Google Rolls Out Chrome 7 292
An anonymous reader writes "Google on Tuesday released a new stable version of its internet browser, Chrome 7. The latest update is part of Google's promise in July to release a new stable version of Chrome about every six weeks. Chrome 7 comes with hundreds of bug fixes, an updated HTML5 parser, the File API, and directory upload via input tag. It is available in the stable and beta channels for Windows, Mac, and Linux. 'The main focus was the hundreds of bug fixes,' Jeff Chang, a Google product manager, wrote in a blog post."
One request...please! (Score:3, Insightful)
Can I open a local file from a menu? Is that too much to ask???
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Ctrl+O
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Yes and the way most people learn keyboard shortcuts is... by first seeing them in the application menu. Putting back the http:// protocol prefix and trailing slash on root directory index would be a good idea too.
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Considering Ctrl+O is a ubiquitous standard such that any application down to MS paint to Adobe CS that can open files uses Ctrl+O to open files, I think they saw it at least once.
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Eh, as much as I agree that it's "standard" operating procedure, I've been tricked by some apps that have different meanings for CTRL+D (Delete or Duplicate line) that can really screw with the user.
Besides, it's nice to tell someone new to a PC who may be flipping through a menu trying to find a way to do it.
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.. What about it Ctrl+O?
On Chrome 7, Windows 7, it shows me an open file dialog box.
7.0? Really? (Score:3, Informative)
Why isn't it 6.x? Does this mean in 6 weeks they'll give us 8.0? Whatever happened to using the numbers AFTER the decimal point, especially for releases that concentrate mostly on bug-fixes?
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Re:7.0? Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
But even if there was a Chrome X 10.whatever, the other browser Opera 11 will still "beat" them. ;-)
And poor seaMokney is only on 2. ;-)
That must be a lousy browser.
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No ones going to download it if it isn't a "new" version.
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Chrome auto-updates, there's no need to try and trick people into downloading anything.
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Is the placebo effect real? Yes, if you don't care how you achieve results. They'd call it Chrome Deluxe 2010 Ultra Extreme if that'd bring more users. Unlike many open source projects that are anti-marketing, not just neutral to it but actually opposed to using more "marketable" names.
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Is Chrome considered "open source" like firefox, or "closed" like Opera? I'm confused. It's owned by Google so I'd think closed but not sure.
Windows NT 6.1 is called "seven" on the packaging Chrome 6.1 or Chrome 7.0 version numbering really means little.
IMHO
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Is Chrome considered "open source" like firefox, or "closed" like Opera?
"Chromium" is like the "Darwin kernel" (MacOS X), which is open source, where Apple contributes and receives contributions, while creating their own environment on top (the rest of the OS) that is closed source.
"Google Chrome Browser" is a modified and closed adaptation of Chromium that adds google's branding and datamining-ware --I think it also added that Mozilla-dreaded H.264 decoder or some other licensed software that can't be open sourced.
You can definitely choose Chromium for the sake of privacy, but
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The base for Chrome, chromium, is open source. I'm not sure how much, if any, code is proprietary in the Google Chrome binaries, but from using builds based on the open-source code there does not seem to be much difference. Opera, AFIAK, is mostly, if not completely, closed-source. Firefox is open-source, but Mozilla has strict rules on branding of builds not compiled by them (the reason for "IceWeasel" in Debian).
The difference between Microsoft calling NT 6.1 "seven" is that it is pure marketing. The vers
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"major.minor.bugfix" was never any kind of universal standard. As far as I know, only Unix programs used to use that back in the day. Others mostly used major.minor.
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Probably will change versioning naming scheme in not very long... at this rate will have numbers higher than the full year this decade.
In the other hand, is still a young product, probably will slow down new versions rate as its feature set stabilizes.
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Re:7.0? Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not to say that Google is not catching up fast, just that they are focusing on version numbers in their add copies, while primarily fixing bugs in actuality.
