Google Chrome, the Google Browser 807
Philipp Lenssen writes "Google announced their very own browser project called Google Chrome — an announcement in the form of a comic book drawn by Scott McCloud, no less. Google says Google Chrome will be open source, include a new JavaScript virtual machine, include the Google Gears add-on by default, and put the tabs above the address bar (not below), among other things. I've also uploaded Google's comic book with all the details (details given from Google's perspective, anyway... let's see how this holds up). While Google provided the URL www.google.com/chrome there's nothing up there yet."
Very Interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
I imagine the first question on everyone's mind will be, "Why do we need a new web browser?" To which I imagine the truthful answer is: "We don't. At least not for technical reasons."
I believe what Google is looking to accomplish is to trade on their brand name in an attempt to further dislodge Internet Explorer.
Remember when AOL purchased Netscape? AOL didn't care about the browser in the slightest. They wanted Netscape for the brand name. To the vast majority of users, Netscape was the Internet.
Google has since taken that place. Google is the Internet to many people. So much so that Google has felt compelled to to prevent the genericizing [independent.co.uk] of their mark.
In this particular case, however, the strength of their mark works to Google's advantage. They have already convinced millions of users to install their desktop software. If they can further convince millions of users to install and use their browser, they can cause enough of a disruption to finally remove IE's leadership in the browser market. Especially given the solid work already done by FireFox, Opera, and Safari. With only another 10% marketshare loss on the whole, even the most stubborn websites will be forced to support third party browsers. And once they support third party browser, it will be very little time before the technological superiority of the alternative browsers causes them to add special features not available for Internet Explorer users.
It will be Netscape vs. Internet Explorer all over again. Except that instead of two giants fighting it out, it will be Microsoft against everyone else. And when everyone else happens to be giants in their own right, Microsoft's prospects will start looking rather grim.
In effect, this move is a blow aimed squarly at Redmond. Not for the purposes of truth, justice, and the freedom of all mankind; as I'm sure many will imagine. Rather, for the purpose of hitting back at Microsoft for their attempts to leverage their monopoly in promoting MSN Search over Google. The only difference is that Google Search is a good product and it is entrenched. Internet Explorer hasn't been a good product since Microsoft stopped developing it nearly 8 years ago (piss-poor upgrades pretending to be standards-compliant not withstanding), and its entrenchments are slowly falling to competition.
Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Funny)
To the vast majority of users, Netscape was the Internet.
Google has since taken that place. Google is the Internet to many people. So much so that Google has felt compelled to to prevent the genericizing [independent.co.uk] of their mark.
Well I'd better do some googling to find out about that.
Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Funny)
To take advantage of the forefront in "tabs at the top" technology, of course. I am personally very excited that science has progressed to the point where we can now have tabs above the address bar.
Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
I know you're being snarky, but if you actually think about it, the address bar really *does* belong under the tab bar.
The address is a property of the current page. Placing it above the tabs puts it into the same space as the persistent elements like the file/edit menus. Those are application-wide. Below the tabs puts it into the same space as the page content, which makes sense as it isn't an application-wide property, but is directly related to the selected tab.
I'd never thought about it before, and can't say I'm bothered with the current setup (address above the tabs) but there is a sense to it.
Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that I care, but maybe the "user" perceives the content of tabs & current page as more related while not being aware of the address of the current page at all.
CC.
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Don't be silly, Google *loves* URLs. Well, at least certain ones. http://www.google.com/ [google.com] is awesome, as are http://www.blogger.com/ [blogger.com] http://www.gmail.com/ [gmail.com] http://www.youtube.com/ [youtube.com] and http://www.froogle.com/ [froogle.com] just to name a few!
Re:Very Interesting... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's a matter of personnel opinion and I seriously hope there will be an option to fix the location if you don't like it.
Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Funny)
I'll contact HR and have them run a survey for ya
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The point is that when you click on a tab, stuff _below_ it changes. A tab is not an element "click me and all around the screen stuff changes". A tab is an element that tells you "if you switch to a different tab, stuff below me changes".
Now look what happens when you currently click on a different tab in Firefox, Safari or IE: stuff changes below it (the page) and above it (the URL in the address bar). This is illogical! It dillutes the meaning of a tab. And it makes it difficult for normal computer users
Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
Judging by the rest of your post, what you really mean is that the address bar does belong with the page. But so do tabs. The active tab is directly connected with the page that's displayed.
