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Android Chrome Google Technology

Chrome 24 Released, Chrome Beta Channel For Android Added 99

Posted by Soulskill from the version-increment dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Google has released Chrome version 24 for Windows, Mac, and Linux. You can update to the latest release now using the browser's built-in silent updater, or download it directly from google.com/chrome. The biggest improvement on the user side of things is the speed increase. Google's own Octane JavaScript test shows that this is the fastest Chrome release yet. When the beta came out in November, the company was touting that Chrome had become 26 percent faster on Octane than it was last year. Now it's even faster. Google also announced it is introducing a new Chrome beta channel for phones and tablets running Android 4.0 or higher. You can download version 25.0.1364.8 right now directly from Google Play (since this is a beta, it's not available via search; you'll need to use the link). The release of version 25 is significant because it means Google is attempting to bring Chrome for Android in line with the desktop version. The current release of Chrome for Android is version 18, last updated in November."
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Chrome 24 Released, Chrome Beta Channel For Android Added More

Chrome 24 Released, Chrome Beta Channel For Android Added

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  • You can update to the latest release now using the browser's built-in silent updater...

    If it's a silent updater, why do we need press releases for new versions? I'm just asking, since Slashdot seems to be less about tech news and more about regurgitating press releases lately.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      For those of you who for whom English is not your native language the word "can" does not mean "will." It just means that it is possible. Also, for those of us who use linux and relay on package management systems you should consult your distribution's documentation to see how to update your system.

    • Re:silent update? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by baka_toroi ( 1194359 ) on Friday January 11, 2013 @01:39PM (#42559519) Journal
      By your logic, Chrome should've been mentioned by Slashdot only once, during it's initial release, since it includes a silent updater from day 1.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        what a fucking awesome idea.

      • By your logic, Chrome should've been mentioned by Slashdot only once, during it's initial release, since it includes a silent updater from day 1.

        My logic is that only things that are actually interesting should be reported on. Have you noticed how often the linux, BSD, or other kernels are updated and how often Slashdot doesn't cover it? It's because it isn't news, and neither is this. I suspect the new owners of Slashdot were paid to put articles like this out. Chrome 24: Just like Chrome 23, only with a bigger number!

        • My logic is that only things that are actually interesting should be reported on.

          Both you and I know this is extremely subjective.

          It's a major release and as such it should be reported. Firefox also has a similar release schedule and it gets reported as much on Slashdot. I do find this new kind of release schedule (both on Chrome and Firefox) completely idiotic, but that's a whole different issue.

    • My understanding is that the silent update mechanism checks in with the mothership periodically, either as-scheduled or with some consideration for system load/onbattery vs. on AC/etc. The Chrome release team has their own schedule that the update mechanism has no knowledge of.

      So, if your silent update mechanism is active, you will automatically receive the newest release; but only when the updater next phones home. Depending on when it last phoned home and when the release occurs, this might be a matter of

    • If it's a silent updater, why do we need press releases for new versions?

      Perhaps the press release is intended for web developers, to let them know that they can design web applications around the new features.

    • If you are asking a rhetorical question that is the exact opposite of "just asking." Also, not everyone has Chrome installed and using it regularly, as well as paying attention to when updates occur, etc. That doesn't necessarily mean they don't want to know what is going on in the industry. Maybe I share a computer login and somebody else was using it when it updated. I could then decide to see if it already updated on its own, and force the update if it didn't.. I'm sure there are plenty of other reas

  • I guess It is about time to move to chrome 26 (Score:5, Informative)

    by micheas ( 231635 ) on Friday January 11, 2013 @01:36PM (#42559481) Homepage Journal
    I am posting with from:
    Google Chrome 25.0.1364.5 (Official Build 174090) dev
    OS Linux
    WebKit 537.22 (@138211)
    JavaScript V8 3.15.11.2
     With silent update the meaning of these announcements is that it is time to check Can I Use? [caniuse.com] to see if any more css3 elements are now in widespread use so you can use them in web development.

  • Fast - good - now focus on... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by presidenteloco ( 659168 ) on Friday January 11, 2013 @01:37PM (#42559493)

    Managing memory better so I don't have to keep shutting down web browsers every day or two. Most power users have many windows and many tabs up, and some are relevant for weeks, but most are unused and could be backgrounded much more effectively in terms of processor and memory use. Hint: Replace with a URL and a snapshot image updated infrequently.

    Also, speaking of tabs. If I use them, I can't easily see visually which pages I have up, in the overview of windows display modes that most OSs offer. There is a usability disconnect here.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ElectricTurtle ( 1171201 )
      Are you confusing Chrome with Firefox? On my primary system I usually have Chrome running for weeks with like three or four dozen tabs. Many of which are some pretty resource intensive pages. Usually I only have problems after a week or two and then only with pages like tumblr archives that have 200 animated gifs on them visible at once.

      I will concur though that some kind of tab overview would be great. Didn't early versions of Chrome have that?

      • Re:Fast - good - now focus on... (Score:5, Informative)

        by Big Jason ( 1556 ) on Friday January 11, 2013 @02:22PM (#42559961)

        I will concur though that some kind of tab overview would be great. Didn't early versions of Chrome have that?

