New Chrome Beta Adds Themes, Speed, & HTML 5 Video 207
adeelarshad82 writes "Google developers are always working on and updating Chrome in three channels — Stable, Beta, and Developer — in increasing positions on the bleeding-edge scale. Today the company thought changes to the Beta channel warranted a post on the main Google Blog. The advances range from the superficial addition of themes for customizing the browser's window borders to even faster speed under the hood to internal support for HTML 5 tags such as <video> and 'web workers,' which allows the browser to divvy processing work among sub-threads."
Still no Adblock though (Score:3, Insightful)
When will google learn that plugins, especially something like adblock, is the killer feature they need to attract the "willing to switch" audience, a lot of whom are using firefox right now. I personally love Chrome for its speed and stability, used it for a week or so, but then switched right back to Firefox because I just didn't realise how it is to do many things in Firefox with extensions such as adblock, no script, autopager, del.icio.us integration etc.
Re:Still no Adblock though (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe you're asking a little too much from Google. Remember that a significant share of their revenue comes from web advertising...
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Agreed. If there was a flash block extension and an extension to un-animate animated GIFs and such I'd use chrome. I don't mind Google's ads. Until then, I'll make do with Firefox.
I am willing to accept unobstrusice ads (Score:5, Interesting)
In the non-cyber world, we all accept ads in the magazines and newspapers, realizing the subsidy they provide to the mags and papers. Same way here.
I wish there is a way to set my browser agent to tell the websites something like:
Will accept text ads.
Will reject all animations gif, flash or javascript.
Will allow 20% of screen real estate to ads.
Content load time not less than 0.33 times ad load time.
Currently looking for ads with keywords : digital camera, DVD cases/sleeves, air tickets to India
Re:I am willing to accept unobstrusice ads (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, I'd like to set something like that in my browser, not just for my own ad-blocking, but I almost want to notify the websites: I am blocking your ads because they're big, slow-loading flash ads. Give me static images or text and I won't block them.
Or what I almost, not really but *almost* want to be able to do is do it on a per-site basis. To be able to send the message to one website, "I'll accept animated GIFs because your site is awesome, but I won't load Flash files for any reason," and tell another website, "Meh, you kind of rot but I just happened across your site by accident. No ad revenue for you." Of course, it would require a lot of work to set that up, even if I had the opportunity to do it.
And yes, I suppose I could send website emails, but I'd just be one nutjob sending an email, and I wouldn't think it'd do much. What I mean is, it'd be nice if we could all register our frustration in a simple, quick way that would be quantifiable to webmasters, maybe it would improve the situation. Like if someone could look at a set of numbers and say, "Look, if we use Flash, then 40% of our visitors will just block all of our ads, but if we use static images that only take up 14% of the display area, then only 20% will block those images," then maybe websites would actually be less annoying about ads.
Sorry if I'm just pushing us off-topic.
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Give me static images or text and I won't block them.
Adding @@|$image to your Adblock rules will allow image ads through on all sites. For specific sites, enter a URL before the $.
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Thanks for the tip. My wish, however, was to be able to block ads in such a way that could signal to the person getting the ad revenue:
The big idea here would be to make the system a two-way negotiation rather than a one-way push. The person making revenue from ad placement could then say, "Huh, not only am I not getting click-throughs, but when I put up F
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My setup comes pretty close:
1. Install Firefox
2. Install the FlashBlock addon (https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/433)
3. Type about:config in the address bar and set image.animation_mode to once (you have to type the value in)
Except the difference between print vs online ads (Score:2, Insightful)
is that you don't get flashing / talking / music / girls in bikinis / speeding gophers / outright lies in your newspaper or magazine.
Imho online advertising did this to themselves, they were as annoying and eye catching as possible (and I mean that in the worst possible way) that people learned to HATE online advertising. I don't mind Google text ads and such, or even banners, but the flashing, animation and sound is the one spoiled apple that ruins the whole barrel.
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Adblock off [imageshack.us]
Adblock on [imageshack.us]
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I just use flashblock. Doesn't break the page (creates appropriately sized boxes where the flash ads would be), and has a big play button in the middle in case I need to see it (youtube, for example). And you're not hurting anyone's non-annoying ad revenue.
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Yeah, but they have two options:
Either one is rather undesirable from their point of view.
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No shit [informatio...utiful.net]
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www.adsweep.org
just add "--enable-extensions" to your chrome shortcut, then click the extension on the webpage and it will be active right away. now if some people could support the project..