Since both the address bar and the tabs both can't be right above the page proper, another solution is then to place either the tabs or the address bar below the page. Yes, below it. Or place the tabs at the side, like most normal books with tabs.
Personally, I'd like to see the address bar at the bottom, which fits with the GUI paradigm of a shell, where your input is always at the bottom, or instant messaging programs, where the input is at the bottom, or line editors, where -- you catch my drift.
But people are easily confused, and probably too used to the URL field being at the top, so it might be better to place the tabs at the bottom (or the sides).
Re:Very Interesting... (Score:4, Interesting)
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But the space they're taking up is less useful.
Increasingly people these days have wide-aspect displays, while web pages are generally designed to have a single fairly narrow column that scrolls vertically. I have this Slashdot window quite wide and it's still only using slightly over half the width of my screen. I could well afford to have tabs containing a decent-length page title beside it.
Not to mention that with tabs at the
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Try Tree Style Tabs as a Firefox addon -https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4287?addons-author-addons-select=5890
I've been using it for a few months and it works pretty well on a 22" monitor, as someone else has also mentioned.
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Try it for a day. Then comment.
It sucks. As do all the things that open up on the side of the page like the history (ctrl-h) and bookmarks (ctrl-b) in FireFox.
I really don't like things to open or display on the side in most cases, except in file browsers that have the directory tree on the left and files on the right. (Just so you know: when I put post-it tabs on dead tree books, I put them at the top).
I've got a really neat and revolutionary idea, though: Why not let the user decide where the tabs go?
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Believe it or not, that's actually one of the reasons I don't use Firefox. That, and the related problem that it only lets one tab be visible at once. I can't, for example, view two tabs side by side or above/below each other.
Even if they fixed everything else, those two issues would keep me away.
Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Informative)
You've never used Opera have you?
Default look is tabs (well, more like mini windows unlike binder tabs) over the adress bar. =/
Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Funny)
And there's more:
They've taken IE's disgusting perverted porn mode idea that only perverts would use, and put it in their own browser so now you can use it to keep your wholesome family activity like buying surprise gifts for your loving husband or your precious children, a delightful little secret for now. Finally, a browser for good-old fashioned God fearing Americans like you and me. Gosh, those perverts at Microsoft, a porn mode! Who would imagine such a thing...
Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's true. My dad refers to the *entire internet* as Google. Sigh.
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Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually the question on my mind is what's going to happen to Mozilla? As I remember, they get most of their backing from Google generously paying for the traffic they get from Mozilla's search plugin. If Google cancels that deal (and they very well might, if they have a competing browser), Mozilla will lose most of its cash-flow very suddenly.
So with fierce competition from webkit and Opera and a lot less money all of a sudden, and a browser from Google that does anything just as well as FF does it and a few things better, Mozilla may be left struggling. This may not be such a terrible thing, Mozilla grew from nothing, it could be an important lesson to go back there, but they may not survive going from being one of the best funded web browsers to one of the worst funded web browsers in just a few months.
Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Informative)
Google doesn't pay Mozilla because they like firefox. They pay because Mozilla drives millions of hits to Google's search engine. As long as firefox is doing that, Google will pay (although, I'm sure they will only freely advertise their own browser now).
Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
That's certainly true to a point; however, rigging up a monetized Google Custom Search is all of five minutes work. The behavior to a search at google.com is a tiny bit different (you can also weight the results with keywords; I find this quite helpful for my development work), but the biggest change for them would be that they'd have to change the default home page from google.com/mozillasearch to mozilla.com/googlesearch, and the search box accordingly.
Do know that the Google search isn't anything near their only source of funding. The Amazon search in that top-right search box is an Amazon Affiliate search - tag=mozilla-20 gets added into your Amazon search URL, and they get a minimum of 4% of the purchase price provided you went through their affiliate link last (I don't see why people gripe about this kind of thing so often, it only costs Amazon money, not the purchaser). With the volume that probably does, it's more like 6-8% on most items.
I'm sure that there are plenty of other sources of income for Mozilla, though I'd expect those are the biggest two. And both are structured in such a way that they'd have to be personally blocked from using the affiliate program (unlikely, especially given the bad press), or the program itself would have to be shut down entirely (even more unlikely, as half the internet gets its funding from these things).
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually the question on my mind is what's going to happen to Mozilla? As I remember, they get most of their backing from Google generously paying for the traffic they get from Mozilla's search plugin. If Google cancels that deal (and they very well might, if they have a competing browser), Mozilla will lose most of its cash-flow very suddenly.
