Google Chrome, Day 2 1016
Seems that almost every story submitted to Slashdot last night in some way involved Google's Chrome that we started talking about yesterday. Dotan Cohen noted that according to Clicky Chrome has hit 3% browser share. Since Google has decided to release Chrome only for Windows, I now share for you 3 reviews written by others: the first comes from alexy2k, the second from mildsiete, and the third from oli4uk. They all seem to feature various opinions, charts, and screenshots demonstrating various exciting points.
Chrome is spyware! (Score:5, Interesting)
Install it and 'Google Update' is silently installed along with it with no apparent way of turning it off besides regedit/msconfig. So much for "Don't be Evil".
Google spying on you (Score:5, Interesting)
Apparently, every installation of Chrome gets an unique id [lawblog.de] (sorry, German only) and, once you've signed into your Google account ONCE, the unique id gets connected with your account and you'll always be traceable back to your Google account, even if you're not logged in.
That's a showstopper. But I'm hoping for a spy-free version to be out soon, the beauty of open source!
local anecdote (Score:5, Interesting)
In my office, there are several windows developers who were excited to try Chrome yesterday - one enthusiastically declaring that he was going to uninstall his other browser as soon as he got home. What struck me about this is that these are people who would never, in a million years, lift a finger to try Safari/Windows - yet here they are drooling over how snappy a WebKit-based browser is. The prospect of increased WebKit adoption makes me happy.
Things I like, Things I don't (Score:5, Interesting)
The inspect element tool is awesome, lets you see the tree and go to any element you can right click on.
Killable tabs, I open tons of new tabs/windows in any browser I use and I hate it when one crashes and takes out a dozen pages I had open earlier to read later and then have to grep and guess through my history. This makes my day
When you search, it puts little marks on the scroll bar where results are. That's neat.
The tweaked tab system is great. Create new windows from tabs, drag tabs between windows, consolidate windows into tabs.
On the other hand
I really miss scroll-click and smooth scrolling. But it isn't the end of the world.
While I like having tabs on top, having the File/options/etc WIMP standards under that little button to the right of the address bar is kinda weird.
It's beta. It's very beta. Somewhere above "everybody else's beta" and but slightly below the usual "Google beta" quality.
I turned the awesome bar off.
But I still want it to do math for me.
I was impressed, but not switching (Score:4, Interesting)
The UI is intuitive, minimal, and eye-pleasing. It rendered almost all of my favorite web-sites perfectly (including some with CSS that previously only rendered in Firefox).
Not switching, though. AdBlock Plus is a must-have.
Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome (Score:5, Interesting)
But in my 10 mins of usage, I have just realized how Firefox has spoiled my browsing habits!
Few points so far (remember - just 10 mins of use):
1. Cursor is going missing in Slashdot reply box if it is at the beginning of the line.
2. There are ads on
3. Great debugging tools for developers built-in.
4. Unlike Firefox, no option for smooth-scrolling (I find it mandatory for large pages - especially on
How do they do it? (Score:3, Interesting)
What makes me wonder is how Google manages to put out a browser, that's seemingly so complete. It's not an easy job: Firefox has been in development for about a decade now, after the open-sourcing of Netscape.
Did they use large chunks of other open-source browsers? If so, which ones? And considering page rendering speed, it is highly optimised. Or lots of features other browsers have are missing.
And how do they manage to get JavaScript work so lightning fast? Looking at the graphs, FF is two, three times as fast as IE, but both are nothing compared to Chrome. Did they write it from scratch, or highly optimised an existing JavaScript implementation? Both options sound pretty impressive to me. It can't be easy to get so quick JavaScript execution - why else can't FF and IE not get anything near this speed.
I can't test the browser myself unfortunately; my desktops run Linux and this laptop is OS/X. It sounds like a pretty impressive job what they did.
Anyone has any ACID/2/3 test results in Chrome? That would be really interesting.
Re:local anecdote (Score:5, Interesting)
I would characterize Chrome as "Safari for Windows done right."
There were massive mistakes Apple made (out of arrogance or incompetence, I'm not sure), when releasing Safari for Windows:
- Apple style Font rendering. Having to switch your eyes between Safari's anti-aliasing and ClearType on a regular basis starts to hurt your eyes, one seems blurry in comparison to the other.