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(Then again, I've recently fallen in love
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Maybe you're asking a little too much from Google. Remember that a significant share of their revenue comes from web advertising...
They could add an Adblock with the following criteria:
-Blocks flash ads.
-Blocks ads when they take up a large percentage of the page(say, over 10%)
This would eliminate ads on most other sites and search engines, without interfering with them.
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Except they have explicitly mentioned AdBlock as something they want to support through their in-development extension system.
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4) have paid fanboys praise $company
???
Profit for Meeeeeeeee !
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Yes, when will google learn to add features that block their core business model to their platform for getting at said business.
Re:Still no Adblock though (Score:4, Informative)
Adblock is needed because of all those blinking and colourful flash ads that are all around. Googles ads are quite moderate and most people would not mind to see them, so your statement is false.
This would give a lot of people the motivation to switch to Chrome, which would be a gain for Google while not having big add revenue losses (actually they would gain add revenues, as the js cross site google ads would not be blocked any-more).
They're problem is probably, that this would raise anti-competitive questions they want to avoid, so this could only be done with an open plugin system (via trusted third party plugins).
See my post above Srware iron (Score:2)
Re:Still no Adblock though (Score:5, Insightful)
Google isn't as concerned with making Firefox users switch to chrome, because they are already using a (mostly) standards compliant browser. IE is the real target. This seems to explain why, if I browse to google.com in IE7, I'm greeted with an ad banner that invites me to give Chrome a try. Google does not do this if I browse with Firefox or Safari.
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Chrome also seems to be a prototype/training platform for the Google OS.
Will Google get in trouble for blocking ads while showing theirs? Users might not mind so much, but advertisers and sites that thrive on ad revenue might.
i'm pleased that they are using the term beta more correctly with Chrome.
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Yeah, when you get down to it, Firefox is just Google's other unofficial browser. AFAIK an awful lot of Firefox's funding comes from Google anyway, and Firefox still uses Google by default. It doesn't hurt Google for users to have lots of options in browsers, just so long as they all use Google for their search bar.
For the 1000000 time use Srware IRON for adblock (Score:3, Informative)
When will google learn that plugins, especially something like adblock, is the killer feature they need to attract the "willing to switch" audience, a lot of whom are using firefox right now. I personally love Chrome for its speed and stability, used it for a week or so, but then switched right back to Firefox because I just didn't realise how it is to do many things in Firefox with extensions such as adblock, no script, autopager, del.icio.us integration etc.
Oh here we go again! :)
SRWare Iron is the same browser as Google Chrome except it has all the privacy concerns removed.
IT ALSO HAS ADBLOCK SUPPORT.
SRWare Iron - http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php [srware.net] ADBLOCKER SUPPORT: "11.10.2008: Adblocker integrated in Iron
The wish of many users comes true: We integrated an Adblocker in Iron! With a filterlist so nearly all online-advertising can be blocked. A working list can bedownloaded here and just has to be copied to the Iron folder (e.g:
Use SRWare Iron for AdBlock (Score:3, Funny)
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Yes, they're all still very rough around the edges, but that's what I'd expect from an extension system in development. Of course, their existence isn't enough to sto
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http://www.killertechtips.com/2009/05/13/download-sample-google-chrome-extensions/
Of course the extensions are still rather primitive, but they do work.
Ad blocker: http://adsweep.org or http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/46974
Flashblock: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/46673
Delicious & Twitter: http://www.chromeplugins.org/extensions/lightweight-delicious-bookm
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Rather than bulking out your browser with add-ons to avoid these ads, try moving up evolutionary ladder and quit being a mouth breather. You'll find it's much better.
Adsweep (Score:2)
There is an adblock alternative for Chrome though - http://www.adsweep.org/ [adsweep.org]
I'm using it now - it's not quite as good as adblock, but it's pretty effective. If you want to use the new Chrome Beta, you can use the new extension framework. If you want to stick to the stable chrome distribution, you can use the user script version.
I've been happy enough with it that I've switched from Firefox to Chrome as my primary browser.
The thing I miss most about adblock was giving me the option to selectively allow certai
Does it install in the right place? (Score:4, Informative)
Has Google managed to get Chrome install in the "program files" director yet? The fact that it installs in "application settings" is the number one reason I can't install it.
Re:Does it install in the right place? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Does it install in the right place? (Score:4, Informative)
It also enables the seamless autoupdating for non-Admin users.