Compare this to firms that are actually trying to deliver a useful feature set to customers, rather than just focusing on metrics that have long been shown to be meaningless. Firefox is happy at 3.6 Safari is happy at 5. Opera, which may have been around longer than google itself, is only at 10.63. These are people who deliver useful browser.
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I'm confused, are you saying the lower (version #)/(number of years out) a browser is, the better? Are you saying Chrome isn't a useful browser?
I don't primarily use Chrome, but I respect it as a browser and consider it fully functional/useful.
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I said this before and I will say this again. Google, just like MS, is playing the version game so they make an immature browser seem equal to other browser, at least to the unsophisticated portion of the customer base.
How is Chrome immature?
Google's explanation is that shorter development cycles mean that they won't have to wait as long if some new feature missed the feature freeze.
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What Google is doing is applying Lean Software Development [wikipedia.org] principles to eliminate waste and deliver useful features more quickly to customers.
Re:7.0? Really? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Why isn't it 6.x? Does this mean in 6 weeks they'll give us 8.0? Whatever happened to using the numbers AFTER the decimal point, especially for releases that concentrate mostly on bug-fixes?
Did you ever wonder at how arbitrary such numbering schemes are? To the end user, a new version is a new version. They either have to download an update or they don't. (Mac or Ubuntu take the version numbering to extremes by giving new versions get fancy animal names. Not a bad idea, really...)
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Why isn't it 6.x? Does this mean in 6 weeks they'll give us 8.0? Whatever happened to using the numbers AFTER the decimal point, especially for releases that concentrate mostly on bug-fixes?
They already are. They sometime issue security fixes (and, more rarely, urgent bug fixes) as only bumping the build number.
As for the 6.0/7.0/8.0, well, it's simply Google's way of doing it. For what it's worth, Google use to refer their releases as "milestones".
I don't think they look at version numbers as you do.
Every 6 weeks (Score:4, Insightful)
So by the time we reach the end of 2011, we'll be on Chrome 16???
What's the point of all these frequent releases? Maybe I ought to give this browser a try... but Firefox and seaMonkey have served me well since I quit Mozilla Netscape, so I'm inclined not to change. ("If it ain't broke...")
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Re:Every 6 weeks (Score:4, Insightful)
So by the time we reach the end of 2011, we'll be on Chrome 16???
What's the point of all these frequent releases?
How is this a "troll"? Looks like an honest question to me. Are questions no longer allowed on slashdot??? Apparently people seeking information are now considered undesirables.
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What's the point of all these frequent releases?
My theory is that they are trying to scare the bejesus out of Microsoft and even Mozilla into doing more frequent releases themselves. The main thing holding back Google's entire strategy is that browsers aren't good enough yet. They want to take over the whole business market by moving it into the cloud using Google Apps. But they can't because browsers suck. So they make Chrome - a browser that doesn't suck. It's been helpful but what they really need is to influence the other browsers, and on
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Artificially dividing feature releases into major and minor feature releases makes sense only if you have preplanned major and minor releases. Chrome does not. Chrome has a regular release schedule. The features that are ready for stable release at the time for the stable release go into the release. All of these get a major version number. You don't have a long process building to a 3.7 release that gets renumbered 4.0. You get a short cycle between stable fea
can Chrome lose the HAL Simon mascot please? (Score:3, Funny)
HAL
http://www.google.com/images?q=hal+9000 [google.com]
Simon
http://www.google.com/images?q=simon+game [google.com]
Chrome mascot
http://www.google.com/images?q=chrome+browser+logo [google.com]
Re:can Chrome lose the HAL Simon mascot please? (Score:5, Funny)
Answer to can Chrome lose the HAL Simon mascot? (Score:3, Funny)
Answer: I can't do that Dave.
P.S. In all seriousness I don't like the default icon either as it was too distractingly colorful. I switched it to this one, called Chrome Z-Edition [deviantart.com].
