Chrome browser

[Tapewolf]

I suspect many people have heard of Google's new browser, currently only available for Windows.  Supposedly this uses process separation so that each tab is protected from the others and a crash in one won't bring down the entire browser.

However, this doesn't seem to be entirely true.  There is an interesting bug in it, posted on Slashdot.  Basically, if you create a small webpage which has a hyperlink containing "evil:%" instead of "http://whatever", it will kill the whole thing.
One of my co-workers began to play around and discovered that simply typing ":%" into the URL bar is enough to smash it.  In fact, simply putting it in the clipboard and right-clicking will do it over too.

I love breaking software.

[DarkAudit]

Everyone's going gaga over how supposedly fast it is. Since it's Windows only, they're only using IE or Firefox as a comparison.

Apples to oranges, I say. There's a Windows browser out there that uses the same rendering engine, and has been available for many months now. Safari. Uses the same WebKit engine as Chrome. And when you break it down a little further, you see that WebKit itself is a fork of KHTML, the rendering engine that powers Konqueror in the Linux world.

So the question is, how does Chrome stack up against Safari on a Windows machine?

[Tapewolf]

Everyone's going gaga over how supposedly fast it is. Since it's Windows only, they're only using IE or Firefox as a comparison.

Apparently, it's win32 only - they don't even have a Win64 version of the optimised Javascript engine yet, which strikes me as even more short-sighted than lacing the program with windows-specific crap.

And yes, a comparison against Safari would be interesting.  Personally, I'm not going bother with it (except as another browser to test against) until they release a version for a platform I actually use at home.

[superluser]

I'm not sold on the concept of having the same company provide me a browser and a search engine.  I'm rather a Google fan, and Chrome looks like a really awesome way to build a browser, but just for security reasons, I'd like to stay away from vertical integration, so I'll wait until Firefox starts doing the same stuff.

And the fact that there's no Linux version sealed the deal.

[DarkAudit]

And the fact that there's no Linux version sealed the deal.

*cough*Konqueror*cough*

But really, in spite of it's presence as a core component of KDE for many years now, who uses Konqueror as their everyday browser?

[Ryudo Lee]

I dunno where Tape gets that error from.  Chrome has yet to crash on me.  I'm trying it out.  It seems to be running faster than FireFox (which runs faster than IE7 and IE8beta), and appears to be a bit cleaner than others.  I'm sure in the future there will be more customizing options.  I don't like using a favorites bar, I like to have my bookmarks under one menu.  I don't use Safari so I can't compare it to that.  I think that it's got a different look that's quite refreshing, IMHO.

[Tapewolf]

I dunno where Tape gets that error from.  Chrome has yet to crash on me.  I'm trying it out.

I downloaded it yesterday.  If yours was from today, it's possible they've fixed it already.  I'm running 0.2.149.27.

But yes, it's simple enough to do... just type ':%' into the URL bar and it will vanish with a dialogue saying:

http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k216/tapewolf/scraps/chrome.png

But yes, it's dead fast.  I'm not sold on the UI myself, though.

What puzzles me is why ':%'?  '%s' and the other usual control codes don't do this.

For the record, this thread was not really intended as any kind of Google hate-fest.  I like the idea, and it's still beta.  I just love exploiting software bugs.

[Mao]

One more browser for my software to support.  Hopefully this one follows standards better.

[Tapewolf]

One more browser for my software to support.  Hopefully this one follows standards better.

As mentioned above, it's based around KHTML, so if your software works on Konqueror or Safari, it should work on this too.

[Amber Williams]

My husband was commenting about its supposed processing eating ways. I forget the actual term but from what he said, it apparently takes a relatively moderate amount of your CPU processing (I think?) when running.  I am not sure the details though until he gets back.

[superluser]

And the fact that there's no Linux version sealed the deal.

*cough*Konqueror*cough*

Konqueror is a version of Google Chrome now?

I suppose the thing that strikes me most about Chrome is the fact that browsers don't use multiple processes already.  I suppose I knew that, having seen the processes in top, but it never really registered.  The sandbox feature is something else that I'm reasonably familiar with--Gentoo's package manager uses something similar to install new packages--so that seems like a good idea.  Also, the new JVM should be an improvement, as it would be hard to make anything less useful than what they have right now.

It will be interesting to see how this develops.  I remember a browser called Dillo from few years back (it's still being developed, though there hasn't been a new version in a while).  One of the major benefits of Dillo was that it was *fast*.  In the words of NTK, ``Not `ooh let's get out our stopwatches and put it in a race with IE' fast: this is `what righteous voodoo hex has this mother *placed* upon my TCP/IP stack?'''

This, I believe, was due to well-threaded networking code.  It looks like Chrome may be doing something similar, so we'll see if this approach actually gets adopted into other browsers.

[Mao]

One more browser for my software to support.  Hopefully this one follows standards better.

