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Google Businesses The Internet

Google Chrome, Day 2 1016

Posted by CmdrTaco from the lookit-all-them-stories dept.
Seems that almost every story submitted to Slashdot last night in some way involved Google's Chrome that we started talking about yesterday. Dotan Cohen noted that according to Clicky Chrome has hit 3% browser share. Since Google has decided to release Chrome only for Windows, I now share for you 3 reviews written by others: the first comes from alexy2k, the second from mildsiete, and the third from oli4uk. They all seem to feature various opinions, charts, and screenshots demonstrating various exciting points.
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Google Chrome, Day 2 More

Google Chrome, Day 2

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  • Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome (Score:5, Informative)

    by xmas2003 ( 739875 ) * on Wednesday September 03, 2008 @09:26AM (#24858741) Homepage
    I looked at the web logs from a general purpose, non-techy website (Watching Grass Grow) [watching-grass-grow.com] and Chrome accounted for 0.73% of the browser traffic yesterday ... ... and traffic didn't start until after the release at Noon. The User Agent String is "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/525.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/0.2.149.27 Safari/525.13" For comparison, IE was 53.8%, Firefox was 34.6%, Safari was 3.5% (non-Chrome) , Opera was 0.7%, and there was even 0.05% of traffic from an iPhone.

    That's an impressive bump for day one (actually, half a day) and if you (unrealistically) extrapolated that rate, Chrome would have 100% of the browser market by year end! ;-)

    I had to modify the Analog source code to account for the Chrome browser (gotta like open-source) but have have other popular programs (such as Google Analytics) been updated to identify this browser?

  • A couple of annoying things I've found so far (Score:5, Informative)

    by rallymatte ( 707679 ) * on Wednesday September 03, 2008 @09:27AM (#24858751)
    You can't seem to change the default new page. For example, open up a new tab and you'll see recently closed tabs and most visited pages. If a collegue wants to use a browser on your computer you might not want him to see a screenshot on your most viewed pages.
    The other thing that I personally find a bit annoying is that if you don't put http:/// [http] in front of or / after a url that is within one of your search domains, it automatically assumes that you want to search the web for that, lets say there's a server on your network that you haven't visited before called server1.domain.com and you have domain.com among your search domains, it will go off to google.com and search for server1 if you only type in server1 in the address bar. But then again, maybe that's just me.

    -
    Posted with Google Chrome

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Kagura ( 843695 )
      Oh, wow! So that's where they hid "reopen closed tabs" at! Thank you so much!

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by RulerOf ( 975607 )
      No, it's not just you. Crossing DNS and HTTP is historically [wikipedia.org] a very, very bad idea. Unfortunately though, it does improve ease of use for Joe "PEBKAC" Sixpack. Therefore, it'll probably end up being the more popularly desired behavior...

      That said though, when I'm creating static links for use in a shortcut, document, nslookup or whatnot, I tend to use FQDN's myself. It's pretty much only in the browser that I cheat like that.

      I speculate, however, that this conflict of interests is simply a result of

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Tom ( 822 )

      It's not just you. I also find this "intelligence" in browsers annoying as hell. In Firefox, there's a search field right next to the address bar - don't they think I'd use that if I wanted to do a search?

      I'm sure a large part of the /. audience uses hostnames only. That's why we have domains in the DNS system, don't we? So I can put my home machine in there, too, and it knows that by "mail" I mean mail.lemuria.org and not mail.google.com
      And I most certainly don't want it to Google for "mail" - thank you, b

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Deag ( 250823 )

      And don't expect it to change. I find with google that once they release things. New features are not quick in forthcoming and giving users a multitude of options is not their style.

      It is pretty much take it or leave it. This is very evident with google talk, I liked the feel of it but eventually I just couldn't change one or two things that bugged me so I am not so fond of it now.

      That said I welcome a new browser to it all, the more the merrier, we don't want to slip back into the days of IE 6 being all th

  • NetApplications shows 1% share (Score:5, Informative)

    by bunratty ( 545641 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2008 @09:27AM (#24858753)
    According to NetApplications, Chrome has around 1% usage share [hitslink.com]. That's pretty good for a browser still only in beta.

  • Chrome Eval (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ethanol-fueled ( 1125189 ) * on Wednesday September 03, 2008 @09:27AM (#24858759) Homepage Journal
    I tried it out on my XP box yesterday and I was very impressed with it, especially its speed, but a quick look through the options revealed that DNS prefetching is enabled by default.