Updated (Score:5, Interesting)
I read this news item and said to myself "Oh, Chrome 7 is out. Maybe I should go get it."
Then I realized I already had it. It updated while I slept and I was reading the article in Chrome 7.
AdBlock (Score:5, Interesting)
And for the Chrome-heads who point out AdBlock [google.com], it is a good start but still nowhere near as effective. It lets many ads through, it still downloads and just hides a large chunk of ads, and it does not seem to stop flash ads at all.
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And this is Chome's fault how? Adblock + Flash block might be a better combination to try though.
Re:AdBlock (Score:5, Informative)
It's Chrome's fault because scripts can't run before page content is loaded.
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Just so you know, they can on Safari.
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t's Chrome's fault because scripts can't run before page content is loaded.
Chrome supports onbeforeload, but yes, there are some limitations remaining that are being worked on.
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Okay, well, I know that it didn't used to when extensions were first introduced, but obviously it wasn't the only issue.
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Re:AdBlock (Score:4, Informative)
Privoxy works very well for me.
Re:AdBlock (Score:4, Informative)
Privoxy is far inferior: it's slower, it requires more setup, it's not as aware of all the different ads out there, being without adblock-like update channels, and it's not as interactive, being separate from the GUI.
Re:AdBlock (Score:4, Informative)
I don't see anymore adds with the default setting with Adblock for chrome than I do for adblock plus for firefox.
Granted, this is just my experience and I am sure that you have many example that you could share but felt that there was no need to.
I don't see any adds on slashdot, fox, cnn, gmail, sourceforge, rapidshare, imdb, etc in chrome.
Re:AdBlock (Score:4, Informative)
I don't see anymore adds with the default setting with Adblock for chrome than I do for adblock plus for firefox.
Granted, this is just my experience and I am sure that you have many example that you could share but felt that there was no need to.
I don't see any adds on slashdot, fox, cnn, gmail, sourceforge, rapidshare, imdb, etc in chrome.
Rest assured that although you don't see them, you are downloading many of them. And being tracked by them ;)
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Hence why my /etc/hosts file is several KB in size...
Re:AdBlock (Score:4, Informative)
Bullshit. Unless you're calling the Chrome Adblock author a liar.
https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/gighmmpiobklfepjocnamgkkbiglidom [google.com]
"New in version 2.0: Ads are actually blocked from downloading now, instead of just being removed after the fact!"
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What are adds? [grin]
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Yet it still doesn't have an equivalent to AdBlock Plus. And for the Chrome-heads who point out AdBlock [google.com], it is a good start but still nowhere near as effective. It lets many ads through, it still downloads and just hides a large chunk of ads, and it does not seem to stop flash ads at all.
I acknowledge that the Chrome plug-in has limitations by itself, but I personally find it much more than adequate because I also took a couple of minutes to write a cron script to to download and apply the latest hosts file [mvps.org]. I never see ads; I can't remember the last time I saw a Flash ad, and my bandwidth isn't wasted on ads (or worse).
The Chrome plug-in is only good enough for grandma and average users, but the rest of us have a multi-layered strategy anyway. Firefox is a great browser, but I liked i
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Bookmark sidebar (Score:2, Insightful)
Chrome 7 (Score:2, Funny)
Finally a version I can run on Windows 7
I don't know about everyone else... (Score:2)
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On the other hand, the first time an automatic update breaks something, there'll be hell to pay.
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Yes, Chrome has always done this. Apparently it saves on the support budget to have a single version of chrome for all users (just like pretty much every other google product).
Where is print preview for God's sake? (Score:4, Insightful)
Really, can someone convince me that asking for this feature is asking too much after all these Chrome iterations? What's really wrong with this feature that makes it unappealing to implement? Come on Google!
Baby steps (Score:2, Interesting)
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Where is it? Which version are you referring to? Can't wait to see this much wanted feature in my case.
