Google Releases Chrome V2.0 381
RadiusK writes "Google has released the second major version of the Chrome browser. This version features more speed improvements thanks to a newer version of V8 JavaScript engine and WebKit. JavaScript-heavy web pages will now run about 30% faster. Other new features include form autofill, fullscreen mode, and improved New Tab page. If you're already using Google Chrome, you'll be automatically updated with these new features soon. If you haven't downloaded Google Chrome, you can get the latest version at google.com/chrome." A version for Linux or OS X would be nice.
AdBlock Plus (Score:5, Interesting)
Does it have AdBlock Plus?
As soon as it does, I'm ditching Firefox.
Re:No plug in support (Score:5, Interesting)
Way ahead of you.
http://adsweep.org/ [adsweep.org]
js rendering is not the bottleneck (Score:4, Interesting)
for me, most of the lag I experience is latency related. Once the webpage gets to me, I'm fairly happy if it takes under a few seconds to render.
Then, I'd like a stable connection, and working webpages (ie without bugs).
Next, I'd like more intelligent tabbing: one which tracks my current surfing location as a whole, and bookmarks that. (I'm thinking a tree structure for tabs, with parents and children and all that; and a dynamic bookmark, that would follow me clicks, for when I'm reading online documentation, or any multipage document.)
Ok, after all that, now I'm interested in js performance. Sorry :(
[a question for those who want adblock in this browser. You realize that while Google makes themselves out to be a search and indexing company, that they are really a very high tech advertising company, don't you? For them to implement adblocking, that would undercut their entire business model. If they did it anyway, and left their ads unblocked?, well, that would just be illegal, under antitrust laws.]
Re:AdBlock Plus (Score:5, Interesting)
Chromium is opensource.
Fork your git branch ... ...
Rewrite AdBlock plus for Chromium
???
Profit !
Re:No plug in support (Score:5, Interesting)
If the masses were blocking ads, what would happen?
1) The web would become a marvelous place without any ad anywhere.
2) Tons of web site would just close
3) Tons of web site would require you to pay per view
4) New, more intrusive, difficult to block, kind of ads would go mainstream. (similar to spam filters vs spammers).
To tell the truth, 1) would only happen in a fairy tale.
Re:Here we go again (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm pretty sure you're being modded Insightful because you list three points that are very good, no matter how sarcastically you state them.
Re:Windows Only (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to ask the same question. I now work for a small startup. Most of us develop on Linux, a couple on Windows, and a couple on Mac. If we could afford to do a linux-only version, we would. But in order to have any kind of marketshare on the desktop, we need to output a Windows version.
The mac and linux versions mostly "just work" and simply need testing. But about a month before release, the entire team needs to stop what they're doing and get the Windows version fully working and tested. Windows development is a resource hog (in terms of people). In some ways, Windows is just different, but it seems in many ways, Windows is deliberately incompatable with anything else at the source code level. Windows makes it as difficult as possible to be cross-platform.
As a result, we get the Windows version out and working before we have time to test the Linux and Mac versions. It kinda sucks to spend that much time and resources on a Windows version. It's either that, or re-route our development resources to Windows-only and ignore the other platforms. Of course, we don't want to do that.
Re:No, but you can load Slashdot and not wait fore (Score:4, Interesting)
This is why I switched to the Chrome beta almost full time.
It doesn't lock up on bad Flash sites, it just kills flash (good riddance), it doesn't fail to load JavaScript on Slashdot (Firefox), it doesn't sit on 1GB of my RAM for no apparent reason (Firefox) and it doesn't crash for no apparent reason (Safari).
Re:Windows Only (Score:4, Interesting)
All that you say is true, but there is something not credible about the length of time that it has taken for them to get this done. It seems to have taken longer for them to do the linux port than it did for them to build the entire windows version.