    The show-stopper is(as of now) no NoScript/AdBlock! I've become spoiled with ad-free pages and seeing that first obnoxious flash ad was enough to convince me to keep FF as my browser of choice -- at least until a few plug-ins are made for Chrome.

  • I'll stick with Firefox (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Massacrifice ( 249974 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2008 @09:31AM (#24858813)

    Really, I still don't see why I'd have to switch from FF3 to this new browser, free or not. I mean, once you get rid of IE's security hole and MS lock-in web technology, a browser's a browser, right?

    I understand that Google want to have their own, but the established base of Firefox, with its plugins and extensions beats all for now, from a desktop user perspective.

    I'll let the hype pass before I have a look.

  • Chrome is spyware! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03, 2008 @09:32AM (#24858835)

    Install it and 'Google Update' is silently installed along with it with no apparent way of turning it off besides regedit/msconfig. So much for "Don't be Evil".

  • Google spying on you (Score:5, Interesting)

    by edelholz ( 1098395 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2008 @09:33AM (#24858839)

    Apparently, every installation of Chrome gets an unique id [lawblog.de] (sorry, German only) and, once you've signed into your Google account ONCE, the unique id gets connected with your account and you'll always be traceable back to your Google account, even if you're not logged in.

    That's a showstopper. But I'm hoping for a spy-free version to be out soon, the beauty of open source!

    • Re:Google spying on you (Score:5, Funny)

      by flynns ( 639641 ) <<sean> <at> <topdoggps.com>> on Wednesday September 03, 2008 @09:41AM (#24858987) Homepage Journal

      So, uh, what happens if someone else logs into their google account, then?

    • Re:Google spying on you (Score:5, Informative)

      by spyrochaete ( 707033 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2008 @10:01AM (#24859333) Homepage Journal
      Matt Cutts denies that Google spies on your browsing and form submissions in this post on his blog [mattcutts.com].

      • Re:Google spying on you (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Sentry21 ( 8183 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2008 @11:03AM (#24860387) Journal

        'Yeah, we force the Google Updater on you, we give your Chrome install a unique ID, and we associate that with your Google account so that *theoretically* we could track you anywhere you went, logged in or not, but we wouldn't do that! Honest! You'll just have to trust me on this one, and haven't we, at Google, earned your trust? Actually, looking through your recent e-mail conversations, IM conversations, blog posts, slashdot posts, and usenet posts, it seems as though you are becoming disillusioned with Google. We assure you that we will do everything within our power to change that, no matter how much you may resist.

        Good evening, and thank you for choosing Google, 'the choice that is no choice'.

    • Re:Google spying on you (Score:5, Informative)

      by edelholz ( 1098395 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2008 @10:28AM (#24859847)

      Read further on Google's privacy policy [google.com] for Chrome.

      # When you type URLs or queries in the address bar, the letters you type are sent to Google so the Suggest feature can automatically recommend terms or URLs you may be looking for. If you choose to share usage statistics with Google and you accept a suggested query or URL, Google Chrome will send that information to Google as well. You can disable this feature as explained here.
      # If you navigate to a URL that does not exist, Google Chrome may send the URL to Google so we can help you find the URL you were looking for. You can disable this feature as explained here.
      # Google Chrome's SafeBrowsing feature periodically contacts Google's servers to download the most recent list of known phishing and malware sites. In addition, when you visit a site that we think could be a phishing or malware site, your browser will send Google a hashed, partial copy of the site's URL so that we can send more information about the risky URL. Google cannot determine the real URL you are visiting from this information. More information about how this works is here.
      # Your copy of Google Chrome includes one or more unique application numbers. These numbers and information about your installation of the browser (e.g., version number, language) will be sent to Google when you first install and use it and when Google Chrome automatically checks for updates. If you choose to send usage statistics and crash reports to Google, the browser will send us this information along with a unique application number as well. Crash reports can contain information from files, applications and services that were running at the time of a malfunction. We use crash reports to diagnose and try to fix any problems with the browser.

      So they send them the URLs I visit and there's an unique id. And I'm still to lazy to check out the source about how it's used...

    • Re:Google spying on you (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Simon (S2) ( 600188 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2008 @10:42AM (#24860095) Homepage

      I posted [slashdot.org] this earlier today, but I feel I have to post this again, as it is really important people know what they get in to using this browser:

      In metrics_service.cc [chromium.org] [chromium.org]
      it sends everything you do in the toolbar to
      static const char kMetricsURL[] =

              "https://toolbarqueries.google.com/firefox/metrics/collect";
      It collects everything and sends it to google servers, on startup and on shutdown.