I can't see that happening. If Google canceled that deal they would loose all that traffic they get from FireFox users. They want to pull more people off of IE and onto a browser that uses google search by default. I doubt whether they care much if it's their browser or FF, just adding Google browser to the mix will add another front to the war that MS has to fight.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
Safari, FireFox, and Opera (in that order) have been showing marked improvements in Javascript performance. To the point where Javascript performance is a major point of competition. Microsoft's JScript engine is currently the slowest Javascript engine on the browser market. (As I can personally attest after running sophisticated sorting algorithms through it.) So the problem still comes back to Internet Explorer.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That's because Flash 9 received a brand new Virtual Machine. FireFox was given the code for it (it's called Tamarin [mozilla.org]), but it has not yet made it into a release. Once it does, FireFox and Flash 9 should show similar performance profiles.
Previous versions of Flash were absolutely terrible from a performance perspective. So the entire JS-language community is slowly moving forward. :-)
1 Single Main reason : Multi-process (Score:4, Insightful)
I imagine the first question on everyone's mind will be, "Why do we need a new web browser?" To which I imagine the truthful answer is: "We don't. At least not for technical reasons."
No, sorry, but there's a big honking huge reason :
Multiple process.
This is going to greatly improve stability of browsing.
Currently, all browsers run a 1 single process (well with some exception for some browser plugins in Firefox - mostly the opensource one - which use a thin plugins to call an external processus like gnash or mplayer).
If anything fucks up (and boy that happens often with Flash plugin in Linux) the whole browser is gone.
If there's a bug in the engine (automatic dictionary recognition was broken when switching between tabs from one textarea straight into another), the whole browser is down.
If there's a freeze (old-style virus scanning plugins in Firefox or on-the-fly scan in Windows) the whole browser is inusable.
All this could be averted if each page and each plugin was enforced to run in a separate process.
In worst case you would only lose the current page.
Flash would only crash its very own process, buggy pages will only crash alone without taking down the whole browser. Virus scan won't stop the user browsing in other tabs.
And as a side effect, this kind of organisation will better benefit from the current crop of 4x and 3x cores desktop CPUs.
I've been dreaming for a good multi-process browser for ages.
I'm just astonished that it comes in the form of a new project from google and not as a complete rewrite of the Firefox browser.
But maybe Firefox has slowly reached the point where it is past it's revolutionary golden period and is now simply polishing it's current model but isn't going to switch to something new (just like "Mozilla 1.x" did stagnate until FireFox/FireBird/Phoenix emerge)
Or maybe Chrome will be the slight stimulation that Mozilla needed to stop masturbate over their growing market share and return back to revolutionize the browsing experience.
PS:
According to the comic, Google Chrom won't use a simple address bar, but what they call an "omni-bar".
Cue in all whine boys who where complaining about Mozilla's switch to "awesome bar" in FireFox 3.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If you've been dreaming of a multi-process browser for ages, you could start using IE8 on Windows! It lets you configure how many processes you want, from one process for all tabs+plugins through to a separate process for each tab/plugin. (And the "frame" running in a separate frame). http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/07/28/ie8-and-reliability.aspx [msdn.com]
Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm only 9 pages into the comic but the fact that every tab and plugin will run as a separate process seems significant to me and something more than just a rebranding.
Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Very Interesting... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Very Interesting... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Funny)
Well how else you think Schroedinbugs [catb.org] can exist? Microsoft is way ahead of Open Source world on this one.
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Re:Very Interesting... (Score:4, Informative)
"I'm only 9 pages into the comic but the fact that every tab and plugin will run as a separate process seems significant to me and something more than just a rebranding."
Which is good because current plugins in firefox (they add up) will freeze/slowdown/crash the browser, and I hate that, it's Firefox 3 too.
Re:Very Interesting... (Score:4, Insightful)
The V8 Javascript engine sounds like a huge improvement as well. Finally, precise, incremental garbage collection for Javascript! I'm hoping this is the beginning of the end for conservative garbage collection and (ugh!) reference counting. The JIT sounds good as well but there will be stiff competition in this area from Firefox 3.1 with TracingMonkey, and SquirrelFish is nothing to sneeze at either.
