Google Chrome

Google have announced they're releasing Google Chrome - their own open source Internet browser - tomorrow:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/fresh-take-on-browser.html

Comic book:

http://blogoscoped.com/google-chrome/

Sounds like it will be generally faster and more stable than any other browser, with a powerful Javascript engine to enable more advanced web applications.

So the browser market becomes even more fragmented - bad news for MS, I can only see IE's market share dwindling even further now.

Not so good news for anybody who is in the business of web design, either.

On the other hand, competition is good and encourages improvement.

[edit] Wait, is this a wind-up? The first link is a 404 and the second won't connect to the server.

First link should work now, second link works OK here. Not a wind up!

Oh joy, another browser to test your code on while google no longer caches your search requests but everything you look at :/

lol, actually I'm quite looking forward to another big contender hitting the browser market, should be fun :)

Sounds pretty nice, I'm looking forward to trying it out. I like a lot of their ideas for security and speed / good memory management, and sounds like it will be a lot better than Firefox / just about anything else in that area, but we'll have to wait 'till tomorrow to see if it's as good as it sounds I guess.

>Not so good news for anybody who is in the business of web design

Tell me about it. I'm not in the business per se, but I do alot of web stuff for friends - I've probably done over 12 decent looking websites in php/css/html.

Its hard enough dealing with the totally different way IE sees websites. Things like the .png color bug, the browser orgins, and the self margins really get under your skins on complex designs.

</rant>


:)

I am in the web design business... and it sucks when this happens. Luckily however I work for the government and all we use are MS products... bleh.

it uses an open source rendering engine, webkit so maybe it will be similar to other browsers
knowing google it will send all your surfing data back to google though

Nobody on Earth should use Google...not directly at least:

http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/scraper.htm

Pretty cool stuff. Looking forward to the Linux release.

Btw, not using Google directly sounds absurd if not totally paranoid.

If a page for absurdly paranoid people like that didn't exist, it wouldn't be the internet we all know and love.

This one's faster from here:

-> http://scr3.golem.de/?d=0809/Google-Chrome&a=62131&s=1

If the advantages are really obvious for the end user there is a good chance that this will be more than just another one, it's google pushing it in. Technically there are some nice things inside.

I would like to see from Google a more clever search engine rather than providing another browser.
What does this means? I want to have the search engine guessing better for what I am looking for and reducing the available links that I have to visit.

Sounds to me like they are starting to do a 'microsoft' with the marketplace(s). :/
Still, its required i guess to kick IE off its undeserved high horse.

On the contrary, if everyone designs for the strictest/fussiest common few browsers that are 100% on specification. A more fragmented market would encourage devs to do this. I hate developers that have the stupid and misguided attitude "It works in IE which is almost everyone, so it will do"

Basically designing to the proper web specs means:

A) your page is more likely to render properly everywhere.
B) You become a less sloppy developer.
C) browser developers are more likely to stick to the proper official specs (MSIE that means YOU!)
D) New specifications remain open as single-browser-only features will be less popular with devs.

*curious*

Incognito mode!

or just code the site properly to universal specifications (rather than microsofts idea of them) in the first place :/

I remember when designing my site, i had a week or so of no-internet access over some contract issues when moving house, so all i had was bloody IE to test with. I did a lot of work and got it looking perfect in IE. As soon as i looked at it in other browsers it was horrible, gaps and formatting errors everywhere and some things like menus wouldn't even work!. Im not sure how it does it but IE seems to autocorrect or assume coding mistakes (possibly why it is slower?).

I have (not that i can recall) ever had this problem the other way around. What i develop and test in FF always looks the same in IE, Opera, iphone and others.

I noticed something similar to D4NM4N when I made a couple of websites with CSS. Had a whole bunch of single pixel offset problems, and odd wrapping problems with my designs that all worked perfectly in IE7 or above. IE6 was the worst, followed by FF. I only tried those 3 browsers so no idea about the rest.

Maybe you need to learn how to use a search engine better? I can't remember ever searching for anything on Google and not finding it in the top two or three results. Which is more than I can say for any of the other search engines.

Not if they use Publisher for their web designs (you think I'm being sarcastic? You're wrong). As long as it doesn't score worse than IE6 on the ACID 3 test, I'm happy.

Of course if you manage to write a browser that is worse than IE6 at doing what it was designed to do, then maybe writing Internet browsers isn't your thing.

Except for a few things, namely that Google products are relatively inexpensive, unobtrusive, well written, high performance applications. I mean Windows Live Search is so remarkably poor compared to Google Desktop it's laughably tragic. Since it seems obvious people are only going to accept monopolistic software giants as market leaders, of the two evils the software monopolist who writes software competently, is the better choice.