      // Ongoing log typically
      // contain very detailed records of user activities (ex: opened tab, closed
      // tab, fetched URL, maximized window, etc.) In addition, just before an
      // ongoing log is closed out, a call is made to gather memory statistics. Those
      // memory statistics are deposited into a histogram, and the log finalization
      // code is then called. In the finalization, a call to a Histogram server
      // acquires a list of all local histograms that have been flagged for upload
      // to the UMA server.
      //
      // When the browser shuts down, there will typically be a fragment of an ongoing
      // log that has not yet been transmitted. At shutdown time, that fragment
      // is closed (including snapshotting histograms), and converted to text. Note
      // that memory stats are not gathered during shutdown, as gathering *might* be
      // too time consuming. The textual representation of the fragment of the
      // ongoing log is then stored persistently as a string in the PrefServices, for
      // potential transmission during a future run of the product.

      WHAT THE FUCK. Keep ff ftw.
      If your privacy means nothing to you just use Chrome.

  • local anecdote (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pohl ( 872 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2008 @09:34AM (#24858867) Homepage

    In my office, there are several windows developers who were excited to try Chrome yesterday - one enthusiastically declaring that he was going to uninstall his other browser as soon as he got home. What struck me about this is that these are people who would never, in a million years, lift a finger to try Safari/Windows - yet here they are drooling over how snappy a WebKit-based browser is. The prospect of increased WebKit adoption makes me happy.

    • Re:local anecdote (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Lendrick ( 314723 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2008 @09:45AM (#24859057) Homepage Journal

      For me, it's not about WebKit at all. Chrome has two features I've wanted for ages: One, separate tabs are separate processes, which means that alert windows and that kind of crap are all tab-modal instead of application-modal. That way one little alert window can't tie up five tabs. The other thing is the JavaScript execution speed, which is nice.

      That said, I'm not 100% sold on it. I like Firefox, and there are big JavaScript improvements coming down the pipe in the near future. Hopefully the tab feature will be picked up by Firefox in the near future as well, but we'll see... it may require a major rewrite.

    • Re:local anecdote (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Zoidbergo ( 751725 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2008 @09:49AM (#24859141) Homepage

      I would characterize Chrome as "Safari for Windows done right."

      There were massive mistakes Apple made (out of arrogance or incompetence, I'm not sure), when releasing Safari for Windows:

      - Apple style Font rendering. Having to switch your eyes between Safari's anti-aliasing and ClearType on a regular basis starts to hurt your eyes, one seems blurry in comparison to the other.
      - Safari didn't follow many of the standard windows app behaviors, another snafu. You can't stuff OS X app behaviors down the throats of Windows users, and vice versa.
      - It also had an incredibly slow startup time. (Although it would render extremely fast)

      Contrast this to Chrome, which renders text using ClearType and windows font rendering, behaves like a windows app, starts up really fast.

      It's not even like I'm bashing Apple for a bad port. iTunes for windows was ported really well, it follows (for the most part, except menus) the windows UI conventions and font rendering, so it feels more like a Windows app.

      (By the way, I'm primarily a Mac user and use Safari regularly on the Mac)

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by moderatorrater ( 1095745 )

      What struck me about this is that these are people who would never, in a million years, lift a finger to try Safari/Windows - yet here they are drooling over how snappy a WebKit-based browser is.

      Because safari on windows is buggy as hell. Apple doesn't care about the windows implementation of Safari nearly as much as it cares about its itunes implementation, and itunes itself runs badly on windows.

      I'm not saying that this reflects poorly on apple or anything, of course their software's going to be better on a mac than on windows, but blaming them for not using apple's software seems a little overboard.

  • Yuck (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bazman ( 4849 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2008 @09:34AM (#24858871) Journal

    I'll start using Chrome the instant they have a plugin that blocks annoying flashing multi-colour favicons.

    [for those who haven't read the links, just go to the second so-called 'review' link, which is really a review of reviews...]

  • Things I like, Things I don't (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Zerth ( 26112 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2008 @09:38AM (#24858933)

    The inspect element tool is awesome, lets you see the tree and go to any element you can right click on.

    Killable tabs, I open tons of new tabs/windows in any browser I use and I hate it when one crashes and takes out a dozen pages I had open earlier to read later and then have to grep and guess through my history. This makes my day

    When you search, it puts little marks on the scroll bar where results are. That's neat.

