Google Betas Chrome 4, Touts 30% Speed Boost 383
CWmike writes "Google upgraded the beta version (4.0.223.16) of its Chrome browser yesterday, boasting a 30% speed improvement over the current production edition and adding integrated bookmark synchronization. Developers Idan Avraham and Anton Muhin, who announced the release, tout Chrome 4.0's faster JavaScript rendering speeds. 'We've improved performance scores on Google Chrome by 30% since our current stable release, and by 400% since our first stable release,' they said, referring to Chrome 3.0. The new beta includes the ability to sync bookmarked sites across multiple computers."
60% faster loss of privacy (Score:4, Insightful)
I bet google would love to see your bookmarks, I bet advertisers would pay dearly for that sort of info.
Re:60% faster loss of privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
if only you could look at the source* to see that they are not doing that...wait what?
*and if you don't trust them compile your own
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That would be chromium-browser, chrome itself is a derivative of that, but not Free software.
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Try SRware Iron. It's just Chrome - tracking bits.
Comparison of Chrome Vs Iron [srware.net]
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Yeah, they slap some Google branding on. That's it. The distinction between Chrome and Chromium is entirely academic (or legal if you prefer). They're functionally equivalent.
If you have a problem using Chrome because it isn't free software, use Chromium. You won't notice a difference other than the branding.
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While I believe you are correct, there is absolutely no way to know that. Google could be taking any number of things onto the Chromium codebase before shipping Chrome, and you would have no way of knowing.
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That would be Firefox which reveals your bookmarks. By abusing the visited link style, it can conditionally load images depending on whether or not you have visited a specific page. Carpet-bomb enough of those, and you can tell which of the top 5000 websites a user has been to.
Re:60% faster loss of privacy (Score:4, Informative)
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We absolutely do NOT want to use google email anymore!
we want to use google wave.
Smoking (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Smoking (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm right there with you. Basically all of the free tools from Google have no serious competition in terms of quality. Other tools may have more users, but it's not because they're better.
I'm not saying we give them a free pass, but have there been any serious breaches of privacy by Google? We've seen dirty moves by Microsoft, we've seen slow moves by Firefox. We've seen silly moves from Yahoo. We've seen invasive moves by Facebook.
I see Google as pretty freaking amazing. I think even the people who take issue with one thing here or there would have to agree that they are definitely the least of all evils.
Re:Smoking (Score:4, Insightful)
Well said. Google bashers always baffle me with their lack of factual support. A healthy caution of companies that have so much information is justified. If someone wants to avoid Google for that reason, then fine. But they should not pretend it is because Google has shown any pattern of abuse. If anything, they have been much better than most companies.
I saw someone in another forum using Google's slogan "don't be evil" as some kind of argument that they are evil... asking why they would need such a motto. From my perspective, "don't be evil" is one of the few corporate slogans worth anything. Unfortunately, it is something that cannot be taken for granted. It's sad, but that's the world we live in. And "don't be evil" is certainly more meaningful than most of the warm/fuzzy tripe that other companies spew in their mission statements.
Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely (Score:3, Interesting)
The quote in my subject from Lord Acton [phrases.org.uk], has been proven time and again, that despite the purest of intentions, a concentration of power will corrupt any person, organization or company. This is the reason that "smaller government" is a desirable thing; We have examples time and again from history that overpowerful organizations aren't trustworthy (current example: US
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Yeah, Google has consistently required court orders before they hand out info. They've even turned down the US government's warrantless demands numerous times, while Microsoft and Yahoo just handed everything over.
I haven't heard of them sharing private info with other companies - they keep whatever they mine closely guarded. I think they realize their reputation is worth more than whatever they could gain by collaborating.
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Re:Smoking (Score:5, Funny)
Password Sync also please (Score:2, Interesting)
The biggest feature keeping me on Firefox right now is bookmark and password syncing. Xmarks does the job beautifully.
I love the fact that native bookmark syncing will be coming to Chrome, but nobody has mentioned password syncing. This is arguable just as important as bookmark sync and should be possible to release alongside bookmarks in this next release.
I wish they would mention it at least just to know that they are working on it. At the very least I can fallback on the Xmarks version for Chrome that wi
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The biggest feature in Firefox is all those unimportant passwords it remembers.
OpenID might fix that eventually.