Having said that, I don't really suspect there's anything sinister going on here ... something tells me it is more to do with there being fundamentally more difficult challenges on linux than windows. When I compare Firefox across ubuntu and windows it is noticeably slower and uglier in linux - there's no two ways about it. I strongly suspect that Google is being a perfectionist here and are simply not willing to release something that doesn't meet the incredibly high bar they have set for chrome.
Re:Windows Only (Score:5, Interesting)
Linux version not far away (Score:2, Interesting)
mmoss: release channel setup, first official build
Re:Still waiting... (Score:4, Interesting)
Lack of development? There is development happening for OS X and Linux. It's just not ready for end-users yet.
Because development isn't simply a matter of money. It takes time to develop software, and organisational/human/communication factors impose an upper limit on how fast development can move. Mozilla have a codebase where 15 years have been spent in development. No amount of money can compensate for that head-start. Mozilla aren't developing any faster than Google, they are further ahead because they've been doing it longer.
The original releases of Netscape were far, far simpler products. I could write "Hello, World" in 30 seconds that would run on more platforms than Chrome - does that make me better than Google? No, because the task of writing a modern web browser is substantially greater than writing "Hello, World" - and substantially greater than writing an early 90s web browser.
Yes, because they had less to do. If your codebase is a fraction of the size and has only a handful of features, of course it's easier to port it to other systems. By the way, have you tried running those early Netscape versions on Linux and OS X?
Passes Acid3 (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I could live with no Adblock/Noscript (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually it's more like I don't want them collecting data on me that they sell later for money without my express permission.
Fair enough. Do you avoid security cameras in stores as well?
So then you would be perfectly fine with your bank, for example, having you do transactions over unencrypted connections? I mean the internet is a public place, right?
If my bank required me to do that, then no, I would not be fine with it. I don't nail my deposits to the side of their building either. And I don't expect any sort of implied privacy when surfing the internet. If I want to do anything private, I'll keep as many hands and eyes off it as possible.
Re:Windows Only (Score:3, Interesting)
I used to ask the same question. I now work for a small startup. Most of us develop on Linux, a couple on Windows, and a couple on Mac. If we could afford to do a linux-only version, we would. But in order to have any kind of marketshare on the desktop, we need to output a Windows version.
The mac and linux versions mostly "just work" and simply need testing. But about a month before release, the entire team needs to stop what they're doing and get the Windows version fully working and tested. Windows development is a resource hog (in terms of people). In some ways, Windows is just different, but it seems in many ways, Windows is deliberately incompatable with anything else at the source code level. Windows makes it as difficult as possible to be cross-platform.
As a result, we get the Windows version out and working before we have time to test the Linux and Mac versions. It kinda sucks to spend that much time and resources on a Windows version. It's either that, or re-route our development resources to Windows-only and ignore the other platforms. Of course, we don't want to do that.
Just develop your applications using a Qt/C++/gcc framework.
Fast, native code, easy, powerful, free (LGPL) and cross-platform.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_(toolkit) [wikipedia.org]
http://www.qtsoftware.com/products/developer-tools [qtsoftware.com]
VLC, Scribus and VirtualBox are good examples of cross-platform applications developed using Qt and Qt creator:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VirtualBox [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scribus [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VLC_Media_Player [wikipedia.org]
If that doesn't appeal, then use Lazarus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_(software) [wikipedia.org]
Only potential problem with that is that you would have to write in Pascal. For me personally, that would be a bonus not a problem.
Peazip is a great example of cross-platform software developed using Lazarus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peazip [wikipedia.org]
AFAIK all of these examples of cross-platform applications bring out versions for Windows, Linux and Mac at the same time.
Re:Windows Only (Score:3, Interesting)
All the webcasts I have participated in have them using Google products pretty much exclusively, with what appears to be their personal desktops. Some could be using a customized Ubuntu, but many of the outward facing employees know to pimp Google properties, even if they aren't overt about it.
I just don't understand why they use WebEx instead of some Google version
AdBlock Plus - And normal UI! (Score:3, Interesting)
Chrome is a killer browser. Because it is _very_ fast and renders correctly most of the time.
