The browser wars may just become a little bit more interesting. Apart from Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and Safari, another player is ready to join the field in what will most probably be released as a beta – you know, company policy – for the upcoming 23 years: Chrome. It’s a webkit-based browser from Google. Update: It’s out there, folks.
Instead of being announced in a normal way, Google had to be all hip about it and leak a web comic (I kid you not) to Blogoscoped. As they explain:
Today there was a comic book in my mail, sent by Google and drawn by no less than Scott McCloud, creator of the classic Understanding Comics. Within the 38 pages, which I’ve scanned and put up, in very readable format Google gives the technical details into a project of theirs: an open source browser called Google Chrome.
Some features are quite interesting. It will have a new Javascript engine from Denmarkk called V8, which uses a ‘multi-process’ design, which probably means that you can kill individual pages without bringing down the entire browser – at the expense of slightly more memory usage. In a blog post posted after the leakage, Google explains that each page lives in its own sandbox, so that one rogue website can’t take down the entire browser.
It will also have more common features like anti-phishing protection, tabs (no, really?), window-less web applications, porn-mode privacy mode, and much more. The browser will be released for Windows today, Linux and Mac versions will follow later. Screenshots have already leaked, and sadly, it seems as if Google is using their own theme for the application’s buttons and window borders, just like Apple did with Safari. Too bad.
the new way to use tab seems good, i am curious to see te v8 javascript engine too.
I have high expectations with the new JS engine. So far, JS engines have left to be desired even among the best browsers. Sites like Digg where Ajax is heavily used, are slow.
Yeah, too bad. I wish this application used the default native OS theme. Same for GTalk…
Also, I hope Chrome supports data synchronization so that I can keep in sync my passwords, bookmarks across computers. A feature like a wand to submit forms automatically would be highly welcome also. And a custom contextual menu to fill in forms with custom data like in Opera (but not automatically like Roboform).
With Google using WebKit code, I guess this engine is going to be greatly revamped and both Safari and Konqueror will benefit from this interest. Web sites should render nicely down the road, both because Google will improve it and also because web devs will test their web sites more in WebKit.
Do you think there’s something very Apple-like about the way they’re trumpeting moving the tabs to the top as a new way of using a browser?
I’m not saying it won’t work better, it’s just interesting that they seem to be studying Apple’s marketing techniques closely.
Apple like?
Definitely – webkit as an engine for example.
Strikes me as strange since Nokia is working on porting firefox to QT because they don’t want an engine at least partially controlled by Apple.
Other strange thing is that nobody besides me seems to be kind of worried that google is getting way too much influence if that move works out.
With Android,chrome and their various other webapps tied together and the whole enchilada being financed by advertising things are starting to look like something to get concerned about.
Edited 2008-09-02 13:47 UTC
Well, I’ll play along with Google for as long as it takes for Microsoft to loose its strangle-hold on consumer software. Once that happens, well, then things may be different. Hopefully, Goog and MS will take each other out in one big Hollywoodesque shooting spree.
http://dl.google.com/update2/installers/ChromeSetup.exe
Edited 2008-09-02 19:43 UTC
I really do _not_ think Google will support or endorse it.
But it is open source and that should make it possible.
Announcement on the Official Google Blog:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/fresh-take-on-browser.html
…which was linked to in the item…
Why is it you must point out other’s non-compliance to your way of reading and dealing with articles.
Could you have not just stayed shtum and let the public decided whether this link was useful here or not through the mod system?
In fact, some like to get their information straight from the horse’s mouth, and don’t want to go blog hopping for what they’re looking for; so putting this link here is every bit appropriate.
Relax. I appreciated it. Saved me from middle clicking on it. I already opened up all 4 links in new tabs and was about to open that one too but thankfully someone mentioned that it was already linked to.
I have my doubts this’ll go very far.
Firefox is the most advanced and extendible browser on the market and to catch up will take a very long time in my view.
The community add-ons alone.. unless there’s compatibility of Firefox add-ons with Chrome or a max exodus from Firefox plug-in development (which I highly doubt) then this does seem to me to be more name and not so much show, much like Safari.
Sorry Google, but you’ve got your work cut out for you.
Just because it has “Google” on it doesn’t make it an automatic success.