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Cheating on my first love - Firefox (Score:5, Informative)
I so loved Firefox and use to tell everyone to use it. I loved that it kicked IE's ass. Gotta love any open source project that goes up against Microsoft and wins.
As much as I hate to admit it, I can no longer stand to use Firefox. Like a slut that wins you over with fantastic sex, Chrome got me where it matters most - raw speed.
In fact, it seems way too fast. Is Google caching the web pages in a nearby Google server? Even sites that use little JavaScript seem to load really fast. Is something going on here?
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Yes, less features.
Firefox is bloated now. Too many features, those features cost RAM and CPU time. Start adding all the 'must have' extensions that geeks use and Firefox REALLY starts to suck ass performance wise.
Couple in that Mozilla has seriously lost its focus and is too busy inventing more crap rather than making Firefox run properly. Mozilla building something like Breakpad/Socorro makes sense, adding crap like new font formats when they already support ones that are more than capable and MORE ope
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The ridiculousness of this post is, of course, that webkit is getting features at a crazy pace, mostly driven by Apple wanting to get as much native support for stuff that could be done in javascript (so it runs fast on the iphone), and everyone else (google, apple, etc etc) who is behind the "html5!!" drumbeat.
look at bugzilla for webkit and you'll see an even match for mozilla in terms of adding features. you'll see the same parity (or worse) in RAM and CPU time (what happened to the decrying of process/t
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We're not talking about WebKit, we're talking about Chrome. Chrome is faster than Safari, they both use WebKit. Safari has more features and it costs.
FireFox uses Gecko rather than WebKit. I'm not talking about the differences in the rendering engines alone as that is not all their is to a browser. The stripped down browsers that use Gecko are faster than FireFox as well. Same rendering engine, different wrapper, different speeds.
Gecko is FAR more feature rich than WebKit, but Gecko also supports XUL,
Re:Cheating on my first love - Firefox (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Cheating on my first love - Firefox (Score:5, Informative)
I used to be like you. Still am, in a way.
Here's the thing: Clicking something and having the action take place instantly makes that unnecessary for quite a lot of tasks. And that goes not just for links to new pages (though that is a factor), but for links that drive Javascript.
I'll give you an example: I always hear people whining about the new Slashdot AJAX crap. I agree, it's bloated and completely unnecessary, and on Firefox and Konqueror, it's slow as hell. In Chrome, it's actually faster than the old system -- click reply, half a second later there's a reply box ready to type, and that's about the longest anything takes here. Clicking on a semi-hidden thread to expand it is even faster.
Granted, that's not "instantly", the way so much of the Web has become for me. But the difference is pretty staggering, and pretty significant.
I still use tabs almost the way you do, but that's when I have a slow connection, or a bunch of links that I can't easily visit in serial.
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With regard to the AJAXy Slashdot, the speed issue was never important to me. I'd command-click the reply button and have it load the reply box in a new tab while I read.
Yes, I did exactly the same.
These days, though, it's just faster -- especially if I have a quick point to make (right now). It's also nice in that I get that much more context while replying -- I can see your post, and posts below the one I'm making. When I submit, if Slashdot is feeling fast, I can preview/submit without leaving the page, without having to manage multiple tabs, and without really waiting at all.
It's kind of like the advantages I get from Git being faster. It's actually faster enough that i
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Yes, less features.
I don't completely buy that argument. On my setup, even gimp-2.6 cold-starts faster than FF 3.5.4, and gimp seems to be pretty featureful. FF and Thunderbird are the slowest apps I use, and presumably they share some code. That tells me there's something really wrong with how Mozilla is writing or deploying their programs.
Not only is FF slow, but it uses amazing amounts of memory. I can't understand what it's doing with all that memory, because it's obviously not using it to cache stuff to make it
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GIMP is C/C++ code loaded in a compiled state. The majority of Firefox's functionality is in the form of JavaScript that has to be compiled at some point.
GIMP is compiled and then run, Firefox is run (and of course the core is compiled) but then it has to unzip a bunch of files and read a bunch of XML, JavaScript and other resource files, turn them into something usable in memory and then do its thing.
FireFox is FAR more flexible than GIMP, but that comes at a cost of speed.
You can actually speed FireFox u
Re:Cheating on my first love - Firefox (Score:5, Interesting)
Heh, considering I develop software for a living, one of our products is embeds on XULRunner 1.9.1 (which is what Firefox 3 is built on top of) and several of our products use WebKit for rendering HTML.