The problem is that they insist on ALSO breaking a lot of UI conventions and inventing their own. That's nice, but one should have the choice to use a "normal" UI. Firefox with the Chrome engine, or Chrome enginge with Firefox UI would be a killer.
Re:AdBlock Plus (Score:3, Interesting)
Gah. People who ask "does it work with AdBlock?" in every single thread about any browser other than Firefox (and asking rhetorically, rather than doing two seconds of research and posting an honest "Hey, I checked, and it doesn't work with AdBlock") are getting to be just like area men who constantly mention that they don't own televisions. [theonion.com]
FFS, AdBlock is not the only solution to annoying ads. I spend 99% of my time in Safari on OS X because I like it a whole lot more than Firefox (for various reasons I won't bother going into here) [wikipedia.org] and the combination of a custom /etc/hosts file [mvps.org] and a flash blocker (can't find it right now... one was released, then discontinued, and now there's another, I forget the name, but I've got it at home; only works in 10.5; there seem to be several non-free solutions) make the Web pretty tolerable. (Plus that particular /etc/hosts file blocks many spyware and malware sites, so it's great to have on Windows--security in layers, and all that--and it works for all browsers on the system, with no additional configuration needed at all .)
That said, as excited as I was when Chrome came out, the fact that Safari got pretty good, pretty fast (version 4) makes me not even worry that Chrome may never make it to the Mac. Every once in a while, competition really works. :-)
Re:AdBlock Plus - And normal UI! (Score:5, Interesting)
On Windows, Chrome's window decorations are always in a horrible bubbly Fisher-Price style that somewhat mirrors the default XP/Vista themes. The application does not honor system-wide windowing theme settings. This is stupid. You've kinda come to expect media players to do this (it's still annoying, but it's become the accepted convention) but serious applications like a browser that I'm going to be looking at all day should not lock themselves out of the OS's visual theme system. I'm stuck with one app which seems like an alien on my system because all the colors and widgets are completely different to everything else. It's as bad as bloody Apple!
Another thing I suspect the GP is talking about is the menu. Oh, I mean the toolbar button. Or do I mean menu? Who knows. Take any normal application on Windows that has a menu - press ALT. Now you can navigate the menu option with the cursors or with menu shortcut keys. Google decided that I didn't need this ability and hacked out the well understood, standard concept menu and replaced it with a little popup off of two toolbar buttons. And for a cherry on top, put those icons at the opposite side of the window from where you'd go hunting for a missing menu anyway.
Ooo lessee... how about allowing the application's controls (in this case, the tab bar) to impinge upon the applications titlebar and moving the apps title from the left to the right. This is just more of the kind of utterly pointless "gloatware" interface decisions that often characterises Apple software on Windows. "Our scrap of software is the single most important thing you'll ever use on your computer so - obviously - it's important that it break established visual style and usage conventions to remind you how important is is!". Gloatware.
These seem like trivial things but interface conventions are of huge value to users who lack confidence in front of a computer. Once you've learned that there's always a Menu and it always has File, Edit, View and Help on it - you've got a huge head-start on getting to know any new bit of software.
There are other things that annoy me about Chrome like that stupid is-it-or-isn't-it-status-bar; curiously referring to its SSL preferences as "computer-wide" in the options page (it's going to change SSL behaviour across all apps and OS?); Bookmark interface; yadda yadda AdBlock, NoScript, yadda.
I feel better now XD
Re:AdBlock Plus (Score:4, Interesting)
You do know they are slowly backing off and Mozilla is looking strangely at Google? [slashdot.org]
Re:Windows Only (Score:5, Interesting)
When I compare Firefox across ubuntu and windows it is noticeably slower and uglier in linux - there's no two ways about it.
Your issue with Firefox probably is actually with Pango. IMHO, Pango renders text far more beautifully than any version of Windows does, but it IS a lot slower. You used to be able to disable Pango when building Firefox; I'm not sure whether that is still possible.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)