The question is: Do most people need this extensibility? I’m asking because I don’t. If it’s the case, catching up (in other words, adding the addons feature) shouldn’t take that long for a company like Google)
I’m sure just the improved speed for Ajax applications, the overall stability, and the minimalist GUI with a Google logo will be enticing enough for people to adopt it. Personally I can’t wait to give it a whirl
No, but it helps greatly. Unless the product is bad, it’s already a success, unlike other brands.
Well, Safari is much just another browser. Chrome, if it maintains its promises, seems another thing. The concept of running tabs as separate jailed processes and to speed up Javascript are really interesting.
I agree that some compatibility with Firefox plugins should be put in place. It would be a tremendous feature.
Any information on the license Google wants to apply? It won’t be GPL, probably, but what else?
Dibs on Google Reciprocal Open Source Software license, or the GROSS license.
And I hereby nominate myself for the Lamest Comment of the Year Award. Beat that.
The comic says you can take what you want and contribute only if you want (that is you can make a closed source project out of it).
So it’ll be something like M.I.T. or BSD license or equivalent which in my opinion is the best thing around. If you really only want to release your code to the public for the greater good there’s no reason you should use restrictive licenses such as the GPL that imposes that you adhere to its ideology.
I think opensource should be made out of good will, without any attachments.
It is bsd. You can download the code from http://www.chromium.org
If you get a svn snapshot and build it on linux, the only thing that works is a small test app. Kind of sucks for us Linux geeks
How does that work? Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Webkit just a ‘derivative’ of KHTML…which is licensed as LGPL. How is that code subsequently relicensed as BSD, Googliscious Source, or anything else?
Not trying to start an argument…just asking…
The Google contributed portions are BSD. Stuff like the browser chrome, the multiprocess stuff, the process manager etc. The Webkit portion (and others) retain their respective licenses.
http://code.google.com/chromium/terms.html
Personally, I managed to endure the whole comic, I find it very well thought out in technical architecture and design. It is very different from how Firefox does things, they mention the ‘single-threaded’-ness of other browsers, and to fix this would take a huge effort.
I can’t help but feel that Firefox may just have been ‘run over’ completly.
That doesn’t make it a good browser. FF is actually pretty crap.
I’m all for more competition so I can have a browser that… well… is a browser and does that well. Something that FF is a complete epic failure at even
with FF 3.
Most users do not give a crap about most of the useless plugins.
If they deliver on what was outlined it is already miles ahead of FF for the base browser which is what most users want.
Believe it or not but I think it does.
That’s your opinion, and you’re entitled to it. I don’t care that much for FF myself, I tend to use Safari on Windows and OS X, and Konqeror and Dillo on other *nixes.
To be fair, FF3 fixed a lot of my personal gripes with the browser. It’s still not quite there though, I think.
Can you provide a reference for this assumption? In fact, it’s been my observation that — apart from being a good alternative to IE — extensibility is Firefox’s hallmark and the main reason people like it. It is indeed the most modifiable browser in existence thus far.
Again you claim to know what “most users” want. I’m not going to make such a lofty assumption; I’m going to give it a whirl and make my own conclusions. Thus far, it’s very, very fast at rendering and seems to know where I’m going as I type it. I’m using it right now, by the way.
I’m anxious to try it on OS X and Linux. I think it’s going to be very interesting in the next year or so; if something like this can outperform Safari, Apple may be forced to improve that browser.
I may be saying this prematurely, but I think this might just be the perfect browser for Haiku when it is ready for one. The only thing that would hamper it so far is the hard-coded window UI; I’d much rather Google had gone the route of FF3 and allowed the OS to dictate window elements. Perhaps if enough people complain about that, they will address it.
Edited 2008-09-02 23:25 UTC
My thoughts exactly, which is why I am pretty excited about this.
I am sure each OS port will require some platform code and there will probably be room for customization and making it fit in with the platform.
I am already downloading the code and will be seriously investigating doing the work to port it to Haiku. I doubt anyone at Google would do it, and since I already did a lot of work to port WebKit, porting Chromium (the open source project behind Chrome) shouldn’t be as hard. Though I’m sure it isn’t trivial either. But it is probably easier than writing a browser shell from scratch.
Since Chrome already has a Haiku/BeOS aesthetic in being lightweight, fast and minimalistic, I definitely feel it would be a great browser for Haiku.
Firefox is the most advanced and extendible browser on the market and to catch up will take a very long time in my view.
The most advanced? Pray tell, what kinds of features does it boast that no other browser has? Extensibility is useful, yes, but it’s mostly used by geeks only so it doesn’t matter for the majority of computer users.