Yeah. Get the undohtml.css stylesheet and cascade from there. The downside is you will need to specify all your styles explicitly, the trade off is your site will look awesome in any browser.

I have an idea to solve the problems with web standards. Everybody makes their own browser. Then, on every website, people can download the browser for that website.

I know, i was just being 'predictive' :).
Google are nowhere near the corporate monolith that MS is, but i believe it has the potential to be the next big "fingers in ALL the pies" company at its current trend of success. They do write great software and products so i reckon the browsers definitely worth a look.

the 'good' things I've read on the comics are the multithreaded-tabs (for rendering & js) and the JScript Virtual Machine.
I think the new browser will be more W3c respectable. It is in the Google interest to have 'web-apps' that works on EVERY browsers, but IE (=MS) has an opposite interest on this aspect (see the latest IE8 anti advertising option -> lock of the Google ads)
Well, we see.

http://www.google.com/chrome

Yay, being here with Chrome! :O)

Oh and Unity is running...

-> http://spielwiese.marune.de/_uni/_tmp/oled.html

...as well as Shockwave and Flash.

o Detaching content is fu&$ing cool!
o Entering Links with a searchengine in the background is cool too!
o ...

Yay!!!

Its a very nice bit of free kit.

Can even resize this edit window on this forum, dead nice.

Oh, yeah... nice!

missing the middle mouse button scroll the whole view thing tho.

Me too although i'm only having a mouse without a wheel connected. :O)

Wow. Extremely clean. Liking it already.

Anyone having any problems with it?

+ Loads very fast
+ Renders nice and fast
+ Very clean in appearance
+ Spelling correction for edit boxes

Missing a couple of Opera goodies such as:

- Ctrl+Space opens default home page
- No Mouse gestures - I use these for quickly closing tabs etc
- Middle mouse click for scrolling
- Sites such as Max show no title in the tab other than "Google Chrome"
- Opening a link in a new tab does not jump to that tab


Posted this via Chome
Gotta LOVE the way you can instantly resize the edit box too!!
Good move Google

Looking good... nice big viewing area.

Actually everything seems nice so far except for loading pages with plugins (flash for example) in them. For me it completely freezes up until the plugin is loaded, then occasionally lags for no reason, where I have no problems in IE with.

I haven't restarted after installing though, which could be the issue.

Well I installed it, seems pretty nice. I like the lack of clutter. Only used it for a couple of minutes though.

very nice - liking it already. Would like to have the firefox "search without having to hit ctrl-F" feature. And the ability to choose an alternate UI for the top panel, e.g. transparent so that you only see the tabs, not the blue bar behind. Although I don't use it, RSS isn't supported yet, and I guess that might put some off until they sort that. I suspect I'd also like to be able to customise that start page a bit once I've used it a while, e.g. have say my own 4-5 fixed pages at the top, then let chrome decide extras to add in there.

the javascript mariokart runs faster!

I would have been impressed with their sense of humour if they had released this as a web-app that ran in IE.

Missing Middle wheel click is annoying, otherwise seems ok, like Firefox before it got really bloated.

Darkheart

On a similar note, does anyone else find the scroll-wheel unusably sensitive? Other than that, the stripped-down feel is very welcome.

I love how clean Chrome feels.

It doesn't have a million useless features I will never use
The address box + search is a good feature.
The middle mouse button scroll wheel feature is useless, so I love how it doesn't have it.

I hate how Google seems to be wanting to do everything, but this browser is pretty good.

hmm, scroll wheel works great here, or am I missing something?

It works too well here -- just scrolls ridiculously quickly (although that's quite useful for monster blitz threads). I miss middle-button scrolling but don't need it on my laptop, which is what I generally browse with, so no biggie.

Chrome is likely to go through the same security issues as the other browsers, in their lifetime.

Can't wait for multi-os support :D

I like it. Very simplistic (it has nice features, but the appear only when you need them), fast, and effective. I don't know all it's features yet, but I reallly like the fact that it seems faster than Firefox and even Opera so far (yet none of Opera's issues so far) :)

Also, it seems to combine all the best browser features, and some I've never seen before, while remaining un-bloated and has a very "clean" interface.