Re:Does it install in the right place? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Does it install in the right place? (Score:4, Informative)
It's not a circumvention of IT policies. Google is actually playing nice, and using the standard mechanisms provided by Windows to install per-user - which is also something that's encouraged (not as a sole way of installation, though). In any case, I'm not an admin, but I'd be surprised if you couldn't disable this via group policies or something similar.
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A recent World of Warcraft patch moved the entire game into "AppData" as well, they claimed it was a "necessity" for Windows Vista 64-bit compatibility.
WOW *does* incorrectly keep Add-Ons in Program Files, so what was happening is that some Vista users (depending on their permissions) were getting their Add-Ons installed into the fake Program Files folder that Vista keeps around for retarded software written by retarded developers who don't understand permissions. The solution to their problem was to move *
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Err, no. He probably made it impossible to run executables from non-trusted locations.
The exact reason is that while I have local admin rights, at the office and permission to install it, it conflicts with the rules for McAfee and for that I have don't have access or the permission to change its permissions. The settings for that are controlled by the company's security division and from previous experience getting water from a stone would be easier.
If Chrome installed in program files then I would not have
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The exact reason is that while I have local admin rights, at the office and permission to install it, it conflicts with the rules for McAfee and for that I have don't have access or the permission to change its permissions. The settings for that are controlled by the company's security division and from previous experience getting water from a stone would be easier.
Per-user applications are a Windows feature, and Google is doing it properly according to Windows development guidelines. If your security division is not aware of this, and have misconfigured your system so that this feature doesn't work (while machine-wide install does), then you only have them to blame. The software is working as intended (by both the application developer, and the OS developer).
Still not a Chrome user (Score:4, Interesting)
The first thing that really got me about Chrome was how well it seemed to learn my browsing habits. At least, that was my first impression when I booted it up. The first view you get in Chrome is the "most visited websites" page or something like that. As a incognito porn site surfer, I was really taken aback and worried about privacy issues.
It took a long time in Firefox to fix the URL history functionality. It used to keep the URLs in some cache so that it could be called up right away when you started entering a URL into the address bar. Now, the URLs at least seem like they are gone forever when you delete them from your History.
IE still has this problem (in addition to completely retarded address bar behavior). In fact, if you delete the entire browsing history at once, the URLs themselves can never be deleted except by completely clearing the cache, but then that also deletes the "cover" sites that I visit to make it seem like my surfing is just innocuous browsing and not the hardcore porn viewing which it ostensibly is.
So if Chrome wants my patronage, I think the first thing it needs to do is convince me that my personal privacy is safe. That my URLs aren't going to be cached and exposed at some inopportune time, and that it isn't tracking them for me to helpfully find other related websites.
In this way, I've found Firefox to be the most accommodating browser on the market today. It does what I want and doesn't try to be smart about it. Funny how so many things in life work better that way.
Re:Still not a Chrome user (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Still not a Chrome user (Score:5, Informative)
Then load up one window in Incognito mode, and another window that's not. I really don't know what you're complaining about. :\
If you're looking for absolute privacy, don't use the web. Otherwise, Incognito-mode is about as good as it gets (just remember to clear out your Flash cookies from time to time, the browser doesn't control those).
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Re:Still not a Chrome user (Score:4, Informative)
As a incognito porn site surfer, I was really taken aback and worried about privacy issues.
Interesting choice of words. Chrome has an "incognito mode". From the blurb shown when you open the browser in that mode:
Pages that you view in this window won't appear in your browser history or search history, and they won't leave other traces, like cookies, on your computer after you close the incognito window. Any files that you download or bookmarks that you create will be preserved, however.
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Well, first off Chrome is famous for its sandboxing concept. Each tab is a process in its own sandbox, so in theory, any compromisation of the browser stays contained. If it's pop up windows you worry about, these are confined to the tab that (attempts to) open them. So if a page opens a billion pop ups - just close that tab and it's all gone. Chrome even has its own task manager where you can kill processes on a per-page or plugin basis.
It's quite neat, really.
It is tied to i386 somehow (Score:2)
It is being x86 only means that it will never ship for ARM, Symbian. It is a show stopper for me since I heavily use smart phones, powerpc machines etc. for browsing.
I know the OS X developer and he is a nice person who doesn't drop PPC support for nothing. If it is not supported, it must have a reason. i386 ASM? Whatever. I don't want to rant too much about a browser which I can't use 3 of my 6 machines anyway.