Now that Javascript performance is on its way to being solved, and local storage and offline mode are close to becoming standard, the last bastion of non-Web applications is graphics. Browsers still don't provide a graphics API that could seriously challenge native apps for things like image and video editing, 3D graphics and games. VRML and SVG don't work as graphics APIs. Some people have forgotten, but we learned long ago that immediate mode is the only way to do graphics; scene graphs/retained mode are a dead end. We need OpenGL ES in the browser.
Looking even further ahead: if OpenCL was exposed to web applications as well, there's practically nothing that couldn't be done in a web app. At that point, Windows becomes irrelevant, and Microsoft's monopoly is finally broken.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
(ugh!) reference counting
Why all the hate for reference counting? Automatic reference counting with cycle detection is a nice way of doing accurate GC. It has more deterministic performance when done with a generational cycle detector than a pure tracing collector, and works better in a number of distributed computing settings. Presumably you've read the Unified Theory of Garbage Collection paper from TJW if you're commenting on this topic, so I'm interested in what you see as the problem with reference counting, since tracing a
Re:Very Interesting... (Score:4, Interesting)
I haven't read the Unified GC Theory, but here is my take on it:
Re:Very Interesting... (Score:4, Interesting)
I suppose I ought to give you a link [acm.org] to the paper.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Opera build [opera.com], Opera Code example [opera.com]
Firefox Addon [vlad1.com]
Another advantage to giving web apps this power- it makes learning programming (especially the flashy bits) easier. Elementry-schoolers needn't worry about configuring compilers, managing imports, window handles, etc; the browser does it all. HTML and parts of Javascript are simple enough to explain with a good teacher; gloss over the trickier bits at first with a vood
Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
Hopefully, that means that Konqueror will be added to the official list of "supported" browsers then.
I really dislike having to use Firefox / Iceweasel to clear my spam folder. (Agent spoofing gives me the interface, but when I try to click on anything, I get stuck in a page loading loop. Either that or the whole page highlights itself and I can't chose anything.)
I know I can manually delete spam, page by page, with the html interface, but when you have +1000 spams, that gets tedious, fast.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Informative)
Does that mean that their relationship with Mozilla will be ending?
Google recently renewed their monetary agreement with Mozilla [betanews.com] for 3 more years.
So, no, it seems their relationship remains strong. Google Chrome sounds like a very cool project, but I'm thinking that it'll be more of an experiment than an actual product, just like most things Google make.
Also, I doubt Mozilla would have a hard time finding funding even if Google pulls the plug on them.
Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Informative)
Firefox isn't the only browser funded primarily by Google; Opera is as well.
Re:Very Interesting... (Score:4, Informative)
Read the cartoon. You'll find a lot of interesting ideas there. It doesn't sound at all like Firefox with a few default extensions and a custom theme.
Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
When I read the comic I seemed to think it looked completely different to Firefox, new process for each tab/plugin/script, new Javascript VM... I suppose they're similar in the fact that they both render web pages, have tabs and extensions, but every browser has those, and that's where the similarities end.
Re:Very Interesting... (Score:4, Interesting)
It looks to my untrained eye like google chrome is working on seriously pushing a web OS (or a hybrid browser/OS)
It'll also make for a damn solid browser, but a lot of the features they're looking to add are necessary for these things to really take off. They want things to be very stable, fast and secure. The first two are needed for wide scale user adoption, and the third is needed to become a long term standard. (and it's far easier to add from scratch than later on.)
They're also working on making it developer friendly it sounds.
I think the tabs on the top is a psychological differentiation - if you have one tab for streaming music and one for reading news, they're really doing two completely different things. I wouldn't be surprised to see subtabs (hopefully with separate processes) below for having x number of 'normal' tabs open.
Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess they will make it seamless to the point you can click an icon and get a remote application launched (without having to open the browser at any time). As for having a beta version released soon, I really doubt Google would release the comic and show their plans to its competitors (mainly Microsoft) if they hadn't something to show very soon.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
ECMAScript 4.0 is a syntactical change. It does not offer new features like multi-threading. Multi-threading is more the domain of the WHATWG APIs. There has recently been quite a bit of talk over a "Worker" API that would allow threads to be spun off into the background.
FWIW, Gears is effectively a Google-specific implementation of many of the
Ha! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Ha! (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
It's the homepage (Score:5, Insightful)
These days, there isn't much to differentiate between browsers as far as end-users are concerned. A "smart homepage" is a very effective way of capturing a user's interest, providing significant convenience, and making it less likely for them to switch away. Opera have started down this road with their speed dial feature, but Google seem to be taking it a big step further. Google have tried this once before, with iGoogle [google.com], but building it into the browser means they can incorporate things like surfing history and bookmarks to determine which websites are most important to a user without needing manual configuration in the same way an online homepage would.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Pardon me, but I'm a bit stunned that anyone might think this is the real reason Google might make a browser.