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How about giving users 'what they want?' Those who see no need for this can disable its presence in the menu. Again, I may want to print stuff on my own terms...not on what folks like you as me to do i.e.
"...save the html and open it into a program made for printing like Word."
.
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You should not be printing web pages; the website should provide you with a document to print if information is actually needed in dead-tree form.
Right, so you've never printed a page from Google Maps?
Chrome is okay, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
Other than that, I like Chrome for its speed.
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Debian's 7.0.544.0 older than Google's 7.0.517 (Score:2)
Interesting, Debian has chromium-browser (the brand-stripped chrome that lacks some of the phone-home features) in its experimental repository as 7.0.544.0~r61416-1 [debian.org] while Google's apt repository is featuring 7.0.517.41-r62167 as both beta and stable (unstable has moved to 8.0.552.5-r62886). Unless I'm mistaken, those version numbers are composed of [version]~[VCS revision]-[package version] and chromium-browser's versions are pinned to their equivalent google-chrome version. That makes the current version
Default (Score:2)
Did anyone else have this occur?
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I did not have Chrome installed, and then installed it. (though it has previously been on this computer)
Don't take my word for it... just wondered if anyone else had experienced this.
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My fault.
Can I copy and paste into the /. edit box? (Score:2)
Still no.
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Yes, that's been annoying me. I installed Chromium on my shiny new Ubuntu Maverick rather than Chrome, and it seems to work there.
I'm more excited about "Facebook Disconnect" (Score:2)
I'm more excited about "Facebook Disconnect", the new Chrome extension from Google. I'm hoping that a similar extension follows for Firefox and the other browsers.
Chrome/chromium ugly fonts in Ubuntu (Score:2)
Does anyone else have a problem with the ugly fonts in Chromium in ever since Ubuntu Lucid came out? It was the same in recent Chromes, which is why I have the version pinned to 5.0.342.7-r42476 .
The problem is that recent Chromiums seem to not use the specified font (DejaVu sans or serif), and instead have a really thin, unreadable font which you have to Ctrl++ many times to be readable, which then widens the web page beyond the browser width.
Anybody else encounter this?
MathML (Score:2)
Where is the MathML (the official W3C mark-up language for mathematics) support?
Firefox has rendered MathML quite well for years now. Google's explanation was that "we will support MathML when webkit does". This was an annoying response, since a $200 billion dollar corporation with 20,000 geniuses as employees could certainly contribute the resources to webkit to add MathML in short order. But now webkit has got MathML implemented! And we have a new release of Chrome! So where is the MathML?
I have always fo
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Google chrome is the new kid on the block, but is already at version 7... that's fast...
Hey neat, they fixed the bug where I couldn't paste into slashdot's textarea if I already wrote <i>
Oh damn, it only worked in the first textarea
Re:Lots of versions (Score:4, Interesting)
It would nice if it improves Youtube playback. It worked at some point, but then after some mandatory sneaky update it broke. For those of you that haven't experienced Youtube breakage: you get a completely incorrect error message and no video. Not only on the main site, but also the 90% of internet video that is just an embedded Youtube player. It can't be diagnosed or fixed and there are thousands of complaints out there on forums about the problem. If you randomly hit then there is no fix.
Then that started working again (was it with 5.0 or 6.0, I forget). But now anything above 480p stutters like crazy. It is a real shame because Chrome is a nice browser, but if they can't even maintain compatibility with one of the largest sites on the web (which they own FFS) then they have issues. Every other browser on my machine can play the same video though the same drivers without a problem.
At this point I might go back to the bloated piece of crap that Firefox has become on the mac....
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Google Chrome 7.0.517.41 on Linux 64-bit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxdskI3uV3A [youtube.com]
at 720p
No chop whatsoever in windowed or full screen view.
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At this point I might go back to the bloated piece of crap that Firefox has become on the mac....