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Just create a new Firefox profile for porn surfing. You can then run that profile with "firefox -p <profilename>".
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Who needs a window manager (Score:2)
Smooth scrolling yet? (Score:3, Insightful)
Does it have smooth scrolling and adblock yet? If not then I can't move. Especially after the huge speedup in FF 3.5.
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How can you *stand* smooth scrolling? It's so slow!
It's one of the first things I turn off, in any app.
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Agreed. Smooth-scrolling feels mushy, like a 1977 Lincoln Continental.
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How can you *stand* smooth scrolling? It's so slow!
Works on my machine(s)! (TM)
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I remember when my computer got locked up because of Smooth Scrolling.
It was years ago, in Win98. An IE window had an endless loop pumping out new lines, and the browser was trying to scroll to the bottom. It locked up explorer, so I had to reboot.
Thankfully that isn't possible in Win2k and up.
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I refuse to use a browser that phones home.. (Score:3, Interesting)
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FWIW, at one of the sessions at Google I/O, a Chrome dev offered a reason for why they do that. From what he said, Chrome will use usage patterns from other Chrome users to pre-fetch DNS results of likely off-site links. For example, a Chrome user that views this story will likely have their browser find DNS results for googleblog.blogspot.com and www.appscout.com prior to clicking on either of those two links since a significant proportion of previous visitors will have clicked on those links. Of course, [
NoScript and Adblock (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a not-very-happy Firefox user, since I find it has horrendous memory leaks. I can get it up to 2GB virtual memory in a morning's average browsing. Yes, I have tried the tips on the Mozilla site [mozillazine.org].
However, I have become addicted to a controlled web experience with NoScript and Adblock. I won't be switching to Chrome until I can get similar tools.
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Me too!
About the memory leaks, Firefox 3.0 solved that for me on Windows and I'm using a lot of extensions. I'm on Linux now so this might be totally different beast. Did you try disabling one extension per day and checking the level of your RAM after browsing all the day?
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I only use AdBlock and NoScript and there are no issues listed.
I do run a lot of windows, rather than tabs - usually half a dozen, some with sub-tabs, spread across many virtual desktops. Still, I've been running Firefox for about 4 or 5 hours today and it looks like this:
3206 pzs 20 0 1132m 639m 28m R 1 8.1 92:38.58 firefox
which seems very high.
Re:NoScript and Adblock (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh I see. I'm running Firefox 3.5 like this (I'm on Linux too):
1213m 272m 43m R
and this is not a problem. The first figure 1213 MB includes also libraries shared with other programs. 272 MB is how much memory Firefox is using on its own. 639 MB for you, which is quite a lot but if you have a lot of tabs and windows it should be expected.
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Tell me your secret.
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In all 4 years I have been using Firefox, I have never seen it went pass 800MBs RAM, even with the heaviest browsing (about 70+ tabs), so I can't understand why people complains so much about it consuming too much ram :-/ Sure it consume quite a bit of ram with normal browsing (171MB with 10 tabs open on Linux right now) but I haven't seen any memory leak yet. I also tend to keep Firefox open for several days too.
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Man, there must be something seriously broken with my (vanilla Ubuntu) install. I regularly have to kill Firefox because it's causing my 8GB machine to hit the swap.
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What version of Firefox are you using?
I've experienced memory leaks in the past, but recently I've been using Firefox 3.5 (on Fedora 11) and Firefox doesn't get over a few hundred megabytes. That's with 7-8 tabs running for several weeks straight.
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It would be a shame if those MBs of RAM would be lying around unused! If
the browser can cache something you might still need, why not store it on a
if-another-app-needs-the-space-I'll-free-it level?
Seriously, I only have problems when I use adobe flash.
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I can get it up to 2GB virtual memory in a morning's average browsing.
(emphasis mine)
Virtual memory has no real bearing on the quantity of physical ram occupied by an application. Virtual memory is a large, expandable, virtually contiguous slice of memory provided by your OS's memory manager. What you're looking for is resident memory. My current FF3.5 session is 'using' 973 MB virtual memory but in reality only 163 MB physical (resident).
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Back in the mists of time when I used to care about filtering out ads (I was on a dial-up connection) I'd run a Privoxy proxy server. Was very effective at ad blocking. Works with any browser, and runs on almost all OSs too.
Quick google search shows that Privoxy is still going strong.
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Both of those addons leak memory like crazy.