Some features I like (so far) are:
+ The ability to drag tabs out into new windows, and rearrange tabs between windows, etc.
+ The ability to resize edit areas like this one I'm typing in now!!
+ The "task manager", which tells you what's taking up 100% of your CPU in the event it happens (and this happened to me in Firefox before, in which case I had to restart completely), and lets you terminate the "process"
+ It's FAST (and appears to be memory efficient too)
+ It loads gmail at least 3x as fast as Firefox
+ Fairly smart list of quick-links and website thumbnails when you start a new tab

I guess the only thing not to like so far (for me at least) is the lack of a lot of add-ons, as in Firefox. The lack of middle-click-scroll mode might be annoying to some people, but I never use it so I'm lucky :)

I agree, best browser - few kinks but still very good.

They need to work on text selection, selecting text in a code tag gets the tabulations to the left of the box (it does in this site's mbn theme.)
I like the different tabs idea, but still want my bookmarks.
It seems to stick them on the page when you make a new tab, imported all my bookmarks from Firefox, awesome.

Did someone mention getting ubiquity (a plugin for firefox) working on Chrome?

Oh, and the only real thing I have against Chrome is I can't find an option to change the language. It decided to stick it in the Greek language even though my system base is English (with IME setup for Greek, dates and times in Greek) - I'm not that fluent in Greek!

EDIT: Just found this: http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?answer=95415&query=language&topic=&type=

But its not working.. :(

Wow! I'm switching. It's a bit annoying with the language, especially since it doesn't spellcheck my English anymore...

Is it just me, or is google starting to feel a little like MS? I think I'm not gonna even touch this Chrome. Or anything else from google besides the web search.

You have been sleeping if you start feeling this just by now. They are more a big Microsoft.

It's not a matter of size. It's the sound it makes when it hits the ground.

I just say whale hits a planet or maybe the other way around. ;O)

What I mean by feeling like Microsoft is aggressively pushing in areas not entirely within their original focus. I thought google was about services in web. I had this feeling about google desktop and now I have the same feeling about Chrome.

Growth is what capitalism is all about, but it feels a bit twisted. I mean the way it happens.

I know what you're saying, but it sounds a bit like tall poppy syndrome to me.

This might be interesting for those who understand german. They are already operating in areas which you might not have thought of.

http://www.zdf.de/ZDFmediathek/content/458378 (the world is a google)

I'm having a play with Chrome, and it seems nice... bizarrely though you can resize multiline text boxes which completely screws anyone's design... Bizarre!?

I only just noticed the resizable text box, inspired.

I used to use that here all the time on Safari when the text box was smaller.

Good ole webkit.

I love it! In addition to the above points, i'd like to add i like the touches of humour they have added, like incognito mode. You get a picture of a detective, and the warnings that come with it:

Going incognito doesn't affect the behaviour of other people, servers or software. Be wary of:
- Websites that collect or share information about you
- Internet service providers or employers that track the pages that you visit
- Malicious software that tracks your keystrokes in exchange for free smileys
- Surveillance by secret agents
- People standing behind you

The last two points :o)

Bah, Chrome doesn't do the middle click scrolling (as in click the middle, move the mouse, click the middle to quit the scrolling)... Why not?! That's really handy.

True, it is lacking that, but i don't see why they wouldn't add it at a later date/version. I really can't be bothered reaching my finger over to the page down/up key :o(

Write this:

:%

in the url text field, and see what happens with Chrome... It crashes with all tabs...

Yup, crashed.
How did you find that out?

I've read it here:
http://www.kriptopolis.org/vulnerabilidades-google-chrome-1
it's in Spanish tho

http://evilfingers.com/advisory/google_chrome_poc.php
just hovering over the link at the bottom is enough to crash all tabs, etc...

And it doesn't scale images like IE7/8 FF3 / Opera when you zoom in and out.

It's just beta, It will get a lot better with future releases I hope. It's very fast and interface is a mix between IE and Firefox.

And then in 6 months time if all goes well it'll be as bloaty as firefox and opera! Yay!

It's a good first outing, but it's not fast enough for me to ditch Opera ;) I'm sure it'll have a bright future, though.

it doesnt render flash very fast

For all those complaining about Chrome ..

+ Click the icon next to the spanner
+ Select "Report bug or broken website"

Fill in your complaints and fire away
I already mentioned the middle scrolling issue. If others wish to complain I am sure Google will fix this for the next release

Problems problems... worst browser EVER hahaha... ;)

It's just a plugin, but yes, Chrome doesn't seem to handle plugins too well just yet. It lags to hell until it completely loads and in my case it continues to randomly lag for no reason.

With IE, I can browse a page with plugins while they load, with very little to no lag. This is the only real issue i've run into so far.

Have you guys seen the EULA part 11.1 about Google having a non exclusive license to all you produce or type including forum posts, which they can also share with other companies etc.



Seems like a good enough reason not to use it.