- Safari didn't follow many of the standard windows app behaviors, another snafu. You can't stuff OS X app behaviors down the throats of Windows users, and vice versa.
- It also had an incredibly slow startup time. (Although it would render extremely fast)
Contrast this to Chrome, which renders text using ClearType and windows font rendering, behaves like a windows app, starts up really fast.
It's not even like I'm bashing Apple for a bad port. iTunes for windows was ported really well, it follows (for the most part, except menus) the windows UI conventions and font rendering, so it feels more like a Windows app.
(By the way, I'm primarily a Mac user and use Safari regularly on the Mac)
Unclear privacy (Score:2, Interesting)
The Google EULA [google.com] that I clicked through was the Google services EULA [google.com] (at least I think so) -- and as such not really acceptable.
Apparently Google published some clarifications [google.com], but still there are open questions:
So, in summary: It's a good browser to use Google applications; but for the moment not apt to access anything outside the Google universum.
Re:A couple of annoying things I've found so far (Score:3, Interesting)
And don't expect it to change. I find with google that once they release things. New features are not quick in forthcoming and giving users a multitude of options is not their style.
It is pretty much take it or leave it. This is very evident with google talk, I liked the feel of it but eventually I just couldn't change one or two things that bugged me so I am not so fond of it now.
That said I welcome a new browser to it all, the more the merrier, we don't want to slip back into the days of IE 6 being all that web developers targeted.
Re:I'll stick with Firefox (Score:1, Interesting)
Why switch from FF3? The browser itself is seriously faster, not to mention the JavaScript VM. And I'm not saying about any points or benchmarks, you notice it in an instant.
It also spawns a new process for each tab which is extremely useful for all those flashes or webpages that seem to freeze your browser. Now, only one tab will be freezed.
These are (imho) the biggest improvements in Chrome, over FF3. The rest is pretty cosmetic, usability, stuff taken from all the other browsers and made good or better.
And yet, addons (adblock) are something that makes FF3 my browser of choice. At least for the moment, until Chrome Extension API is released and some nice addons (including something like adblock) are developed.
One click install???? (Score:5, Interesting)
OK, I went to install Google Chrome, and the "download and install" button started running an external application without any prompts. Needless to say I immediately cancelled it and started digging through the source to see what the fox is going on.
I am sure that some Google software that I installed in the past has given google this capability, rather than this being some kind of trust relationship between Mozilla and Google. I'm even sure that at some point I clicked "OK" to some question that said it was OK for them to do X, Y, and Z, and that included this capability.
Regardless...
I don't think this kind of backdoor is even vaguely sane, no matter how "non evil" Google may be. If this capability exists, then the possibility exists for other folks who aren't so "non evil".
This is something I'd expect from Microsoft.
And if they could slip something like that past a fellow as paranoid as me, they sure didn't provide nearly enough disclosure.
So...
What's going on. Is this something in Google Gears? In some other Google tool? I guess I'll have to start dissecting my browser and figure out exactly what the hell they're doing.
Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome (Score:5, Interesting)
You obviously missed Chrome's, which never writes that private information to your hard drive in the first place. Much more secure. Safari also does this, has done for a while.
Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, no, it started much earlier than that :-)
Once upon a time, they made "web browsers". Well, actually, no, what they made was hardware: a hunk of electronics, a keyboard, and a CRT (like a monitor from the days before LCDs). And they called them "terminals", and wired them to the computers. And the software on the computer would sniff the terminal to figure out what type it was so that the correct HTML (I mean, "escape sequences") could be sent. Esc [ 4 m, for example, was "bold". Esc [ 0 m meant make it plain again.
Only it turns out there was one popular terminal, the VT100 from the ever-present Digital Equipment Corporation ("DEC". Later they called themselves "Digital"). (Only it wasn't actually popular; the actual popular version was the VT102). So every minor terminal maker -- and there were hundreds -- would lie, and claim to be a VT100.
How do I know this? Because I worked on RS/1, an interactive statistical package and had to support those hundreds of terminals. And what a pain it was.
Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Chrome is spyware! (Score:3, Interesting)
What was Real Networks sin to get listed to "Stopbadware.org" independent, Google funded site?
They asked network about "news" to show to user, actual news, not ads. They also installed Rhapsody framework which sits there until user actually purchases something.
Wonder if Google will be listed on Stop Badware organisation for sending Unique ID to Google and make it hard for average user to disable it.
It should come DISABLED by default, just like Real Player, Windows Media Player. If it is not a big issue, I question the flames directed to Real as "Send unique ID" and "Statistics" is actually sent to SERVER owner instead of Real Networks/MS.
It is NOT easy, it is easy for you, it is not easy for average user. That is the trick and that is why it should come disabled by default.
Install behind firewall (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome (Score:3, Interesting)
Mouse gestures work horribly when I'm using the keyboard instead of the mouse.
Which happens more and more often, simply because it's faster.
When I'm done writing this, tab-tab-tab-tab-tab-return takes far less time than moving my hand over to the mouse, navigating to the submit button, click, then move my hand back to the keyboard again.
Re:Google spying on you (Score:5, Interesting)
I posted [slashdot.org] this earlier today, but I feel I have to post this again, as it is really important people know what they get in to using this browser:
In metrics_service.cc [chromium.org] [chromium.org]
it sends everything you do in the toolbar to
static const char kMetricsURL[] =
"https://toolbarqueries.google.com/firefox/metrics/collect";
It collects everything and sends it to google servers, on startup and on shutdown.
WHAT THE FUCK. Keep ff ftw.
If your privacy means nothing to you just use Chrome.
Re:Great, just when we'd almost standardised.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Are any of these browsers going to be taken up by corporations?
Firefox already is. Chrome probably needs some time.
Is this all happening because some folks can't quite accept that MS won this war 10 years ago?
You mean in the sense that Germany had won WW2 in 1941? MS has a big share, but that doesn't mean all progress suddenly stops.
Well, progress did stop for MS, but fortunately Firefox gaining market share got MS to finally update their browser to something better than that piece of crap that IE6 was.
My poor eyes. (Score:3, Interesting)
The mildseite site, http://www.monacome.com/2008/08/download-google-chrome-browser-review.html (which I'm intentionally not hyperlinking), is the most god-awful thing I've seen since MySpace.
To spare you the experience, I'll just say that the tab icon is an animated GIF that does nothing but blink through the colours of the rainbow. Oh, and "My SideBar: Ads, Search Bar and Widgets" takes up half the screen and contains more animated GIFs. The BLINK tag seems to have been used as well (unless that's another animated GIF).
Re:Chrome Eval (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been using Firefox on Windows since it was called Phoenix 0.2 (though I spend most of my time now in Safari on a Mac) and have never installed AdBlock. Why? Because an ad-blocking /etc/hosts file [mvps.org] does most of the work AND works on all browsers on the machine. It's not perfect but it's very effective and I'm always amazed at how many ads my most-visited sites have whenever I view them on someone else's machine.
Here's a review from a non-Windows fanboi: Chrome's performance absolutely kicks ass. Sure, I had to boot my Windows box to see it, but I am thoroughly impressed so far. And I'm sure I'll be more impressed the more time goes by if their "it won't get painfully slow over time" claim is true. I can't wait 'till the OS X version is out. (Though my true hope is for Apple to say "Holy crap! This is a great idea! We'll use this as the basis for Safari 5!")
People don't get it (Score:5, Interesting)
In the past 24 hours since Chrome launched, the thing that I've found most interesting has been the range of reaction from people around the Web. In a nutshell the reaction can be pretty evenly divided between people who "get it" and people who don't. If you think that Google's purpose for Chrome has anything to do with improving UI or grabbing browser market share then you're in the camp that doesn't get it.
Chrome is more or less a reference design for other browser developers, hence the reason Google is putting so much emphasis on it being open source. There's no money in it for Google to be giving out browsers. What Google is interested in is increasing the capability of the average browser in order to allow them to serve up more robust web-based content for more revenue.