    The tweaked tab system is great. Create new windows from tabs, drag tabs between windows, consolidate windows into tabs.

    On the other hand

    I really miss scroll-click and smooth scrolling. But it isn't the end of the world.

    While I like having tabs on top, having the File/options/etc WIMP standards under that little button to the right of the address bar is kinda weird.

    It's beta. It's very beta. Somewhere above "everybody else's beta" and but slightly below the usual "Google beta" quality.

    I turned the awesome bar off.

    But I still want it to do math for me.

  • I was impressed, but not switching (Score:4, Interesting)

    by halivar ( 535827 ) <bfelger@nOSPAM.gmail.com> on Wednesday September 03, 2008 @09:38AM (#24858941)

    The UI is intuitive, minimal, and eye-pleasing. It rendered almost all of my favorite web-sites perfectly (including some with CSS that previously only rendered in Firefox).

    Not switching, though. AdBlock Plus is a must-have.

  • Reviews suck (Score:5, Informative)

    by Phylarr ( 981216 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2008 @09:40AM (#24858963)
    One reviewer hadn't even installed the browser yet. Seriously.

    I installed Google's browser. It sucked. Didn't ask where I wanted to install it. No adblocker (and probably never will be). Very limited configuration options. Couldn't handle my font colors. Set GoogleUpdate.exe to run every time my computer starts. Took me to a "why are you uninstalling it" web form when I went to uninstall it, and the web form didn't work. Ass sucking from start to finish. Classic Google.

  • do not pass go. do not collect $200 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by the_B0fh ( 208483 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2008 @09:42AM (#24858995) Homepage

    Does it matter how good or bad it is, when you type in:

    about:plugins

    and the first thing you see is:

    ActiveX Plug-in
    File name: activex-shim
    ActiveX Plug-in provides a shim to support ActiveX controls

  • How do they do it? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by wvmarle ( 1070040 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2008 @09:42AM (#24859003)

    What makes me wonder is how Google manages to put out a browser, that's seemingly so complete. It's not an easy job: Firefox has been in development for about a decade now, after the open-sourcing of Netscape.

    Did they use large chunks of other open-source browsers? If so, which ones? And considering page rendering speed, it is highly optimised. Or lots of features other browsers have are missing.

    And how do they manage to get JavaScript work so lightning fast? Looking at the graphs, FF is two, three times as fast as IE, but both are nothing compared to Chrome. Did they write it from scratch, or highly optimised an existing JavaScript implementation? Both options sound pretty impressive to me. It can't be easy to get so quick JavaScript execution - why else can't FF and IE not get anything near this speed.

    I can't test the browser myself unfortunately; my desktops run Linux and this laptop is OS/X. It sounds like a pretty impressive job what they did.

    Anyone has any ACID/2/3 test results in Chrome? That would be really interesting.

  • Chrome's source (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03, 2008 @09:43AM (#24859019)

    I will shamelessly copy&paste my comment from the other Chrome news today:

    I suggest you use the OpenSource version of Chrome , which is BSD licensed and has no EULA you need to agree to.

    Builds:
    http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/

    Info:
    http://www.chromium.org

    It's time to start hacking away at this ;-)

  • Noticably the fastest browser. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by tjstork ( 137384 ) <todd@bandrowsky.gmail@com> on Wednesday September 03, 2008 @09:47AM (#24859097) Homepage Journal

    I'm using Chrome right now and I find it to be easily the fastest browser I've ever used. Slashdot's Javascript is slow on my machine but that compiler Chrome has seems to make even this plodding page load up almost instantly.

    Suddenly, the thought of Google challenging MS-Office with JavaScript makes a great deal of sense.

    • Re:Noticably the fastest browser. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by dannannan ( 470647 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2008 @02:13PM (#24863507)

      Not just Office -- it's the whole desktop environment. Chrome is Google's way of telling everyone that the web really is ready for primetime app development. The roadblocks of the past, like poor performance, second class UI, hacky little scripts taping everything together, etc. are not fundamental limitations imposed by the web; they were shortcomings of the legacy web browsers.

      Google is trying to get good, self-respecting developers to target the web with their apps, even for traditionally "local" apps.

      Look at some of the mainstays of the traditional local app platform. Chrome's approach to tabbed browsing is one step away from replacing the Windows Taskbar. Your app gets listed in the Chrome Task Manager, too. A lot like Windows Task Manager, eh? Except it's more useful. Even the hotkey to open is simpler. SHIFT+ESC instead of CTRL+SHIFT+ESC.