Yes I saw that too.. well Google if you're reading this I was just kidding a few posts back ;)

Can't make no jokes on the intersnerts these days -_-

That's pretty all encompassing. Seeing as I have just displayed this page through Chrome, presumably the entirety of this page has just been licensed to Google. Anyone "displaying" BBC iPlayer through Google has just given Google rights to "display" BBC content anywhere...

[edit]...cue the "EULA's are non-enforcible brigade...[/edit]

Hmm.. Chrome is nothing but a Safari in disguise. It even includes some of the vulnerabilities Apple already patched in their (newer) version of Safari.

More info here:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1843&tag=nl.e539

Barney

Of course it's like Safari - they're both using WebKit.

The CNN verdict:
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/ptech/09/03/review.chrome.ap/index.html

On my PC the bloody thing has to wait for an animation to finish before loading another page.

Heh, thought I'd install IE8 beta 2 after reading that. Beta 1 was incredibly bad, B2 seems pretty good.

I like chromes minimalist aproach, but at a glance it doesn't really seem much better than FF3 or IE8. I'm interested in seeing how well IE8 behaves on my ageing single core CPU. Sounded like IE8 might be the best browser for older systems where flash heavy sites are concerned.

Randomly locking up when scrolling after closing a tab. Scary EULA, I think I'll stay away from Chrome for now.

Someone on YakYak posited that it's a hasty cut 'n' paste job from their online services and that it'll duly disappear, which sounds about right (it's hardly an applicable term... you're not subscribing to any service by running Chrome).

Why should I trust "someone on YakYak"?

I wonder what EULA section 11.1 was in originally!

A nonsensical enquiry. The postulation is credible in and of itself -- YakYak is mentioned for attribution only.

I am view this page in it rite now...
Im wondering if this isnt a way for google to gather more info from the average web-surfer

http://lifehacker.com/5044668/beta-browser-speed-tests-which-is-fastest

flash player just crashed in this.. while i was on youtube...

The only reason i would make this my main browser is if they put out stuff that will enhance google services like gmail... and youtube.. stuff that is like built in.. and official.. that you can turn on and off..
idk.. thats just me..

More special secret Chrome bits:
http://lifehacker.com/5045164/google-chromes-full-list-of-special-about-pages

So if I use Chrome to send death threats to George W Bush, does that mean I'm off the hook, and Google are going to be prosecuted for terrorism? I think that clause is self-defeating, unless they also have a clause about not creating WMD, like iTunes.

380MB of RAM and 171 threads "seems pretty good". Compared to Chrome? I know you often make a case in point about having an out-of-date PC, but I'm starting to think you're just making it all up as you go along.

My biggest concern is that they could collect stuff you write and sell info to unscrupulous companies. Here in the states employers already do web background checks to find out what makes prospective employees tick in their private lives, and charge a fair packet too.

FWIW, that clause in Chrome's EULA has been removed for a while now.

iTunes is a WMD!

Bah, Can't block images from specific places so I keep seeing Mortiis' mug on posts again... back to Firefox I think until google fix this stuff.

I was expecting a google toolbar (I hate any toolbar) on top, but it looks clean.

What I like is the way it gives webaddress options while typing and the way you see the most used websites as a small screenshot when opening a new tab.

Also the clean topmeans you can see more website then toolbar.

For a new browser this is a good start.

Aye, Adblock is the best plugin ever.

IE8 beta 2 does the same search thing now too. I actually like it better than the other two since it runs a lot of sites with flash more efficiently than either chrome or FF3, especially with multiple tabbed pages.

Yes, indeed, Chrome uses Webkit, so for those complaining about having to support yet another browser, you should already be developing for Safari, so it's no sweat. Plus, Webkit really is a good little puppy, I never get trouble from Safari.

It really makes me sad to hear MS go on about further improvements in IE. Not because I don't support improvement, but because of the huge amounts of inertia in IE users. I'm going to have to support IE6 for another year, and IE7 for at least the next four, bearing in mind IE8 is still in beta. And in the other corner, we have just about everyone else complying far more closely with standards. Gragh.

So yeah, I'm happy to see Chrome. Google can place a link on their homepage, which will get it massive exposure, and hopefully convert a few IE6 users (although I doubt it). IE7 users can stay as they are, I can live with it.

google just has to dip there fingers into a little bit of everything... they originally started as just a search engine.. now look at it...
email
free website hosting
picasa
chrome
youtube
google earth
google maps
mobile apps

and the list goes on.. and its all FOR FREE! they must be making a killing with just advertising...(i heard thats how they make all their money)and they spent millions on buying youtube... How can they really afford to keep-up all this free stuff.. and at the same time come out with new free stuff all the time... i mean 7100mb for gmail.. i know that they count on the fact that not everyone is gonna use that much for mail.. but still.. the fact that that is even available..i dont know... just wondering if neone has comments or information about what i just said

Google rob banks, that's how they pay for all dat stuff.

