook or etc., etc. I'm looking for a lean 64-bit build of Chrome.
The 'fuck you' was removal of the checkbox to disable javascript, and the one to disable pictures.
*That* sucks donkey balls, even if it's something you'd very rarely use ; maybe you're referring in part to that?
If I want to "break" the web it's my call and I also know about Firefox profiles, even running two of them concurrently.
Australis is rather benign, since you can have a title bar, a menu bar and remove unwanted icons.
Install classic theme restorer?Good luck: https://developers.slashdot.org/story/15/11/12/2015227/mozilla-plans-to-remove-support-for-firefox-complete-themes
Well, they used to get paid a lot of money by Google to have Google be the default search bar, but they decided to piss on that deal. They also decided to piss a lot of money away on an OS no one wants, and mobile browsers no one wants. Probably a few other things I'm forgetting.
Basically, the whole thing went to shit when Mozilla incorporated.
Chrome support on Windows XP stopped a few revisions ago, so this new feature with cast built-in doesn't matter to me. Although I have cast installed on the last chrome browser they supported, this doesn't help me either since they removed access on their website to the application that was used to configure the chromecast device to change the router name it was supposed to connect to. Thus, when a router was updated from ATT to a cable company, the name changed and since I couldn't use the old chromecast application to reconfigure Windows XP to reconfigure the chromecast device, I have a chromecast device I can't use. I don't know where in the registry or where the files on the disk are stored that contains this info so that I can edit by hand without needing the application to do this.
Supposedly VLAN was going to have chromecast streaming support, but I guess they couldn't get enough information from google to do this, thus eliminating the need for googles application and cast application.
Thus, I don't use chrome anymore, nor can I use the chromecast device (first version let alone the revised version of this device).
I think the root problem here is that your Chromecast setup is not what they expected.
The intended approach is not that turning on the TV turns on the Chromecast, but in fact the opposite: you have the Chromecast turned on permanently, and then when you activate it (whether via the Chrome browser or via an app on your phone) the Chromecast will switch the TV out of standby, instruct the TV to switch to it as the active source, and then begin playback.
Of course, this configuration requires keeping at least two devices permanently on standby, which is non-ideal... but this seems to be the expected mode for just about all consumer devices these days.
What brass balls you have to complain about them dropping Google and trying to go with a less questionable primary source of funding. Maybe if people like you donated enough they wouldn't have to seek funding from a stabler and less fickle place.
Anyone play monopoly?
Err, well as far as I've checked my version of Chrome doesn't "include Facebook" and in fact I needed to install an extension to include Hangouts, but if you're looking for a version of Chrome without the proprietary bits and blobs (which presumably includes this, although I could be wrong), you should just use Chromium.
Failing that, as others have pointed out above this function can be disabled.
There are also plenty of Blink and WebKit based browsers out there, although as someone who's quite satisfied with Chrome and Chromium and uses Google services extensively (and so benefits from such integrations) I can't say I've used any extensively myself. The Vivaldi browser seems to be the new trendy one, last I checked, although it isn't as open as Chromium. And if you're looking for a lean 64-bit build of Chrome, even if existing builds aren't lean enough for ya you could probably skip some things at compile time and slim it down even further if you built it yourself.
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
Interesting, thanks for sharing your insightful comment! :)
I have my Chromecast powered off the TV USB port so it powers on with the TV, works just fine, doesn't grab the output at startup (defaults to the cable box as i want).
While your version of Chrome doesn't "include Facebook", there are other advertised-as 'slim' Chrome builds that have integrated functions that are not extensions one can disable similarly to this one.
I'll have to evaluate the difference between Chromium and Chrome as I'd just assumed one was an eventual stepping stone to the other with all these unwanted bits included. Thanks for the suggestion!
That's odd, because I've used all three versions of the Chromecast dongles (v1, v2 and audio), and they all pop up in my browser and the Chromecast app within a couple of seconds of fully booting up. If you're turning yours on and off regularly, you do realize that it needs a bit of time to boot up, right?
Eat the rich.
"mozilla...is a tiny non-profit charity"
Mozilla is not tiny AT ALL, and it is an absolute wonder how development of a web browser and a maintenance-mode email client cost $317 million per year, or require a $261 million (and growing) endowment. From the Mozilla Foundation's 2014 Annual Report:
$261 million - Net Unrestricted Assets at the end of year
$329 million - Net Unrestricted Revenue over the year
$317 million - Total Expenses over the year
Expense include:
$212 million - Software Development
$ 40 million - Branding & Marketing
$ 38 million - General & Administrative
$ 13 million - Program Services
Thanks for the informative comment.
It may seem like a lot, but it pales in comparison with the likes of Google, Microsoft, and Apple.
As I said, they have virtually limitless amount of resource and money to develop their browsers, Mozilla don't.
And as I and others have pointed out, browsers are probably far more complicated than operating systems these days, and likely the most complex software ever created!
To be honest, considering how much Mozilla and Opera have done for the web and developing the latest standards (and Apple to some extent), it's a joke that they aren't appreciated as much as Chrome, which is a just a glorified Apple Safari rip-off.
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