The community add-ons alone.. unless there’s compatibility of Firefox add-ons with Chrome or a max exodus from Firefox plug-in development (which I highly doubt) then this does seem to me to be more name and not so much show, much like Safari.
Most Windows users don’t know much about Apple, if anything, so they don’t have any brand recognition and thus have no incentive to move to Safari. Also Safari doesn’t seem to offer anything over any other browser. But Google is known more or less by 100% of computer users, both illiterate people and über geeks. Also there’s a whole lot of people who associate Google with the whole internet. I, too, have Google as my homepage cos I use it all the freaking time. Thus they already have a huge market penetration and recognition.
Believe it or not, Chrome will get addons written for it if it’s not compatible with the Firefox ones.
Just because it has “Google” on it doesn’t make it an automatic success.
No, but it’s a lot more probable.
I pretty much agree with all of this, since we’re talking about the Windows version. In OS X, I strongly prefer Safari’s behavior over Firefox’s, but on the odd occasion that I’m in Windows, I can’t stand the ugly thing. It really is a completely different product. It seems like Apple only ported it so Windows developers would have a mainstream implementation of Web Kit compatible with the iPhone for testing Web apps. For general use, I can’t imagine why a Windows user would pick Safari.
I do have some issues with Safari even on the Mac, though, and Chrome looks promising as a solution. First of all, leaving Safari as my default browser seems to make it think it’s OK for it to make itself my default RSS reader, too, so getting away from it is compelling in and of itself. Safari can’t restore sessions, and one little piece of Flash on one tab can make all my open pages disappear. I also get a lot of memory creep, which Chrome’s multi-process design aims to avoid. Assuming Chrome is good at blocking Flash and its UI on OS X isn’t awful, I look forward to making it my new browser.
Don’t be too quick to dismiss extensibility. 90% of Firefox users don’t use more than one extension, but I find that the majority of Firefox users each use–and become attached to–a specific, different extension. It’s like having a browser built just for their purpose, because the little bit extra they come to rely on can be seamlessly added in.
The ‘minimal’ browsers with limited or no extensibility are always touted as great because of their simplicity, better design, better performance, etc.. This is all true, but, remember, the reason Windows isn’t going to soon be replaced by a simpler OS isn’t because of any one application that everyone needs, it’s because of a thousand different applications each needed by one person.
I agree with your comments – well said.
I’m surprised the FireFox fanatics haven’t modded you down, they’re almost as rabid as the Linux lovers and BSD Bastards. Don’t dare knock FireFox!
So far, I like chrome, my only concern is if browsing habits will be mined back to Google, like they do with Gmail (I was too lazy to read the entire EULA, which makes me want to say, why can’t software companies just write in plain English, and stop babbling on when it comes to EULAs?).
Dave
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2008-08-28/
(I wanted to embed the comic, but I fear it would ruin the comments’ formatting)
Love it
some damn bastard has modded you down as well and I can’t mod you back up
you get a +1 moral mod point from me.
Dave
Do most people care, to me it’s look the other way around. The over reliance on the add-on system are the biggest drawback I see in Firefox. Not only that they tend to brake when upgrading, but the simple fact that the add-ons I would even bother to install comes as default on other browsers.
I’ve never looked at the WebKit code, but I used the original KHTML code base quite a bit a couple years ago.
-If WebKit is still like KHTML, Google had to go with multi-process “sandboxes”, ’cause KHTML was certainly not thread friendly
-If WebKit is still like KHTML, then Google must have put in a lot of work integrating a new JavaScript engine. KHTML was very tightly coupled with JavaScript.
This work is presumably related to the Android browser work?
WebKit consists of WebCore and JavaScriptCore. So it will be relatively easy to change JavaScriptCore to something else.
A lot has changed in a couple of years.
This is not even remotely true. The design decisions behind Google’s browser were intentional and explained in the comic strip. The design decisions make perfect sense from a sane design perspective. Firefox embodies a lot of horrible design decisions.
It was coupled with KJS. But that doesn’t mean someone could not make changes, rewrite it or replace it all together.
It will be a windows only beta with Linux and OS X to follow. It makes sense to support the largest audience first I suppose but I wish it was a simultaneous release.
Some of the features seem like good ideas though, particularly the separate process per tab with ability to monitor memory usage on a by tab level.