A big part of that memory usage is probably caused by them. I bet you wouldn't leak to 2GB nearly as fast, if you disabled your addons. Mind you, your browsing experience would be degraded.
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Thanks for the tip. I'm using it now. We'll see how it goes.
What's the video codec ? (Score:3, Interesting)
are they supporting theora (like firefox) or just h.264 ? both would be great, of course.
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I just noticed the latest chromium update on Linux requires ffmpeg. It will be funny if Chromium/Linux supports all formats while Chrome only supports h.264 by default.
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IIRC, Chrome will support both Ogg/Vorbis. Apple is only supporting h264 in Safari, while FFox will only support Ogg/Vorbis. When h264 gets added to a browser, royalties need to be paid (which is why Mozilla won't go that route). Google is happy to pay and Apple doesn't want Ogg/Vorbis because it doesn't support hardware decoding (same reason why iPhone doesn't support flash).
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AdSweep != AdBlock+ (Score:4, Informative)
Chrome OS being Linux based, where's the Linux ver (Score:2)
LoB
Chrome reaches 100 on Acid, Great Sunspider score (Score:3, Interesting)
Having passed all of the different Acid Tests [acidtests.org] with a perfect score on the latest JavaScript oriented Acid [acidtests.org] test.
My thumbnail look at Sunspider scores shows about a 20% overall speedup over the latest Firefox beta, but Firefox wins in enough of the individual tests that I expect BOTH to improve quite a bit, that is if the fastest times on each are used, even Chrome's time would be 20% better.
Currently unavailable for bleeding edge users (Score:2)
When I went to the Themes page, I got this message: "We're sorry, but themes are available for Google Chrome 3.0.195.3 and above only.: The funny thing is, the about box says I'm running 3.0.195.4!
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Themes sound promising in terms of not having the ugly Chrome look standing out like a sore thumb against the rest of my GTK themed apps, but 64-bit is the killer. That plus the fact that they can't be bothered to make a simple RPM of it and only want to deliver a DEB. It's a shame, because I'd be interested to see how well it works and how much faster it is, especially on my quad core at work.
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I would certainly image it does feel faster than Firefox on Linux x64. As per bug #489146 [mozilla.org], TraceMonkey is still not enabled on x64 Linux builds. This does make it feel rather sluggish on any page with serious amounts of JavaScript (i.e. any Slashdot story), and is something that really bugs me about the 3.5 release. I'm sure I'll really enjoy it someday, but not until I can actually use the biggest enhancement of the release.
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How do you define "wrong"?
Tabs go above the content that is part of the tab.
The address bar is not part of the tab.
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Different != Wrong
In my opinion, it makes more sense for the address bar to be part of the tab, because the address of the page has a 1:1 relationship with the page you're viewing.
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There are several widgets on the address bar, none of which change in layout or behavior depending on which tab you're on, and only one of which changes its contents... and they're ALL "part of the tab"? Give mea break.
If you want to put your tabs somewhere weird, be my guest, but not giving me an option to put it back is a complete deal-killer for me. It drives me crazy. I quit using Opera when they started doing that, and I'm not going to bother even looking at Chrome until they fix it.
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If you want to put your tabs somewhere weird, be my guest, but not giving me an option to put it back is a complete deal-killer for me. It drives me crazy. I quit using Opera when they started doing that
Just FYI, you can configure Opera to have tabs below address bar if you want. Go into Appearance, enable "Main Bar" - which is displayed above tabs - and then drag the address field (and Back/Forward, and whatever else you want there) onto it. Then hide the address bar completely.
By the way, I'm not sure what you mean by Opera "starting doing it", because Opera tabs were always positioned above the address bar by default. Everyone else followed it from there... Well, in much older versions (like Opera 6, II
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You can't understand that some people might see things differently than you?
Sure. That's why the position of the tabs should be an option.
As I already pointed out.
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Yes, I may switch from Firefox for work (Windows) and home (Mac) if they only got the Mac version more mature. I can still not even drag my bookmarks on the bookmarks bar, and such basic things. Besides, I find the touchpad scrolling much more sluggish in Chrome for Mac than Firefox for Mac, for some reason. It's a bit annoying, because it's a wonderful browser on Windows.
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The point of using (now and even after Chrome is released) Stainless [stainlessapp.com] is its nifty "parallel sessions" feature (i.e. log into the same site with different accounts simultaneously) -- something Chrome, FF and Safari don't have.
Re:I want a Mac beta of that (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/eula_dev.html?dl=mac [google.com]