Cuz, I mean, we all remember how well it worked for Netscape. Don't we?
First, this [archive.org] happened to the world's most popular browser, as it grew to include a kitchen sink. Then, a little over a year later, AOL happened [cnet.com] to Netscape. Mere days later, it was revealed [archive.org] what AOL's real intentions were. They later disbanded what was left of Netscape. And today, nobody gives a shit about AOL's $4,200,000,000
Now they can monitor everything you do easier (Score:4, Insightful)
Now they can monitor everything you do easier...
Google is a marketing company, and in the past has used nefarious ad tracking to even Firefox searches reporting information to the Google servers.
Now they want a browser? Why? What reason would they need for a new browser?
So instead of putting full support behind a 'generic' Firefox, they want to enter the market so they can gather even more information from the user.
Nice... Geesh
Sadly they will get some of the Dell and other bundling deals, because they can afford to pay these companies to put this browser on machines, and most users won't know what is going on behind, even if the tech community finds Google doing the most nefarious things possible with the browser.
This type of concern makes the IE8 privacy mode and blocking sites from tracking users the 'non-evil' choice.
What was Google's ad hoc motto again, and was it just words after all?
Re:Now they can monitor everything you do easier (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Now they can monitor everything you do easier (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Now they can monitor everything you do easier (Score:5, Insightful)
It's open source. I'm sure a project of this magnitude will get lots of looking eyes. Good resource pool for Google to spot talent too.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Now they want a browser? Why? What reason would they need for a new browser? So instead of putting full support behind a 'generic' Firefox, they want to enter the market so they can gather even more information from the user.
That's a pretty big assumption. Since this browser will be open sourced, it's not like they'll be able to hide any tracking. My best guess is they have different motivations. First, this gives them a good project to help contribute to Webkit, which in turn benefits them by further undermining Microsoft's market dominance. Second, it allows them to develop their own Java VM and faster javascripting and pages protected from one another and special windows for Web apps. All of those features point to making a
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opensource it, so i very much doubt your conspiracy theory
Wow, OSS would make it free of any Google server tie ins?
Even Firefox reports back to Google, it is OSS, right?
OSS isn't that magical, it just might make it easier to see what the browser is doing. Which is something you can also do easily with IE/Opera/Safari by watching the network traffic.
I am seriously starting to think the OSS movement is making people dumber.
I hear too many arguments around the, "We need source code to see what a product is d
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
To most people this would mean reporting every URL visited, possibly even what you're typing into forms. To you it means making google.com the default homepage, and OMG if you type something into that box, it's gonna report what you type to Google!! Duh, it's gonna report it to Google because google.com is in the address bar.
You really think this is the only information sent to Google? Really?
Put on your tinfoil hat kiddies, you need to actually research this...
google's relationship with mozilla? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:google's relationship with mozilla? (Score:5, Informative)
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I just uncovered some hidden subtitles (Score:5, Funny)
Just when you thought Google wasn't going to get any cooler, we try desperately to prove you wrong.
Don't worry, it won't be out of Beta until IE 10.
Now with Omni Bar, the omniscient Awesome Bar
Just when you thought data mining couldn't get any closer to home
OK, in all seriousness I think it's nice to see another Webkit based browser around. I'm personally waiting to see the Epiphany team's Webkit based browser. Hopefully, Google's Chrome project will spur some innovations that the Firefox/Safari/Opera/IE competition has failed to supply. Maybe the JS engine will prove it's worth as well, speedups in this area are always nice.
Mozilla? (Score:4, Insightful)
What does this mean for Mozilla, which currently gets most of its financial support from Google? If Google has their own browser which competes against Firefox, will they be inclined to reduce their support of Firefox?
If not, it means Google will be paying for two competitors to Internet Explorer. I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft complains about unfair competition.
In any event, if Google's aim is to further drive people away from IE, they'll have to spend some cash on advertising. Their target is people who are already familiar with Google's brand name, but believe the blue "e" is "how you get to Google." Some of these people launch IE and type "www.google.com" into the address bar every time they want to search for something, because their home page is set to MSN and they are unaware that it can be changed (or that other sites can be bookmarked), let alone know how to do so.