So yes, my knowledge of them and profiling them tells me this.
You can find my name in the Gecko commit logs and all over the developers mailing lists, wheres yours? I don't think I've seen Anonymous Coward committing anything.
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I get annoyed when I try to scroll a window in Chrome and it's so fast I can't control it easily.
I'll be keeping firefox around for as long as there's no adblock and no flashblock for Chrome. Chrome wins the instant they're compatible with Mozilla plugins.
I'm glad that there's once again some vibrant competition in the browser sphere.
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Adsweep [userscripts.org] and BlockFlash2 [userscripts.org] are the Chrome equivalents, respectively.
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Re:Cheating on my first love - Firefox (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not a Firefox fanboy, I'm just aware of my needs. In the business arena, I wouldn't recommend anything but Internet Explorer (behind a proxy, of course), because no other browser comes with the enterprise management tools necessary for large deployments. That's another area that I wish more browsers would improve upon.
If either Opera or Chrome would implement those two feature sets along with their superior rendering performance, they would blow the web browser market wide open. I don't know why it hasn't happened yet, since most technical people are well aware of these issues.
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How is this a troll?
Moderators, you need help.
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Agree totally. What's the point of /. if you can't discuss relevant poi's? /. should instigate a moderator license scheme as lately they've been hopeless.
Maybe
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Chrome got me where it matters most - raw speed.
This is why I never understand how people can say "sure, maybe Java/garbage-collection/50mb-binaries/etc. are a little slower, but computers are SO FAST these days and programmer productivity is SO much more important. Hardware is cheap, programmers are expensive." etc.
Speed still matters! And it always will.
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Actually, you're proving those people's point:
sure, maybe Java/garbage-collection/50mb-binaries/etc. are a little slower,
Let's see...
chromium-browser is a 38 meg binary on my system, and that's just the binary. The libraries it distributes bump it up above 40 megs, and it's probably easily 45 or 50 with all the system libraries it pulls in.
Here's an example of where you're both very right, and very wrong:
You're very right in that speed still matters, and always will. By applying a little optimization at just the right point, we gain massive speed boosts for everyone. For example,
Re:Cheating on my first love - Firefox (Score:4, Interesting)
Want proof? Ctrl+U.
Whoa, don't blow my mind quite so hard. I'm not sure I can handle all this wisdom at the same time.
C'mon, you think I execute shell commands by writing a C program that calls fork(), exec(), and pipe()? You think I write web pages pixel by pixel? Obviously high-level languages and programming paradigms are appropriate in many cases.
I'm sticking it to the Java weenies who think that C and C++ are obsolete. The people who year after year say that *now* Java is "often as fast as C++ and sometimes faster." The people who still won't acknowledge that there is a real reason C and C++ are still the languages of OS kernels.
It's not premature optimization to write libavcodec in C. Likewise with OS kernels, virtual machines, rendering engines, DSP plugins, and many other applications where the code will almost certainly be on the critical path of a resource-intensive application. It's not premature optimization to use manual memory management in applications that need to move lots of data around with low latency.
Re:Cheating on my first love - Firefox (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Cheating on my first love - Firefox (Score:5, Insightful)
For reasons that, I assume, have to do with the fact that advertisers are subhuman vermin who would sell their own grandmothers for a nickle, ads are overwhelmingly among the slowest page elements to load. Even if you don't mind what eventually pops up(which can be a tall order, particularly with noisy flash crap) wasting 10 or 15 seconds on what would otherwise be a highly responsive page waiting for one or more overloaded 3rd party ad servers sucks. It sucks even more when you do it dozens of times a day.
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Except for the fact that, generally, resumes are solicited for job openings and you are therefore not "advertising". You are responding, which is something entirely different.
Re:Cheating on my first love - Firefox (Score:5, Insightful)
Because web advertising has gone way beyond "little images trying to sell things." Instead, we get Flash monstrosities that slow my computer to a crawl, pop-ups that jump in front of the content you're trying to read and steal mouse clicks, and pages full of blinking, animated pictures that make it difficult to find the actual content.
Just because you don't mind having your time wasted in that way doesn't mean that everyone else will put up with it.