The first thing I downloaded after buying my Acer Win 7 netbook was firefox, and I'm a bit disappointed in it since I wiped Windows. I tell the Linux Firefox to work offline, but the next time I open it it's back online trying to reload pages it already loaded. Its Windows counterpart doesn't do this.
<tinfoil>Did Microsoft give Mozilla some money or something?
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I assume it probably has something to do with a difference of OS settings? I know private browsing turns itself off when restarting the browser - by design so maybe the Linux version is also coded to reset the offline status on reload (or not retain it on shutdown.)
Re:Lots of versions (Score:4, Informative)
The Linux version listens to DBUS events, so it knows whether the system thinks it is online or not.
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that's not fast (Score:2)
that's just version numbering manipulation to appear fast
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If IE took that version numbering manipulation from the start... Meaning a new IE version with every Windows Update... What would we be on? IE4000?
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By your logic, I guess we need to check which subversion (or git) revision Chrome is on to get a real version number.
Most updates to IE in windows updates are bug fixes. Same is true for Chrome which is why neither project gets version numbers the way you are suggesting.
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Not to mention there are many components to each, with each component progressing at its own pace. Google Chrome's "version" number is really a public release number.
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It's easy to do that when you arbitrarily bump up the major version number every six months to "catch up" with Internet Explorer 8.
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That's every six WEEKS, not months, and I would highly doubt "catching up with IE" is of any interest. Will you be singing that same tune when Chrome 16 comes out in one year (54 weeks)?
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In other projects, the same release might have gone "1.1.1, 1.1.2., 1.1.3" (or if it's an independent OSS project "0.010, 0.011, 0.012" ;) - or 10, 15, 20, 25 30.
I see the appeal of google's choice though - it keeps things simple. "What version are you on?" "3.6.10"... ? Isn't easier to just call it 5?
The only people who really care about the significance of "dot" releases as opposed to major releases are us developers - and perhaps marketing types. End users a
100% coverage is expensive (Score:5, Informative)
Just how the hell did such a bug infected version get released to begin with?
A test suite that guarantees 100% coverage is called formal verification [wikipedia.org]. As I understand it, this is far too labor-intensive for commercial off-the-shelf PC software. So there's a trade-off: you can write a bigger test suite, not ship a product, and bring in no revenue; or you can fix defects and add them to the test suite as they are discovered. For decades, the latter has been sufficient for PC software used by the general public.
Re:100% coverage is expensive (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Still Playing Catch-UIp (Score:4, Interesting)
I really start to get scared when a developer releases an update to a product and starts off by declaring that there are "hundreds of bug fixes".
Can you name even a single large software product (other than ultra-expensive avionics) that provably doesn't have hundreds of bugs?
Re:Still Playing Catch-UIp (Score:4, Interesting)
No, but that doesn't mean you talk about it. At a previous job one of the lead developers was responsible for writing the release notes. At one version, he bragged in there about how "over 200 bugs" had been fixed in that release. Not long after letting it out the door, we started getting a barrage of emails from angry customers demanding to know "why your software has hundreds of bugs in it."
The reality is that software has bugs. The reality is also that most users will never be impacted by all of them. Touting the number of bug fixes as if it's some kind of badge of honor just confuses people and makes them panic.
He no longer got to write the release notes after that.
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Maybe that's because you didn't specify how the method's being called, or offer suggestions as to how it's supposed to behave. Is it actually a bug in Chrome's implementation of Javascript? Maybe the TeamSite app has some broken browser detection.
Can you supply a unit test that only fails on Chrome? It might be a coincidence (or just copied unspecified behavior) that the other browsers work.
Without more information, it's not clear at all if there's even a bug, let alone where it might be. There are more pre
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Try "chrome://flags [chrome], if your running the Dev build (or Canary, the daily) on certain OSs then side tabs is an experimental option. I know it is available on the Windows version, and am pretty sure it is there on the Linux versions now.