Excellent - I can't wait! (Score:5, Funny)
Not their standard 404 (Score:3, Interesting)
For what it's worth, the 404 error page being served on http://www.google.com/chrome [google.com] is not their standard one - their standard one is to search for the whole url from the looks of things?
What would really impress me... (Score:5, Funny)
would be an *online browser*. Like Google docs. Imagine just how great it would be not to need a browser to go online. History, cookies, bookmarks, all stored on Google servers. Plus it would be incredibly fast since the internet is already on Google servers!
Also that would be very convenient for Google, they could access our private information locally on their servers, no need to "call home". Hell they could even check with our e-bank statements to see how much money we can spend so they could offer really well-targeted ads.
That would be huge. All they need for me to sign up is to throw in some features involving blogs, mashups and Spacebook.
Ex-Firefox developers (Score:5, Interesting)
Did anyone else notice the number of current or former Firefox developers name-checked in that comic? Ben Goodger was the Firefox project lead until recently. The most significant part of this news may be that Google is pulling people off Firefox development (assuming they were contributing to Firefox while working there) and getting them to write a new browser. Still, Firefox is working pretty well and their financial future is secure for the next few years - thanks to wads of cash from Google - so we need not be too worried.
Apart from that, my verdict is 'show us the code'. Announcements of future plans and vapourware are not really interesting, even when it's Google.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This has been in the works since 2006 [wordpress.com].
This will be interesting to watch (Score:3, Interesting)
I've always liked Webkit, but am not as big a fan of Safari since it doesn't have the extensibility and flexibility of Firefox - so I'm going to follow this project closely. There may be some side stories to keep an eye on:
- What will this do to Firefox? If Google Chrome is successful, I suspect it'll be at Firefox's expense rather than IE - at least in the near term.
- What will this mean for Google's add-ons for other browsers? They talk specifically about the "Gears" developers' dissatisfaction with the way current browsers work as a primary motivator for this project. So does this mean Google's tools on browsers other than Chrome are going to become unwanted step-children? That's could hurt the other browsers (if Chrome is popular), but it could also turn around and bite Google.
- What about the Mac (and Linux)? This is important to me, anyway. Google's Mac support is stellar in some areas and poor in others. Will Chrome's development on platforms other than Windows stay apace of its progress on Windows? Maybe the comic answers this, but I haven't managed to get all the way through it yet. I'm on page 10 and *still* there's no mention of any villian.
Designing browser as if it were an OS (Score:5, Interesting)
Based on Page 4 [blogoscoped.com], Google is designing the browser as if it were an operating system. This is something that I commented on previously in the discussion of Microsoft's approach to IE8 [slashdot.org]. Going from shared memory to protected memory was a big step for multitasking on the desktop, and since web applications are more and more complex, the same move needs to be made with browser design.
If IE8 and "Google Chrome" are moving in this direction, what will we see from Safari and Firefox? Safari 4 betas give no indication of a fundamental re-architecting. Firefox 4 is still at least a year away, and so far no one in that community has been publicly talking about this kind of redesign. And Opera... who knows?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Going from shared memory to protected memory was a big step for multitasking on the desktop, and since web applications are more and more complex, the same move needs to be made with browser design
Not really. Javascript doesn't allow arbitrary memory access, so there isn't any concept of an address space to share or separate. Nor is there any requirement that different web pages cannot execute concurrently.
This is a VM/Renderer implementation detail, so that a bug in the browser itself only impacts one tab, but it doesn't do anything to actually improve the current programming model. If you were confident enough in your browser to securely and reliably handle all input, then there is no advantage
Google's own implementation of Flash (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'd love to identify which of my tabs (presumably one running Flash) is causing the memory usage (and kill it, if need be). This sounds like one of the greatest advantages of Google Chrome.
Where's Belgium? (Score:5, Funny)
Weird because the rest of the chart seems pretty correct.
This must mean all of Google are Nazi's.
The comic is AWESOME! (Score:4, Insightful)
That comic is really great. It deals with every question someone interested in the field would have at Google once he hears of this.
"Why a new Brower project?" "Why Webkit?" "Why yet another JavaScript VM?" (OMG, not *again* is what I thought first), etc.
Very informative indeed.
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Re:404?!?!? (Score:5, Informative)
I believe you're confused as to what "404 Not Found" means. It means the page you're looking for isn't there, not that the server is overloaded or can't handle the request. It's not slashdotted.