  • blinking favicon? (Score:4, Informative)

    by ftobin ( 48814 ) * on Wednesday September 03, 2008 @09:52AM (#24859191) Homepage
    Is it just me, or does the second review at http://www.monacome.com/2008/08/download-google-chrome-browser-review.html [monacome.com] have a ridiculously annoying animated favicon? I'm searching Google now for a way to disable this distracting device. I am definitely not going to read the article with such an annoyance about.

  • DO NOT READ 3rd link (Score:5, Informative)

    by FiloEleven ( 602040 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2008 @09:56AM (#24859261)

    It's not malicious or anything, it's just very, very poor writing and will make you angry.

  • Google update service installed without choice (Score:5, Informative)

    by kriston ( 7886 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2008 @10:10AM (#24859497) Homepage Journal

    The Goodle update service program is installed without the choice to avoid running it.
    It is a regular background process started from HKCU\\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run.
    The files are installed to %HOMEPATH%\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Update.

    By any sensible definition, applications that "phone home" are spyware when they cannot be opted out upon installation.
    Google Earth's downloader asks you if you want to install it, but Chrome's downloader just goes ahead and sideloads it without asking. Worse, it's not easy to remove, since you have to edit your registry or use a registry "autorun" hacking tool to remove this "phone home" application.

    I don't understand Google's motivation for installing this without prompting the user or providing a removal option.

  • One click install???? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by argent ( 18001 ) <peter&slashdot,2006,taronga,com> on Wednesday September 03, 2008 @10:10AM (#24859505) Homepage Journal

    OK, I went to install Google Chrome, and the "download and install" button started running an external application without any prompts. Needless to say I immediately cancelled it and started digging through the source to see what the fox is going on.

    function installApp() {
        if (isOneClickEnabled() && _GU_isOneClickAvailable()) {
          installViaOneClick();
        } else if (isClickOnceEnabled() && _GU_isClickOnceAvailable()) {
          installViaClickOnce();
        } else {
          installViaDownload();
        }
    }

    I am sure that some Google software that I installed in the past has given google this capability, rather than this being some kind of trust relationship between Mozilla and Google. I'm even sure that at some point I clicked "OK" to some question that said it was OK for them to do X, Y, and Z, and that included this capability.

    Regardless...

    I don't think this kind of backdoor is even vaguely sane, no matter how "non evil" Google may be. If this capability exists, then the possibility exists for other folks who aren't so "non evil".

    This is something I'd expect from Microsoft.

    And if they could slip something like that past a fellow as paranoid as me, they sure didn't provide nearly enough disclosure.

    So...

    What's going on. Is this something in Google Gears? In some other Google tool? I guess I'll have to start dissecting my browser and figure out exactly what the hell they're doing.

  • Use privoxy to block ads... (Score:4, Informative)

    by iamstuffed ( 764517 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2008 @10:13AM (#24859565)
    Privoxy [privoxy.org] is your friend. It allows you to block ads using a local proxy, so it'll work with any browser. It isn't as easy to setup as Adblock, but it still works effectively.

  • The jewel in this software is V8 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kriston ( 7886 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2008 @10:15AM (#24859589) Homepage Journal

    The user interface is limitted and the options available for customization are practically nonexistent based on a somewhat single-sided view from Goodger that browsers should not be customizable.
    The real value of Chrome is V8, the JavaScript engine, and the smart, asynchronous management of native-code JavaScript objects on the client (without re-parsing them over and over).

    V8 will be released to the open source community and hopefully will be the standard JavaScript engine for Firefox which actually has a useful user interface.

    I can't really speak of Gears, though, but I think the real value of this release is V8.

  • People don't get it (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Itchyeyes ( 908311 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2008 @10:53AM (#24860263) Homepage

    In the past 24 hours since Chrome launched, the thing that I've found most interesting has been the range of reaction from people around the Web. In a nutshell the reaction can be pretty evenly divided between people who "get it" and people who don't. If you think that Google's purpose for Chrome has anything to do with improving UI or grabbing browser market share then you're in the camp that doesn't get it.

    Chrome is more or less a reference design for other browser developers, hence the reason Google is putting so much emphasis on it being open source. There's no money in it for Google to be giving out browsers. What Google is interested in is increasing the capability of the average browser in order to allow them to serve up more robust web-based content for more revenue.