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What is with people whining about AdBlock all the time? OH NOES TEH ADZ@!1!One. Is it really that big a deal? Thanks to my Slashdot obsession and excellent karma, I have the option to disable ads on Slashdot natively, but I don't even use the option. Why do people care so much about little images trying to sell things?
In addition to the previous reasons offered, another good reason to block ads is to reduce the number of potential vectors for malware. For instance, when malicious third party ads were served from the New York Times web site [slashdot.org] less than two months ago, needless to say users of AdBlock were unaffected.
Re:Cheating on my first love - Firefox (Score:5, Informative)
The lack of extension support is a myth [chromeextensions.org]. As is the supposed lack of adblocking extensions [chromeextensions.org].
The chrome extension API specifically includes the exact functionality needed for ad blocking via the filter APIs... and yet here we have conspiracy theorists breaking out their tin foil hats and claiming that Chrome is Google's plot to get rid of ad blockers. *facepalm*
The adblock extension I linked above isn't the only one, although it's the only one that I've tried. It's a bit buggy and the UI isn't all there yet, but it does subscribe to the real ABP's easylist, and it *does* block the ads in the list.
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It isn't their fault though, apparently this functionality has not been coded into Chrome yet.
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Really Fast (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Really Fast (Score:5, Funny)
100% less advertisements would be nice... (Score:2, Insightful)
No AdBlock, No mouse gestures... No Chrome :)
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I know. Perhaps this is the real reason Chrome even exists. They can prevent people from blocking ads, and of course track peoples surfing habits.
Quite sad actually. The browser is pretty nice overall. Its too bad they will most likely treat their users like most corporations do... like shit.
Firefox is much better in this area. As if that needed to be said.
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I don't care about Google ads, just all of the flashing obtrusive crap. The fact that I have to block* google ads to prevent that other stuff is in my eyes unfortunate, since they don't annoy me and help support the publishers of content that I like (not to mention support Google, who pretty much owns my entire digital life)
*I'm sure I could adjust the filterset somehow to whitelist text-based adsense, but I'm too damn lazy to do it once, never mind across all of my systems.
Re:100% less advertisements would be nice... (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, Chrome 4.0 has extensions, and multiple ad blockers have already been written using the system, without being stopped by Google.
Actually, we're a little bit smarter than that. As it turns out, treating users "like shit" -- for example, by crippling our products just to drive away the small minority of users that run ad blockers -- is actually not profitable. On the other hand, making the internet better for users, in general, is profitable to us, since it directly leads to more usage of other Google products. Which is why Eric (the CEO) frequently tells employees, in plain terms, that we should be doing whatever we can think of to improve the internet for users, without worrying about how to monetize it -- in the long term, this approach is far more profitable than being dicks.
(This post is my personal opinion -- I am not authorized to speak for Google.)
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Yes of course. My point was that... with their own browser, they can strictly dictate it however they want. For example not allowing you to block ads, or perhaps more intrusive features.
Fast, even on Slashdot (Score:4, Interesting)
JIT javascript (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:JIT javascript (Score:4, Funny)
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Uh, they all have JIT compilers (TraceMonkey in Firefox).
Almost every scripting language does these days. If you're looking at embedding scripting languages then look no further than Lua. It's super small and easy to embed, fast, easy API for extending, and similar semantics to Javascript (except way better). Also, LuaJIT 2 beta just came out a few days ago and it's kicking all kinds of ass as far as performance in scripting languages go (rewriting the book in fact)..
Re:JIT javascript (Score:5, Informative)
Spidermonkey (the ECMAScript implementation in Gecko, hence in Firefox) and Nitro (aka SFX Extreme, the ECMAScript implementation in Safari) both use JITs as well.
> just like modern Java runtimes
Not quite; the tradeoffs are somewhat different.
> JavaScript is going to approach native code speed
Somewhat. Depends on your jit, on your code, etc.
Speed is nice, but lets get some basic features (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, I wanted to use Chrome as my HTPC browser as it does a good job scaling it's plugins to the system 2x DPI (unlike Firefox where flash applets are tiny squares in big dark frames they are supposed to fill).
But Chrome does not save the full page zoom setting! Every time you open a tab or browser instance you have to Ctr + which becomes unusable. It has not browser-wide options related to full page zoom and their font options are confusing and seem to make no effect.