However, this is not Google's normal 404 page. They've definitely configured www.google.com/chrome differently than the rest of the site, so they're obviously planning to put something there.
Re:404?!?!? (Score:5, Informative)
If you think Google's www.google.com address just goes to one server that picks out different content by file name, you're in for a surprise. Try the http://www.google.com/chrome [google.com] address and the http://www.google.com/chrome1 [google.com] address with a tool that lets you look at the HTTP headers. Look at the "Server" header. Different server code. Google runs a high performance, massively load balanced, widely geographically distributed, HTTP front end that figures out what server to pass things to based on the URI part of the URL. They don't need to do separate hostnames (although they can still do that, too, such as http://maps.google.com/ [google.com] and http://mail.google.com/ [google.com]).
Re:404?!?!? (Score:5, Funny)
Can't stay on task long enough to read a Slashdot summary ? Better up your Ritalin dose.
Re:Webkit (Score:4, Informative)
Apple chose [kde.org] KHTML as the foundation of WebKit for the size and quality of the codebase compared with Gecko, despite having Gecko experts working on the project. It makes sense that others would choose WebKit for the same reasons.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, plus rumour has it Gecko's api is baroque in the extreme. Anyway, given Google's deal with Firefox (the default search engine stuff), it's nice to see they've made their decision on what appears to be purely technical terms, rather than political ones.
Re:Webkit (Score:5, Funny)
So will Google add ad filtering capabilities?
translation... (Score:4, Insightful)
Translation
"I own Microsoft stock options and I'm unhappy". [yahoo.com]
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Having a read of the section around multi-threading / multi-processes it looks like this is the Google OS.
In the same way that widgets on the desktop have become common place, google gear widgets would replace these...and eventually larger pieces of software.
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Re:Uh, Memory Leaks (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, the opposite should be true. Memory won't "leak" from tab to tab. When the tab gets closed, it's memory gets returned to the OS pool by hook or by crook. Only the UI itself should leak memory over the lifetime of the browser.
Re:Opera, Safari, Chrome? (Score:4, Insightful)
According to the TFA, it's multi-process, multi-threaded. ... are over. And yes, it happened to me today on eBay while I was opening up a bunch of auctions looking at cars - some worthless POS put a monster flash based gadget in his auction and brought my entire browser to its knees.
That in and of itself is enough to get my interest.
The days of having FireFox clocked / crashed because some flash or javascript went ape-shit on one of the 20 different tabs you have open
Re:Fine line between clever and stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yes but unless you regularly open 20+ tabs it going to waste a lot of screen real state.
Besides it's ugly, the tab titles get cut tiny anyway, this time always not just when using many tabs.
Now if you only use one window I understand it and I in fact would demand such a layout, but I *like* having separate windows for separate tasks. I often have 2-3 windows (spread on 2 virtual desktops) each one with 1-4 tabs.
Other times I use the tabs as a stack where I simply middle click what I
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They removed folders... To be replaced by labels, which can do everything folders can and more, and since email clients tend to treat them the same it's the EXACT same for client users, and the same except for the word "Label" instead of "Folder" on the web UI.
Of course you can't have the same email in multiple folders, but you can have the same email in multiple labels
I agree that "don't sort it, search it" can be annoying, but it's obvious that they won't remove folders for bookmarks or randomly order tab
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This isnt about "just another open source browser", it goes to the core of several problems that browsers have with today's web requirements.
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WebKit [wikipedia.org] is dual licensed under LGPL and BSDL, so Google can use just about any license they wish, probably BSDL, same as their Gears stuff, but because of the additional LGPL, there will be no "problem" with the FSF and FOSS community.
However, since Mozilla is also under the LGPL, if Google chooses to use the LGPL for the project they could incorporate code from Mozilla if they wanted any...
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By "figure out" do you mean "decide which app to hand it off to"?
There used to be a standard for that on *nix: mailcap files. Then GNOME and KDE did their own things that differ from that, leaving apps to deal with the resulting mess. Firefox will ask GNOME for handler info, then fall back on mailcap files. I keep hearing that GNOME and KDE will get their acts together and converge on something where if you set up a handler in KDE the GNOME API for getting a handler will see it... but until that happens
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the name of the VM doesn't exactly send the signal that it will be the fastest one around?
Hey, I'm a RoadWarrior driving one of the last of the V8s, you insensitive clod!