Slashdot Mirror
Chrome Browser Turns 10 (theverge.com)
Google first released its Chrome browser 10 years ago today. Marketed as a "fresh take on the browser," Chrome debuted with a web comic from Google to mark the company's first web browser. From a report: It was originally launched as a Windows-only beta app before making its way to Linux and macOS more than a year later in 2009. Chrome debuted at a time when developers and internet users were growing frustrated with Internet Explorer, and Firefox had been steadily building momentum. Google used components from Apple's WebKit rendering engine and Mozilla's Firefox to help bring Chrome to life, and it made all of Chrome's source code available openly as its Chromium project. Chrome focused on web standards and respected HTML5, and it even passed both the Acid1 and Acid2 tests at the time of its release. This was a significant step as Microsoft was struggling to adhere to open web standards with its Internet Explorer browser.
Another significant part of Chrome's first release was the idea of "sandboxing" individual browser tabs so that if one crashed it wouldn't affect the others. This helped improve the speed and stability of Chrome in general, alongside Google's V8 JavaScript engine that the company constantly tweaked to try and push the web forwards. After a decade of Chrome, this browser now dominates as the primary way most people browse the web. Chrome has secured more than 60 percent of browser market share on desktop, and Google's Chrome engineers continue to improve it with new features and push the latest web standards. To mark the milestone, Google said it would make a surprise announcement on Tuesday -- some improvements coming to Chrome.
Another significant part of Chrome's first release was the idea of "sandboxing" individual browser tabs so that if one crashed it wouldn't affect the others. This helped improve the speed and stability of Chrome in general, alongside Google's V8 JavaScript engine that the company constantly tweaked to try and push the web forwards. After a decade of Chrome, this browser now dominates as the primary way most people browse the web. Chrome has secured more than 60 percent of browser market share on desktop, and Google's Chrome engineers continue to improve it with new features and push the latest web standards. To mark the milestone, Google said it would make a surprise announcement on Tuesday -- some improvements coming to Chrome.
The problem was while Firefox did starting to adhering to standards it had it's issues. Phoenix was fast before being renamed to Firefox 1.0. It still had some Netscape bugs here and there but was much improved. Firefox 3.0 was slow and was known to freeze with lots of plugins. Firefox 3.5 was even slower even if it did adhere to even more standards.
IE by default was quicker if you ran MS specific HTML and MS CSS and cheated by loading when the OS loaded so it appeared to load faster. People stuck with it as it just worked and it was there.
Chrome was much better. Webkit also was a much better architecture than Gecko which is why Google left Gecko and switched to webkit for Chrome OS and Chrome browser in development. Apple already used webkit for Safari and their iphone. The architecture was multithreaded and easy to embed and light. It was perfect and much needed in the age of Vista where Pcs barely had enough ram to run it.
Chrome surprised Firefox quickly too. IE 9 was the first non sucky IE browser and MS was forced to follow webstandards all thinks to Chrome's marketshare and users demanding their websites work on their iPhones.
Chrome was a better browser. I could argue Firefox was marginally better depending on which are you looked at. Most users do not know what web compliancy is. All they know is Firefox was slow, and their worksites looked funny which is why it never took more than 15% marketshare.
http://saveie6.com/
I tried chrome://flags/#autoplay-policy in Chromium Version 68.0.3440.75 (Developer Build) built on Debian 9.5, running on Debian 9.5 (64-bit). It didn't block most of the test cases in my video blocking test suite. I guess that's because blocking all video playback is very much easier said than done.
- Block the <video> element, and sites will fall back to the less efficient <img> tag with GIF.
- Block <video> and GIF, and sites will fall back to using JavaScript to rotate JPEG or PNG images into a container.
- Block <video>, GIF, and script, and sites will fall back to using CSS sprites with stepped animations to rotate frames of a JPEG or PNG filmstrip into a container.
I went back to Firefox. I don't trust Google and their ad ecosystem.
Firefox has its problems, but it doesn't have a multi-billiondollar neoliberal fascist enterprise backing it.
LOL....LOL....LOL
Apparently you don't understand where Mozilla gets all their money.
Almost 100% of Mozilla's revenue (currently about $350 Million a year) comes from . . . . . . . GOOGLE!
And Mozilla is just as "neoliberal fascist" as Google. (Forced their CEO to resign because he gave some money to a political campaign they don't like).