Worse is the how easy it is to fine lots [google.com] and lots [google.com] and lots [google.com] and lots [google.com] of people complaining about this on their own help forums without a single response from the developers.
I know they are avoiding feature creep and keeping things slim, but even by a 80/20 rule, this kind of thing should be picked up (and could even replace their useless font settings dialog).
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Yeah, it's a shame. I'd love to see official versions for both Mac and Linux as soon as possible.
This really reminds me of Skype. The Skype version for Windows is ages ahead of the ones on Mac and Linux. I had to use Skype on a Windows computer, and I was blown away by the interface changes and features. Let's hope that Chrome doesn't become that.
Granted, at least Google is working a Mac version. There are even development builds that can be downloaded. I don't think it's anywhere near beta quality, though.
Re:Love to use it, but... (Score:5, Informative)
FYI, nightly builds for all platforms (Mac, Win, Linux, Linux x64) available here: http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/ [chromium.org]
Should get official versions soon, I guess, but I find any given nightly build (on Linux) fast and reliable.
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skype on windows has become a piece of shit! The linux version does everything except for SMS messages and hasn't become a UI nightmare. let's keep it that way
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I am using it right now on a Mac. You just have to google "chrome developer mac" to get a download link. Or you can just go here. Anyway, it is fast and works well. It does not integrate with MacOS the way it should - but they are working on it. Overall I am very impresses as I like it more then Firefox.
But I guess there are bugs.. (Score:2)
I tried to post the above in Chrome but it failed to work. The Submit button just kept on saying to try again later. So I then tried in Safari. The Submit button still did not work but it did display a countdown. This countdown was not visible in the Mac version of Chrome.
So I guess I'm saying that if you use the Mac version be prepared for some issues.
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I get broken interaction from slashcode all the time in firefox. The problem may not be Chrome.
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demand? won't most of these features get ported to safari anyway?
Re:Love to use it, but... (Score:4, Informative)
http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/ [chromium.org]
Which can be found by visiting:
http://www.google.com/search?q=chromium+mac+download [google.com]
Imagine that.
I stopped bothering with Chromium, Safari isn't different enough to justify the instability of Chromium for me.
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The dev channel [chromium.org] may be more stable than the nightly builds.
Re:Love to use it, but... (Score:5, Funny)
Mac
Hello PC, Whats that you have there?
PC
Oh this? Its Google Chrome and its faster than IE and Firefox.
Mac
But it still gives you viruses and spyware right?
PC
Oh Mac, you're such a brainwashed little cunt.
PC (Cont'd)
Look, it uses WebKit, the same stupid thing your Safari browser uses. Happy now?
Mac
Sort of. I'm a Mac and I want it my way. I want Google Chrome now!
Mac (Cont'd)
PC... give that to me.
PC
You know Mac...You could just buy a PC, or at the very least boot windows on your over priced PC hardware.
Mac
But then I will get viruses...
(PC Throws his arms up and walks away)
PC
I give up.
Re:Love to use it, but... (Score:4, Funny)
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Just for reference, I have two in-laws that have been more than capable of infecting their machines with Chrome. They run as normal users, not admins. Doesn't matter if the machine doesn't get infected, their accounts are, which when theres only one user on the machine, thats effectively the same thing. The only difference is that I can cleanup user infections by deleting their profile. They still get infected with malware.
The one saving grace is that its much less common, and doesn't support crap like
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...I use a Mac. How is it possible that it is in its 4th version, but there's still no Mac version of the browser?
This is like the situation with Google Earth which only eventually showed up in a Mac version a few years after the Windows version.
Well, I whined about that too for quite a while - I'd try other browsers but couldn't leave Firefox, despite it's issues on the Mac, but kept pining for something better. But now I've finally switched over to Safari plus a couple plugins (ClickToFlash and Glims) instead, and am reasonably happy. As far as HTML rendering goes, Chrome won't be any faster obviously. It's possible Javascript rendering will be faster, but I wouldn't bet on it - Safari 4's Javascript engine runs circles around Firefox 3.5's (yes
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You mean this? [google.com]
(It's dev channel [chromium.org], meaning it's still a little finicky, but it is good enough to be my primary browser on Mac.)
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As much as I wish it could be for me, there's some serious lacks. The biggest ones are that Google Gears doesn't work and that not all the privacy and security features are working. The lack of working "Create Application Shortcut" (SSB) is another big not-yet-ism.