        Hit Shift-Esc to bring up the Chrome Task Manager. It will give you a summary of each tab's memory, cpu, and network consumption as well as the ability to kill individual tabs.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        In my experience, a freshly started Chrome needs way more memory for the same set of tabs than a freshly started Firefox. Firefox however leaks memory. That may or may not be caused by some plugin rather than Firefox itself but either way, I can only reclaim that memory by restarting FF.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bengie ( 1121981 )
        I have to agree. I let Chrome run for weeks at a time on both my work and home machine. But let FireFox run for 2-3 days and I have no memory left.

        • Firefox crashes way too often for my taste, but since about version 13 it's gotten a lot better on memory use. I haven't used Chrome in a while, just tried it and found that yeah, it's really really fast. It used to be a real memory hog, and I won't be able to tell if that's still true unless I load it up with a lot of tabs. (And unfortunately, since I'm stuck running 32-bit Win7, I can't just throw enough virtual or real memory onto the laptop to handle memory bloat, and modern browsers don't seem to li

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bhsx ( 458600 )
      I believe the next push will be to get extensions running on Chrome for Android. The major intent being to get Chrome Remote Desktop running on Android, allowing for TeamViewer-style remote control (NAT-traversal et al) of Windows, Mac and Linux boxes from your Android device. This can obviously be done already with third-party apps like TeamViewer or Splashtop; but this would bring it in-house and make it an OS feature. As a side note, Splashtop used to use Google servers for NAT traversal. They release

    • Managing memory better so I don't have to keep shutting down web browsers every day or two. Most power users have many windows and many tabs up, and some are relevant for weeks, but most are unused and could be backgrounded much more effectively in terms of processor and memory use. Hint: Replace with a URL and a snapshot image updated infrequently.

      Have you seen the amount of state information that website commonly carry these days? It's been years since you could safely assume that if a user has "URL X" open, they will be OK with the browser just re-loading "URL X" at some point in the future. There's form data to consider, cookie stuff, URLs that don't point to any persistent resource on the server and are intended to time out fairly quickly, sites that are really picky about referrer strings(common on shitty multipage forms, breaks 'forward' and 'b

    • What are you doing that you need a tab open for weeks? During a session I'll have some tabs open and when I'm finished close the browser. What are these people doing with 100 tabs open at a time?

      • Re:relevant for weeks? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by nuggz ( 69912 ) on Friday January 11, 2013 @03:48PM (#42561007) Homepage

        Some people don't like bookmarks, or they use their browser like "todo" lists.
        Not that I advocate such an approach, but I understand it.

        For any particular project I might have a handful of links that are open at one time.
        I typically don't have 100 tabs open, but 20-40 is pretty typical.

      • In any given week I might be working on 3 distinct projects at work, the most complex of which might have 4 or 5 distinct informational topics requiring reference material or research.

        Each informational topic might require a web search or two, and anywhere from 3 to 10 pages from different sources to investigate the leads or to keep handy the valuable pertinent information for that work task.

        Of course, we generally don't control for how long we get to continue working on a given task. An important priority

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by atisss ( 1661313 )

      I'm using UnloadTab for Firefox, works pretty well. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/unloadtab/?src=api [mozilla.org]
      Of course hundreds of tabs for a week still requires some occasional restart (use ulimit -v in script before starting FF).

      However I dislike Chrome, because occasionally it starts hogging CPU, so I even can't move my mouse.

  • Between mobile Firefox being a thing again and Chrome being improved we can finally see some competition for Opera Mobile on Android :)

    The state of the Android browser is fairly pathetic, so this is really quite important.

    Right now the only reason for chromebooks to exist is that Chrome on Android is meh at best. When this changes they can stop deploying ChromeOS. Hopefully they will offer some kind of upgrade path to Android on Chromebooks, so that the community doesn't have to fumble its way through :)

    • Why is Chrome on Android so much worse than Opera Mobile.
      I'm actually at a point where I would be willing to pay Opera for its browser even though I manage to crash it every once in a while.
      How long will it take for Firefox on Android to be worthwhile using? Checked 1.5 years ago. Rechecked a couple of weeks ago. There's been definite progress but it still has a long way ahead.

    • Just downloaded on my Nexus 4. The install went without a hitch. The speed improvements are huge. Tried about 10 websites and it looks and feels great.

    • It's troll or overrated when I say it, it's insightful when someone agrees

      I love slashdot

  • I still think it's really neat that I can click install in the Play Store on my PC and watch it start downloading on my phone...

    • "I still think it's really neat that I can click install in the Play Store on my PC and watch it start downloading on my phone..."

      You can also dial a special number from a different phone and make it play sounds!

  • 25? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    And people get irrationally upset about Firefox's release schedule?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      And this is why I ditched them they are churning out a version number every.... wait this is chrome? Oh in that case this is the best thing evaaaaaaaaaar!!!!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      And people get irrationally upset about Firefox's release schedule?