As mentioned above, it's based around KHTML, so if your software works on Konqueror or Safari, it should work on this too.

Based around means that there's room for variations.  Those variations can break an app in seconds.   Not saying that it will, but I've been burned a few times.

[superluser]

My husband was commenting about its supposed processing eating ways. I forget the actual term but from what he said, it apparently takes a relatively moderate amount of your CPU processing (I think?) when running.  I am not sure the details though until he gets back.

Since no one has commented on it, here's what Google has to say about it:

http://blogoscoped.com/google-chrome/3
http://blogoscoped.com/google-chrome/4
http://blogoscoped.com/google-chrome/5
http://blogoscoped.com/google-chrome/6
http://blogoscoped.com/google-chrome/7
(warning: Contains Scott McCloud)

Unless you're on an embedded system where you a few K of RAM really does make a difference, Chrome's method is probably a better way to do things.  Among other things, it makes the whole system more secure and stable.  And that's not even including things like Porn mode.

[Ryudo Lee]

Hm, I did get that error Tape.  I typed in :% into the address bar and it crashed outright.  I wonder if it has something to do with the DNS Pre-fetching that it uses to speed up load times?

Edit: Sent a bug report.  Dunno if it's the first time they heard of it, but I didn't see it in their list of known issues.

[Cvstos]

I don't think I'll be giving it a try until they provide a way to use auto-complete without sending every keystroke into their own logs.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10031661-56.html?tag=txt

[Tapewolf]

I don't think I'll be giving it a try until they provide a way to use auto-complete without sending every keystroke into their own logs.

Firefox 3 seems to do that anyway.  At least, I'm assuming it's Google they're querying.

To stop Chrome doing that (or Firefox) you might have to recompile it, though.

[Cvstos]

I don't mean stored locally. That would be OK. I mean stored on Google's servers. Check the link.

[superluser]

I don't mean stored locally. That would be OK. I mean stored on Google's servers. Check the link.

No, Firefox 3 (and 2) query Google if you start to enter a term into the search bar.  It gives you past searches, and a few that I've personally never tried.  So I assume that that comes from Google.

[Mao]

I was of the impression that the search bars in firefox did both a local store as well as a query.  That's just from observing it's behavior though.  I say this because stuff I have searched for before shows up first.  Beyond that, do all of the search plugins that you can get for it do that?  I'm just asking because I've never taken the time to investigate that aspect of it. (didn't affect my work or my day to day life, so I ignored it)

Also, does the query identify the user in any way?  What sort of info is being sent?  I believe google logs all searches and the ip that made them so I suppose that would be quite identifying in that case.

[DarkAudit]

And the fact that there's no Linux version sealed the deal.

*cough*Konqueror*cough*

Konqueror is a version of Google Chrome now?

Other way 'round. Konqueror was first, with it's KHTML rendering engine. Chrome uses WebKit, which is a fork of KHTML. in fact, KHTML has been integrating more and more WebKit code, so it's conceiveable that eventually the two will merge into one again.

[Reese Tora]

I was hoping thre was a thread about chrome, which i've just stumbled onto through a few websites I read...

I'm going through their oficial information right now, and I like a lot of the under-the-hood stuff I'm seeing, but I'm not so sure I like a lot of the UI 'features' as described. (the new tab screen, for instance, I don't like, nor searching from the address bar.)

I was hoping I could get some impressions from the rest of you on how well it works in practice, because 'in theory' and 'on paper' doesn't always make it to 'in practice'.
(and, yes, I realize that Chrome is still in beta)

[superluser]

I'm going through their oficial information right now, and I like a lot of the under-the-hood stuff I'm seeing, but I'm not so sure I like a lot of the UI 'features' as described. (the new tab screen, for instance, I don't like, nor searching from the address bar.)

Agreed.  One other thing is that I've taken to the bookmarks bar.  I've got all the favicons of sites I visit often up there so I only have to middle click them to get a new window.  Looks like Chrome might make that more difficult.

[thegayhare]

While I haven't tried it I did run into this

http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp09032008.shtml

[Tapewolf]

While I haven't tried it I did run into this
http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp09032008.shtml

That, I like.   I did actually make the Conan connection myself, but didn't do anything with it...

[Jack McSlay]

tried it yesterday, but did not use it enough to really notice a speed boost. to me it looks more like it renders things in a way that gives it the impression of being faster than FF
I don't see making javascript faster effectively makes weppages faster. how often have you came to a webpage with so much javascript code it makes a difference how fast the browser processes it? from what I've seen so far, html updade speed takes a far, FAR more important role than javascript speed.
Once I made an animation with javascript, and Opera ran terribly slow - even slower than IE, and if I did some operations sich as popping up a drop menu, it would freeze until I stopped doing it, yet opera brags to have a faster JS processing than both FF and IE.