Agreed: Memory AND CPU usage per tab: no more having to wonder which is the f* website which is making your computer sluggish..
Nice!
No need to wonder: it’s Digg!
I read this earlier, and there was something about it that bothered me. I just realized what it was. It *doen’t* make sense for a first beta release to go out to the masses. It actually would have made more sense to do a short beta with Linux users who are a smaller, more technically adept group (than the *average* Windows user) and typically have better bug reporting skills. (Also on the *average*!)
What it really comes down to is that Google felt that the Windows market was more important to them. Second class citizens, still. But at least a closer second than we used to be. Still a bit irksome considering where most of the underlying code they used came from.
Well, I think this is really only competition for Firefox. If someone really wanted off IE, they could have chosen something else ages ago. Perhaps Google doesn’t like paying that 66+ Million to Mozilla each year? (source: http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/documents )
What? No. The [probable] lack of extensions is going to mean a lack of uptake in certain crowds. Google Chrome is going to eat almost exclusively into IE’s market share.
People will even use more than one browser interchangeably, as suits needs.
I think this browser is just going to bring more diversity, and *much* more pressure on Microsoft and Adobe to clean up their act and get with it. IE8 is still a terrible browser as far as standards/javascript go, where as Firefox/Opera/Safari/Chrome are not.
Are you sure about that? I don’t know a single person who would admit to using more than one browser except in the (extremely rare now) cases that a site is ‘IE’ only, for example.
Plus I’m still not sure that the general public know the difference between IE and Firefox and how it affects their browsing experience and also the general ‘ethics’ of the situation (standards compliance, for example). I can’t help thinking a lot just use it because their resident geek told them it was safer.
But I certainly agree about it eating Microsoft’s market share rather than Mozilla’s or Opera’s. It’s amazing how many people are lost without Adblock these days.
Edited 2008-09-02 08:49 UTC
I use Firefox & Safari interchangeably. If I’m developing with Firefox, I use Safari for general off-the-side browsing, so that if Firefox leaks or crashes, I don’t lose my other unrelated stuff. This behaviour could even be solved by Chrome’s process-per-tab that would allow a crash to cleanly exit without taking the whole browser down.
No, but I’m sure they know who Google is and “Google is coming out with a browser” is going to have significant impact on them.
What’s a browser? You mean The Internet? Google is coming out with their own The Internet? Wow! I’ll ask the kid down the street to put it on my computer.
Senator Stevens? Is that you?
Most German newspapers already have articles about the new Google browsers on their webpages, for example Sueddeutsche, Der Spiegel and FAZ. They are not aimed at computer science persons or geeks. A lot of people will hear about Chrome and since so many people already use Google, a lot of people will try out Chrome. I think Chrome will be a serious contender in the browser market and I think more competition is always a good thing.
Perhaps my point was missed. It’s certainly not that I like IE (as I am writing this from my Mac/Firefox). But there is a reason Firefox, while far better than IE, still has the bulk of the marketshare. People like my grandma are NOT going to install a browser even if it is the best thing ever. So, that’s my point. IE comes with the PC and unless I go an install something different for her, that’s the browser that will get used. So, people wanting “something better” might try Chrome. But I certainly don’t expect it to be the IE crowd. And Kroc, you are using Firefox and Safari and are interested in Chrome. My grandma… well not so much. So tell me again why IE will lose more than firefox?
Because Firefox *proved* that people are willing to download a new browser. Non technical people. Regular people. Grandmas. Because I’ve seen them in my travels as a repairman. Mozilla hear from them in letters.
You are discrediting users to think that getting/using Firefox is above them.
You may be right. I certainly don’t mean to discredit the “average person”, but even my father (who is far more technical than most) would never have installed firefox. I did it for him because he was having problems with popups several years ago. But he never uses the plugins, themes or anything like that. Neither he (nor my grandma) for that matter are in anyway dumb. And I hope that my comments don’t come across as such. But they only use the internet for very specific things (such as email) and could care less about things like process based tabs. But time will tell… perhaps I’m missing something.
Firefox is an improvement over, say the old Mozilla Suite.
But yes, there are still areas of it that are inaccessible to the public and would easily get skipped over because they are not the types to go hunting down functionality.
For example, there’s no default new-tab button in Firefox. Tabbed browsing may as well not exist if it’s hidden like that, the same goes with extensions.
Google Chrome will be able to one-up Firefox in that very respect. There is no menu, tabbed browsing is up front, bookmarking is more obvious.
