Google Chrome

There was bound to be a topic about it, so I figured why not be the one to make it?

I for one am pretty excited. I'm getting tired of resource-hungry programs like Reason, Vegas, and Audition stuttering because Firefox needs 200 megabytes to keep one single tab open. I tried to revert to IE but it didn't do it for me in terms of features, and Opera was... well, I don't remember what it was, but I think there was some fundamental problem like with a keyboard shortcut or something and I uninstalled it right away. Anyway, more than anything I'm just so comfortable with Firefox that I couldn't be bothered to change. Kinda like with qwerty and Dvorak...

But now I'm hyped to again try something new. In fact I was planning my night around the release, but apparently it's not up yet. The comic makes it look pretty cool, but here's hoping it has all the "little things" as well like bilt-in splellhrck and a good tab-switching shortcut, etc.

I think everyone knew it would happen eventually. Next up will be an operating system, closely followed by a giant robot army and global domination.

optimization hype
i'll believe it when i execute it (on my old boxes)
currently Seamonkey is the best working-modern-features browser those old things (486, p1, p2) can use
it'll be a feat for chrome to dethrone that as my default browser.

But yeah the comic does make a point. Why waste so much power for just colored text on colored backgrounds?

This is either gonna be a total disappointment or make the internet its bitch, this time for real.

Leileilol has a point though, despite the claims of "more performance" adding features such as multiprocessing, dynamically compiled javascript virtual machines etc. has its overhead and depends on using advanced operating systems, so in absolute terms it can't be as lightweight or efficient as e.g. Lynx or an ancient version of Netscape or Mosaic (which can run on a 486 with 4 MB of RAM), nor can it reduce Firefox's 200 MB to e.g. 20 MB but hopefully it will be more crash resistant and a better multitasker than what's currently available.

I'm not sure what makes you people think Chrome is supposed to run in your abaci. What they're trying to build is a browser that pays proper respect to the inherent speed of today's computers.

Richo Rosai said:

Anyway, more than anything I'm just so comfortable with Firefox that I couldn't be bothered to change. Kinda like with qwerty and Dvorak...

DVORAK is horribly overrated anyway. The actual speed increase is on average 1% or so. Not really worth learning a new keyboard setup just for that. This Dvorak, on the other hand, is really awesome.

Anyway, I'm probably not going to change. Firefox has been working for me the last several years, and I'll probably not change unless it goes downhill somehow.

Sweet - I'm posting from Google Chrome right now. I gotta say, it's rather nice. It has a clean, minimalistic interface, and the performance boost really is noticable, especially for websites that tend to clog browsers with data.

From what I can see, it looks like proof that Windows lacks any solid interface guidelines whatsoever. Or at least nobody bothers to follow them. Maybe when there's a Mac version I'll check it out to see if it really is faster, but I doubt that it'll be so much faster that I'll want to switch. Seriously I don't know what Google is doing entering the browser game at this stage.

I just downloaded Google Chrome and am testing it out...so far, it's significantly faster than any of the browsers I've used before. I may discover something I don't like sooner or later, but for now this is pretty nice.

DooMAD said:

I think everyone knew it would happen eventually. Next up will be an operating system, closely followed by a giant robot army and global domination.

I wouldn't mind a Google OS, they have a pretty clever team that is dedicated to providing a good product. You can't accuse Google of doing anything half-assed.

So they tout the browser as "open source", but the Windows version comes with an EULA. No Linux version yet, and as far as I see, there's not even source code to download. Bleh

John Smith said:

From what I can see, it looks like proof that Windows lacks any solid interface guidelines whatsoever. Or at least nobody bothers to follow them.

I don't think it was any secret... Even Microsoft can't demonstrate any consistency

http://code.google.com/chromium/

Also posting this from Google Chrome...ok, so far it appears a tad faster than mozilla or firefox (didn't try youtube yet, but it appears to have built-in Flash support, or at least it can reuse existing plugins) but it's not any more lenient on the RAM, on the opposite. Having 6 tabs open consumes more than 100 MB of RAM, quite heavy even by firefox standards (I need to get 20+ tabs open to even come close to that).

OK, so process isolation may be wonderful and all for stability, but the RAM overhead is tremendous, it's minimum 9 MB for every new, empty tab and increases quickly. It's not at all different from firing up multiple instances of firefox or ie instead of using tabs, like it was 1997.

StupidBunny said:

I just downloaded Google Chrome and am testing it out...so far, it's significantly faster than any of the browsers I've used before.

True that. It opens pages before I click :o

But honestly, since Opera is getting worse and worse (at least imho), and I never digged the Firefox (mostly because it's everyone's favourite and I have to be different), I'm gonna try Chrome thoroughly. I have been using some of Google's software (and the software they have adapted, like SketchUp), and they never let me down.

I might be tempted to give the browser a go at some point, but maybe not for a while as the beta isn't 2k compliant. I'm not all that bothered, but some of the linux users out there seem to be shitting themselves with woe, heh.

Naked Snake said:

I wouldn't mind a Google OS, they have a pretty clever team that is dedicated to providing a good product. You can't accuse Google of doing anything half-assed.