  • General impressions (Score:5, Informative)

    by shutdown -p now ( 807394 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2008 @10:55AM (#24860291) Journal

    Overall, very impressive. I'm no Google fanboy, and I disliked their desktop apps previously, but this one looks like it was designed by good UI usability experts. The overall philosophy seems to be close to GNOME in that few things are configurable, but the rest tends to seamlessly work "the right way" (and that coming from a user of Opera, which has hundreds of configuration options, is saying something). Toolbar icon theme is instant classic - very clear and without flashy colors, looking much better than either IE, Firefox or Opera. Some inconspicuous animation effects when opening/closing/dragging around tabs make it very clear what's going on. By the way, have you noticed that the loading indicator on the tab turns counter-clockwise when HTTP request is being sent, and clockwise when HTTP reply is being received, and that its rotation speed indicates up/download speed? Also note the tooltip-like popup at the bottom of the window with full URL when you hover mouse over a link.

    Some stuff is less obvious. For example, there are tab groups, even though they're not color-coded as in IE8. To observe them, open 4 tabs from 2 different domains - say, first 2 for kernel.org, the other 2 for slashdot.org. Then try middle-clicking links in the 1st and the 3rd tabs. You'll see that newly created tabs go at the end of the respective tab groups (and not at the end of the tab bar, or immediately after the current tab). This seems to be based on the full domain name of the site though, and not on user interaction like in IE8 (which groups together all tabs opened from within the same "parent" tab), which is mildly annoying on /. which varies domains - so tech.slashdot.org won't group with games.slashdot.org, for example.

    Interstingly enough, UI looks better on Vista rather than XP. On Vista Aero, the tab bar itself is glass-translucent underneath (like IE7's tool/address bar), and when maximized, the tabs are interposed right on top of the window title bar, saving screen space. On XP, it emulates Vista's large window decorations to achieve the same effect, but obviously no translucency, which rather spoils the effect. Overall, it looks somewhat out of place on an XP desktop (particularly if you have Windows theme set to Classic, or indeed anything other than the bluish Luna), but fits right in on Vista.

    Speed: very impressive. Rendering is very fast. No UI slowdown I can notice under any circumstances. I guess we'll see JS benchmarks soon enough.

    That said, it's not without issues. For starters, where's my smooth scrolling? And why is scroll-on-middle-click, which has been available in every single browser since at least IE4 (maybe earlier, I just can't remember now), is gone?

  • I have nothing to contribute to this discussion (Score:5, Funny)

    by exp(pi*sqrt(163)) ( 613870 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2008 @11:18AM (#24860625) Journal
    But that's not going to stop me posting to slashdot because I'm part of the *me* generation and I think my opinions need to be heard by everyone.

    Anyway, I don't know anything about Chrome. Apparently, whatever it is, there isn't a version for my platform, so I'm not going to download it. I know that's just a fact about me, but you all need to hear it. I'm not going to download it, I say. And because the whole universe is based on my experience I can categorically say that this means that Chrome has lost the browser war. So obviously Google have screwed up their strategy royally because if I don't want to download Chrome, why would anyone else?

    Apparently it doesn't have adblock. I don't know what adblock is, but from reading the other comments it's obviously the most important part of a browser. How could Google leave it out?

    Anyway, I've said my piece. Google are a doomed company. In fact, here's a graph to prove it:

    | /
    | ___/
    |/
    +------

    You can't argue with statistics!

  • Does Google Want Chrome to Win the Browser Wars? (Score:4, Informative)

    by qazwart ( 261667 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2008 @12:08PM (#24861423) Homepage

    This is all a side issue. Google has promised to back FireFox until 2011. Google Chrome isn't a browser, but a template on how FireFox, Safari, and other browsers should behave. What Google wants:

    * More multi-threading in the browser. Browsers shouldn't freeze up.
    * More multi-process tasking. Browsers shouldn't crash because of a bad webpage
    * Faster JavaScript: How much do you want to bet that V8 will quickly become part of WebKit.
    * Standardized Rendering Engine: This will put pressure on FireFox and Opera to switch to the WebKit engine, or at least make sure their browsers are 100% compatible. Thus, standardizing desktop and mobile device browsers on WebKit.

    It's not so much that Chrome is Google's candidate in the browser wars as much as a template other browsers should strive for. I love the fast JavaScript engine and the multi-processing approach to webpage rendering. You'll start seeing that adapted by the other browsers in the next year. I also like some of the security features like the complete sandbox approach. Google's idea is that your browser will become infected, and the browser should prevent the infection from spreading.

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