Hmm,

first impressions:
goods:
Looks good, feels good.

bads:
-zooming is crap, makes pages look wierd.
-crashed on me twice now (ok its a beta so forgiven)
-no spellcheqing?
-'feels' slightly slower than ff

I uninstalled it for being pants, and now I can't stop the 'google updater' from running. Lame.

I highly prefer the lack of plugins. Clean perfect interface for me. It feels a lot faster to me, initial load times and page displays especially.

As for firefox and its bloated crappiness, no thanks. I have no use for its extra features.



Please...it's corporate. Soon or later schemes show up, not to mention the hindering of any potential competition.

Google earth/maps makes loads of money from businesses (Google earth pro?), and probobly even the government (Hey! There's G.W. choking on a pretzel!).

Youtube brings in TONS of business partners from all over bringing them plenty of connections. I'm sure this is no loss on their part

Their email logs everything so they probobly do algorythmic research on all its content, and just who knows what connections the cia or other orgs have with them on all their data. Recently going to show that they log addresses of clients and their actions (even google searches)

No idea on the others as I don't use them.

oh, and I just found these in mid-post:

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/07/court-ruling-will-expose-viewing-habits-youtube-us



I'm sure the same logging goes for traffic to their webhosting. Data bandits.

LOL... a joke, right? ;)

No seeryouslie!, no spellchequing honist! :)

I thought the spell-checking in Chrome worked well. As barebones as Chrome is, I was pleased to see spell-checking included.

Hmm, i dont get any red underlining on the version i have got. I will try downloading again :/

I dont know if this happened to anyone else but uninstalling it killed my Windows XP SP3, even a system restore wouldnt fix it. Had to reinstall the whole thing, got miffed installed Vista Ultimate instead as a fresh install rather than an upgrade it works a dream :)

Sounds like what happens if you try and uninstall the latest beta version of IE 8 from XP SP3.

> Hmm, i dont get any red underlining on the version i have got. I will try downloading again

Might be worth looking at your spell checker settings:

Spanner > Options > Minor Tweaks > [Change font and Language Settings]
Languages tab
Spell checker language: [ English ] ????


I reckon "Incognito" mode is going to VERY popular with porn-surfers!
I am glad they have the "Restore pages that were last open" option
Very handy when you close down and want to re-start things later with the same windows open. Nice Opera feature

I do wish the home button was enabled by default, but that is easy enough to check the box in the options.

I didn't have a problem uninstalling IE8 beta 1 with XP SP3. I did that the minute that I couldn't navigate a edit box when posting in forums. Beta 2 is what Beta 1 should have been. Overall it's nice but no spell check built in :(

I got used to the spell check in FF3 the last month or so and can't do without now.

yeah why would they make the home button optional.. wth

Because they're going for a minimalist, clean design I suppose. I bet there's many people that hardly ever use the Home button.

yeah i guess there is... its not that bad of an idea.. i just hope they use this as a console to maximise the experience of stuff like gmail.. u know? but still have this thing they have now as an option.. cuz the non-cluttered look is nice

Google Chrome is much better than IE. 'Nuff said.

...but not better than firefox.

Not sure what to think of it -- technically it seems to work very well, and it's fast... but I don't car emuch for the GUI.

It's a bunch of small things like the tabs in the titlebar and the extremely minimalist look just to name some, but in the end all those little annoyances all add up. I think I'll stick to AvantBrowser for now.

Funny, I was just thinking about Avant Browser the other day. Back when there was no tabbed browsing in IE, I always thought of it as a must. These days, I have no idea why I keep it installed. It's one advantage was tabs. Nowadays, the only thing it does that other browsers don't do is look butt-ugly whatever skin I choose.

I'm liking Chrome so far. A few rendering bugs, but a great beta. Glad to see Google putting a link on their homepage. With a bit of luck, that'll grab a few IE users rather than Firefox users.

Used it for a couple of days, but the small bugs will keep me with Firefox for now. For example, I cannot login to sites, where my password contains '$', there seems to be no fullscreen view and then there are occasional problems with typing text into text areas (nothing happens).

Looks good, though.

Good to know it wasn't just my computer acting up. I got that problem with text boxs too. I like the look of it. Hopefully google will iron out the bugs to make it useable.