Chrome for Mac is in the 20% limbo, it seems.
Re:Sucks To Be You (Score:4, Funny)
That all depends on your industry/area of research.
ah, i see, it depends on your niche...
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Re:Sucks To Be You (Score:5, Interesting)
Say what you will, but it is nice having an OS that is *tightly* coupled with the hardware -- it cuts way down on poorly written drivers that are responsible for many of the BSOD in MS land. It is a premium to pay, but the frustration spared is well worth it.
Ah yes the "blame it on the drivers" apologetic for various Windows issues. It's the perfect excuse, really, because it's difficult to falsify. So I'll ask you this: how, pray tell, do you explain how properly-installed Linux has its rock-solid stability on such a wide variety of hardware? If indeed the support of a wide variety of commodity PC hardware is the cause of instability, and if the Mac is so stable because it has such a comparatively narrow range of hardware to support, what would be your answer to that question?
Note, my question was about Windows. I don't dispute that the Mac is quite stable. I just believe it's stable because it's based on Unix and Unix had this kind of stability long before Apple decided to use it. Apple was just smart enough to recognize that and smarter still to put a pretty and usable GUI on top of it. It's the "faulty drivers" excuse for Windows that I don't quite buy, and mostly because I've never received an answer to that question that made sense.
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So I'll ask you this: how, pray tell, do you explain how properly-installed Linux has its rock-solid stability on such a wide variety of hardware?
The simple answer is that it doesn't. WiFi is still hit and miss on some popular chipsets. Don't even get me started on audio - headphone/speaker auto-switching is still broken in my Karmic, and clicks and pops are all over any played sound (particularly so when it starts). Video is normally fine... except when either NVidia or X decide to break something and forget to tell the other side.
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Re:Plugin support (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.chromeextensions.org/ [chromeextensions.org]
They have adblock.
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So run the dev channel [chromium.org]. It has extensions [google.com] today. Yes, including ad blockers [adsweep.org]. Dev channel is actually perfectly usable if you don't mind the occasional disembodied head taking the place of a button [google.com]. Dev channel Chrome has been my primary browser for over a year now.
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So run the dev channel [chromium.org]. It has extensions [google.com] today. Yes, including ad blockers [adsweep.org]. Dev channel is actually perfectly usable if you don't mind the occasional disembodied head taking the place of a button [google.com]. Dev channel Chrome has been my primary browser for over a year now.
Me too. Best part is, you can get Glen's head back by running "google-chrome --glen". (At least on Linux.) I highly recommend you freak out all your fellow Chrome users by changing their browser shortcuts when they aren't looking!
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This is a common mistake developers make -- they think "Do users really care if this page loads a tenth of a second faster? It's such a short time that it should make no difference". In reality, though, such performance improvements make things "feel" better. You will spend more time on a site or in an app that responds faster, because you will enjoy using it more, even if you don't realize why.
Also, the faster Javascript is, the more of it sites can use in the future -- hopefully for improving their use
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This is a common mistake developers make -- they think "Do users really care if this page loads a tenth of a second faster? It's such a short time that it should make no difference". In reality, though, such performance improvements make things "feel" better. You will spend more time on a site or in an app that responds faster, because you will enjoy using it more, even if you don't realize why.
Interesting viewpoint. I used to develop document viewing and imaging software at a small company with a fairly
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If tomorrow Intel released a CPU that's 30% faster than today's fastest while still using the same amount of power and not costing any extra $, it'd be pretty big news, don't you agree? Well, this is basically the same thing, except it's free and you don't need to replace hardware to get the speedup. Like it or not, most people routinely use Javascript heavy pages on a daily basis (most any webmail interface, Facebook, even Slashdot), what's wrong with speeding that up? Or maybe you don't like Javascript be
Re:Is it 30% faster? Does it matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
uh... (Score:3, Insightful)
you seem to be left on an island in history. i remember that island, it was somewhere around 2003 i think:
the thinking was that javascript was unnecessary bloat and a properly written website didn't need any javascript, and a good netizen concerned about safety and privacy turned his/her javascript off. people were (and are) doing harebrained unnecessary things with javascript (whoa dude! look at the animated cursor!) and incompatibility between browsers in an era when firefox was still a cult and ie5 was k
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