That’s what excites me about Google Chrome – having the balls that Mozilla don’t regards the interface.
Google Chrome will be able to one-up Firefox in that very respect. There is no menu, tabbed browsing is up front, bookmarking is more obvious.
That’s what excites me about Google Chrome – having the balls that Mozilla don’t regards the interface.
One of my pet-peeves is that every single god damn application insists on having menu even when it already has all it’s functionality available otherwise, and even if the app doesn’t have anything else than File -> Exit and Help -> About….
That said, I find Google Chrome to be interesting. To me it makes more sense that the url bar is inside the tab rather than outside it, having no menu bar and so forth. We shall see how it turns out in the end, but Google does have some talented devs there..
Firefox users normally have a set up where they have the addons they need integrated and are relatively loath to change their web browser. Most, like myself, will try it but will only change if there are real advantages to Chrome in terms of functionality, reliability and speed.
On the other hand most people use Google. Google are the experts in targeted web advertising. Thus they will be able to market their Browser to people who have never thought of switching to Firefox and who have never even heard of it. Google can market it as giving the best possible Google experience and many default IE users who are regular Google users may switch on this basis
i use firefox and ie 7 at work and safari at home
ie Iuse more than one browser
From the announcements I have not the greatest hopes for the mobile market. That’s where most of the pain is right now (concerning a technical decent and reliable browser).
I got very excited, seeing the Firefox concepts for mobile browsing. Some very handy eye candy and good functionality for tiny screens.
Lets see how Chrome goes Android.
This feature was removed to meet the deadline.
If all goes well.
This’ll make things really interesting! The WebKit
browser engine has shaken things up a lot recently, that’s for sure.
It’ll be interesting to see which license Google uses for this new browser.
It’ll be worth seeing MS’ response to this. With Firefox tearing chunks out of IEs market share, do they flag IE and focus more on Office and Windows, or do they put more resources into IE (which is a minimal earner for them anyway)?
The jist of the Google Chrome comic is “Adobe, get your sh*t together”.
I dont think basing it on Webkit counts as “starting from scratch” though.
Not even close. The whole comic from beginning to end is lambasting Firefox for its piss poor design.
This will just be one more pain in the arse for web designers… a new browser to test. The only people using it will be the geeks who come to sites like this. It will be about as popular with the masses as Orkut (could be spelt differently).
If google and the other companies were serious about web standards they would stop helping to draft new versions (sometimes two or three later versions) of standards before they actually support 100% of the existing standards.
Having another browser that supports maybe 100% of CSS1, 80% of CSS2, 20% of CSS3 and 10% of CSS 4 doesn’t help anyone. This will be just another browser half supporting standards… and annoying geeks every where.
It’s based on webkit (KHTML/Safari) so it should pass Acid 2 completely, which will make it one of the most compliant browsers for CSS. Acid 3 is Javascript based so we’ll have to wait and see how well v8 works, but I suspect it’s going to do well on Acid 3 too.
It’s only a pain if you’re a crap web developer – and good. People should feel pain for writing wonky code; it’ll make them write better, more standards based code in the future.
In fact, it’s only a pain when you write stuff for IE. I have a site that doesn’t support IE at all, I haven’t even tested with it – and guess what – it worked in all the other browsers just fine.
Plus, Chrome is based on Webkit, so it’ll render the same as Safari, no difference.
“It will be about as popular with the masses as Orkut (could be spelt differently). ”
Well, in this case 80% of us, Brazilians will use google chrome. It’s a nice start!
Google is very-very popular here.
You can count us Indians in too for this browser. More than 90% of web users in India have an Orkut profile.
It is the standard amongst social networking sites here.
Where do those stats come from? Or is that 90% of the people you know?
It could well be 95% , but I lowered it for sensibility’s sake.
And these statistics come from experience and it is not “the people that I know”.
You can try this little test yourself. If you know any Internet user from India, try finding him/her on Orkut and in most probability (yes in more than 90% – so much for “statistics”) you will be able to.
I think it is called common sense and just looking around. Believe or not, Orkut is king here in Brazil and nobody even knows Facebook and MySpace despite some early attempts from the former to enter the Brazilian market. Oddly enough, GTalk is nowhere near as popular as MSN Messenger is here no matter how much Google tries to throw the weight of its brand on top of it (as a matter of fact, AOL’s AIM isn’t even a blip on the radar either).