      No, because Chrome updates tend to just work. Things don't break. I click Chrome and it works the same as it always had with the extensions it always has and it looks the same.

      Everytime Firefox updates, things break. Either some extension I have suddenly doesn't work anymore, or more likely, someone changed something in the UI behavior so when muscle memory takes over, things go haywire.

      Basically - Chrome updates keep the same UI and things

  • Slow for SVG with display='none' (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Bill Dimm ( 463823 ) on Friday January 11, 2013 @02:11PM (#42559859) Homepage

    I've noticed that for large SVG files where much of the content has display='none' (so it is only displayed when something is clicked to trigger a change in the display property) Chrome seems to take several seconds to become responsive after the SVG page load is initiated, while other browsers seem to handle it almost instantly. Since a display value of none "indicates that the given element and its children shall not be rendered directly (i.e., those elements are not present in the rendering tree) [w3.org]" it seems Chrome shouldn't be spending so much time processing such stuff. Version 24 doesn't seem to fix that issue.

  • I'll wait... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I'll wait for Chrome 31.1 for Workgroups. Hurr durr.

  • Chrome's attitude (Score:4, Interesting)

    by arisvega ( 1414195 ) on Friday January 11, 2013 @02:20PM (#42559945)
    Chrome's functionality sounds great, but I do not like its attitude: it establishes numerous connections "on the side" talking back to Google central all the time, almost constantly transmitting all sorts of information: Google intercepts and highjacks most of the traffic when someone uses Chrome, that much is obvious.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by ThatsNotPudding ( 1045640 )

      Chrome's functionality sounds great, but I do not like its attitude: it establishes numerous connections "on the side" talking back to Google central all the time, almost constantly transmitting all sorts of information: Google intercepts and highjacks most of the traffic when someone uses Chrome, that much is obvious.

      Use Chromium instead.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        For the very paranoid, there is a nice chromium variant. [comodo.com] Works well, doesn't freeze up like other options I've used, and the defaults make the IE10 "do not track" default look like an exibitionist.

      • Use Chromium instead.

        I just did: no time to compile my own, so I installed a build.

        Just firing it up, and it already tried to connect to several Google-owned domains (including the controversial gstatic.com) out-of-the-box without any warning or permission.

        Attempting to just write text to the adress bar triggers another cascade of connections- initially to just activate the "aid" of predicting the site I am looking for, I know- but not stopping there. So where does it stop, exactly?

        Respectfully, this reminds me of the various s

    • Re:Chrome's attitude (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11, 2013 @03:06PM (#42560471)
      If you don't want Chrome phoning home, disable that functionality. If you go to the settings, there's a "privacy" section with 4 checkboxes (at least in my version of Chromium):

      • Use a web service to help resolve navigation errors
      • Use a prediction service to help complete searches and URLs typed in the address bar
      • Predict network actions to improve page load performance
      • Enable phishing and malware protection

      Uncheck all of them and it should stop contacting Google except for automatic updates (not sure how disabling those works; Chromium doesn't have them as updates go through my package manager instead).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jez9999 ( 618189 )

      In addition, Chrome's UI is way too minimalistic for everyday use in my opinion, and completely uncustomizable. I detest having a close button on every tab - I regularly close Chrome tabs by accident - but they stubbornly refuse to do a damn thing about it.

    • Every time someone has made this allegation, and Ive taken the time to bust out Wireshark and sniff my network traffic, the allegation has proven false.

      The only things AFAIK that they transmit-- unless theyve snuck something in in the last year-- is the following:

      1. Keystrokes to your default search engine, if you have suggestions turned on (like every other browser that uses search suggestions)
      2. URLs and page contents if you are using the auto-translate feature-- just like would normally happen if you use a web

  • Worth noting that this release 100% breaks monitor color profile support, which sucks if you're someone that cares about photos. It's incredible that this is not a more important to the Chrome developers, but maybe most people don't care about quality. Just speed.

    Before this release, you had to use the --enable-monitor-profile command-line switch to enable monitor profile support. It wasn't perfect but it worked most of the time. Now this does nothing. Lame.

    • It's incredible that this is not a more important to the Chrome developers,

      No its not, because,

      most people don't care about [color profiles].

      (FTFY)

      I dont know of anyone (outside of IT colleagues) who would even know what a color profile is. I dont know that Ive ever used one, or that I care to.

  • What I want is for them to fix Crome's broken printing. I've had no end of problems printing from within Chrome. I realize it works for many people but not for us. Their default print preview will not print multiple copies, ignores color settings, sometimes ignores duplex settings, and has other problems besides. I've had problems and so has at least one other person in our company. We have to use the system dialog each time we print. I've sent in some problem reports but nothing has seemed to update

  • Chrome 24 breaks the use of animations in GWT 2.4 compiled code. If Google truly backs both of these products, they'll hopefully issue a Chrome patch ASAP. For more information see http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=158910 [google.com]
  • They've got opus audio for their remote desktop feature and WebRTC last I heard, but they STILL haven't added support for it in plain old tags...

  • when are they going to create a secure password generator? Lastpass is great but it would be so much smoother cross device if Chrome handled it all.

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