First DoS vulnerability detected already (Score:2, Interesting)
SUMMARY
An issue exists in how chrome behaves with undefined-handlers in chrome.dll version 0.2.149.27. A crash can result without user interaction. When a user is made to visit a malicious link, which has an undefined handler followed by a 'special' character, the chrome crashes with a Google Chrome message window "Whoa! Google Chrome has crashed. Restart now?". It crashes on "int 3" at 0x01002FF3 as an exception/trap, followed by "POP EBP" instruction when pointed out by the EIP register at 0x01002FF4.
DETAILS
Vulnerable Systems: * Google Chrome Browser version 0.2.149.27
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION The information has been provided by Rishi Narang. The original article can be found at: http://evilfingers.com/advisory/google_chrome_poc.php [evilfingers.com]
Re:Incognito mode actually isn't really so... (Score:5, Interesting)
Google still has your browsing history nicely tracked, stored on their computer, available for subpoena etc.
Do they say that in that link you provided? In fact, the link says something opposite. And they make it pretty clear what is sent to Google, when and how to disable it.
If you want to continue with FUD, that's fine by me, but you can help yourself by not weakening your own arguments.
Re:local anecdote (Score:1, Interesting)
Personally, I think most of Apple's decisions for Safari for Windows make perfect sense, when you realize the real purpose of the program:
To allow Windows-only web developers to test pages for the iPhone.
Because that's what I consider the main purpose, you can re-evaluate your mistakes: Font rendering has to match the iPhone, so developers can be sure things line up. App behaviors also need to match the platform they are emulating, so developers can see what they are working with.
Startup time is probably a result of that: They have to load some large libraries (I assume) to do the above, and it's not all that bad a problem for a developer to remember to load once and not quit.
So it's a good port, with a different audience than normally considered.
Re:The jewel in this software is V8 (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not sure about that. I think the real jewel is the sandboxed tab infrastructure. FF's tracemonkey js VM will (probably) be as fast or faster than V8, though I don't know enough technical details to compare the two in any other way.
Actually, here's [blogspot.com] a comparison of Chrome's Javascript speed with Firefox 3.1 and Safari 3.1 (both with their new Javascript engines), and Chrome goes roughly twice as fast as either of them.
Re:Tried Chrome, going back to Firefox (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, it still has problems...
And regarding a tab not being able to crash the whole application... here's a page that will nuke your Google Chrome browser:
http://www.definethis.org/temp/chrome/index.html [definethis.org]
It's nothing malicious, and doesn't do squat in Firefox, only Chrome has this issue (maybe some url handling issue)
Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome (Score:3, Interesting)
Same benchmarks in Opera 9.5 - 5.5 seconds.
The number of features I'd lose from Opera compared to Chrome makes switching a complete non-starter for me.
Re:Incognito mode actually isn't really so... (Score:3, Interesting)
FUD FUD FUD. please show the line of code that calls home when you browse a page that isnt Google (or has Google analytics)
Re:Noticably the fastest browser. (Score:5, Interesting)
Not just Office -- it's the whole desktop environment. Chrome is Google's way of telling everyone that the web really is ready for primetime app development. The roadblocks of the past, like poor performance, second class UI, hacky little scripts taping everything together, etc. are not fundamental limitations imposed by the web; they were shortcomings of the legacy web browsers.
Google is trying to get good, self-respecting developers to target the web with their apps, even for traditionally "local" apps.
Look at some of the mainstays of the traditional local app platform. Chrome's approach to tabbed browsing is one step away from replacing the Windows Taskbar. Your app gets listed in the Chrome Task Manager, too. A lot like Windows Task Manager, eh? Except it's more useful. Even the hotkey to open is simpler. SHIFT+ESC instead of CTRL+SHIFT+ESC.
Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome (Score:3, Interesting)
kthx.
Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome (Score:3, Interesting)
Except for one major problem that FireFox has always had, and still isnt fixed:
It's not physically possible to launch a new FireFox.exe process. You need this when you have a site that requires login, and you want to be logged in under multiple sessions, or many different logins at the same time.
Which means you're forced to use IE for that sort of thing. Thats one thing that Chrome does well, abandons the 'One Process to Rule Them All' mentality which is a bane of web developers (I mean app developers, not designers).