Would probably be quite difficult to accomplish anything that linux hasn't done already. The only way a real breakthrough could be made in the OS market is if someone found a way to use windows, linux and mac apps all together in one neat little package without any bodged emulation. Google might be clever, but I don't think they're that clever, heh. That, and microsoft lawyers would have a field day if they even attempted it, having patented every possible byte of code they can manage.

Another weird thing is the installation directory: don't bother seeking it under Program Files: at least for me it silently installed in C:\Documents and Settings\[my account]\Local Settings\Application Data\Google , and the installation is about 80 MB, of which 50 application data including plugins and dictionaries, and 30 MB of user data. Plus, there's no standalone installer yet but you can only install it with an active internet connection.

The rendering engine appears similar to firefox's, but it passes the dreaded acid2 test: http://www.webstandards.org/files/acid2/test.html (ok so does firefox 3.0). OK, so far it appears as a worthy alternative to firefox, but only time will tell. After all, it's open source, so most of its secondary features will have already appeared or will also creep elsewhere soon.

However the memory usage is a dog as of now, and while multiple processes appears, memory reclaiming does not work so wonderfully as promised (probably there's still internal process fragmentation/multiple tabs per process).

Naked Snake said:
I wouldn't mind a Google OS, they have a pretty clever team that is dedicated to providing a good product.

Considering that most of their applications run in a web browser, I would suggest that Chrome is their operating system...

you are aware that opera has a screen for customizing the keyboard shortcuts?

also acting like a 486 is a good tester for how well-optimized a modern app is is like saying source engine is badly optimized because a NES chokes on it

DooMAD said:
I might be tempted to give the browser a go at some point, but maybe not for a while as the beta isn't 2k compliant.

The installer says it requires Windows 2000 SP 4.

Maes said:

The rendering engine appears similar to firefox's, but it passes the dreaded acid2 test: http://www.webstandards.org/files/acid2/test.html (ok so does firefox 3.0). OK, so far it appears as a worthy alternative to firefox, but only time will tell. After all, it's open source, so most of its secondary features will have already appeared or will also creep elsewhere soon.

The Acid2 test is still pretty important, but not as much anymore since a lot of rendering engines can pass it (WebKit, modern Gecko, Presto). I'm more interested to see if it can pass the Acid3 test in the near future. I'm trying right now, but the server seems bogged down. But according to the Wikipedia page on it, it gets a 78/100.

On another note, I'm rather peeved thatclicking my mouse wheel doesn't produce that nice scroll-thingy.

I like google chrome so far, the interface seems very clean and organized, and it loads pages much faster than it would in firefox.

The renderer seems slower than Opera to me, but then again it's just WebKit. I downloaded Safari for Windows to check and it seems roughly comparable. I don't visit any JS-heavy Web 2.0 monstrosities so I didn't really notice any scripting speed differences.

The point of Chrome is clearly to push the other browsers to focus on improving the speed of webapps, which Google is obviously heavily staked in.

It's pretty nice, and it's only using 17mb of ram right now.

I'm liking it so far. Everything seems to be functioning exactly like in Firefox except the huge increase in screen space and the garish color scheme, which I'm sure I can live with or change. And it seems to have imported EVERYTHING, including saved passwords. And something about the ctrl+f text finder just makes me smile...

And the vertical scrolling seems to be faster!

Until I can think about it more, I've actually decided to stop using Chrome after I read more into the EULA.

DJ_Haruko said:

Until I can think about it more, I've actually decided to stop using Chrome after I read more into the EULA.

I started to read the EULA, but then I thought Meh. I mean they're a big company, and if they try anything bad enough to warrant stopping using it I'm sure it won't be a secret or anything and I can let smarter people figure it out and worry about it then. Worst case scenario would be simply uninstalling it--it's not like a Windows SP or something.

Richo Rosai said:

I tried to revert to IE but it didn't do it for me in terms of features

Maxthon Classic + IE6 = win^14

I have only installed Chrome so far and I hate it already. I want to choose where to install my programs damn it!

edit: Apparently Chrome also fails at showing the Java-using online banking system of a certain Finnish bank even after installing Java a new after Chrome.

But what's scary is that it apparently imported settings from my primary browser which it didn't even show in the list of browsers to import settings from (a modified version of FF, which most websites don't recognize as FF).

edit 2: I'm uninstalling Chrome after less than ten minutes of using. I might have kept it if my computer was newer, since some of the features could end up good and it does seem faster. But I'm not a huge fan of having tons of running processes (minimum 3 on one tab if you're on a page using javascript) each eating a lot of ram on an older system.

Jodwin said:

edit: Apparently Chrome also fails at showing the Java-using online banking system of a certain Finnish bank even after installing Java a new after Chrome.

The one really annoying thing I've discovered about Chrome (so far) is that it won't run with your installed Java. I did the exact thing you did, and after searching the internet a bit found out that you have to do some download and copy-paste magic into some folder somewhere so that the browser will recognize Java. And then, even once you've done that, you probably need to reinstall Java again anyway. It's a pain in the ass, but hopefully once they're past beta they'll fix it.

Hah, I just went incognito. Cute.

Going incognito doesn't affect the behavior of other people, servers, or software. Be wary of:
*Websites that collect or share information about you
*Internet service providers or employers that track the pages you visit
*Malicious software that tracks your keystrokes in exchange for free smileys
*Surveillance by secret agents
*People standing behind you

oh and the scroll speed is nuts and buggy - I can scroll down, but not up.