I work for a Fortune 500 company that has outsourced some jobs to India and therefore I have some acquaintances there and based on what I’ve heard from them, I don’t have any reason to believe that MySpace or Facebook are strong there either.
Is it that hard for some of you to understand that what is true for the US might not hold for other places in the world?
Is it hard for you to understand that not everybody comes from the US?
Ah, but it’s not a new browser to test. You only have to test web pages against the four major HTML rendering engines: Gecko, WebKit/KHTML, whatever IE uses, and whatever Opera uses.
You don’t have to use Firefox to test the Gecko engine. You don’t have to use Safari to test the WebKit engine.
The only area where you may have to test against multiple versions of multiple browsers is if you want to compare JavaScript performance.
Mozilla uses Gecko.
Konqueror uses KHTML.
Safari + Google Chrome use Webkit (based on KHTML).
Opera uses Presto.
IE uses Trident.
There are at least these other rendering engines: GtkHTML (Based on KHTML), iCab, Tasman, Prince XML and Robin.
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_layout_engines
There are of course others even more obscure.
For the most part, if you first test against Webkit/KHTML, Gecko and Presto you can generally get it working OK fairly readily … and then you also have test it against Trident which will cause you all sorts of grief.
If you can also get it working against Trident without breaking the Webkit/KHTML, Gecko and Presto rendering … generally you would be well pleased with your effort and you would not bother with the others.
So, like I said, you only have to test against the four major rendering engines. Not against all the bazillion different web browser that are out there.
This might be very interesting. Competition is good, especially if the new competitor has a big influence on the web. It will probably force the other browser vendors to make their browser better. Some might even borrow code from Google Chrome.
At home I use Opera as my default browser, IE7 for sites that don’t work well with Opera, and sometimes I use Firefox to test out stuff.
At work I use Opera as my default browser and IE7, Firefox and Safari for testing our web applications.
I’ll probably try out Google Chrome when it’s available. Unlike other people, I will not comment on its quality before I get a chance to play with it.
The crucial thing for me is if Chrome will allow me to turn off tabbed browsing (I detest tabs – I have my reasons), while still allowing me to use the sandbox stuff for separate windows. If that’s the case, then despite the fact it looks like total ass (not like other Windows applications), I might give it a decent go.
Edited 2008-09-02 12:02 UTC
Can’t you just not use tabs? Ctrl-n and “Open in new window” instead of Ctrl-t and “Open in new tab”?
You might be better off using IE8.
It does the sandboxing thing, and also have porn-mode.
And if it’s rumors about standard compliance turn out to be true it’ll be the first IE browser that I don’t hate.
In fact, I would claim that Google stole these ideas from IE. (Just like they stole from Opera with the tab-placement.)
Nothing wrong with stealing, but the funny thing is that they only credit WebKit og and Mozilla with regards to the stealing, when they did actually steal pretty much from every major browser. (Safari/WebKit, Mozilla, Opera AND Internet Explorer.)
Erm, do you have a source for that. As far as I am aware, Internet Explorer sandboxing and Chrome sandboxing are entirely different things. IE partially isolates its entire self from the rest of the OS in one blob, while Chrome isolates itself from other bits of itself.
I was a bit hasty I guess, Google took MS’ concept and took at a alot futher.
Still I would say they definetely share similiarities and philosophies.
Saying they’re completely different isn’t quite right IMHO.
I somehow doubt it.
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?no_d2=1&sid=08/09/02/1418252
I really hope they didn’t steal anything from IE. The world just doesn’t need another slow, bloated, non-compliant lock-in browser.
I don’t think(or see) how they could take actual source from IE, what they did they was ideas. (And took them futher.)
I’m not a Microsoft-fan, I think they’ve done alot of stupid things, and I don’t use Windows at home…
However, what’s the point of being against things simply because they are Microsoft?
If they actually did something good, why not aknowledge that rather than deny it?
For instance: IE8 will be better at standard compliance. I’ve tested it and a few of my only-works-in-standard-compliant-browsers sites worked without a hitch with it.
I’ll probably never use IE8 myself, but I’m really happy others will so I don’t have to care about all the f–king bugs in IE6 and IE7.
Isn’t that a good thing?
I see from the screenshots that there is no menu bar. I wonder if the people who bashed MS for doing the same with IE7 will also be taking a sledgehammer to Google’s GUI design teams, or will there be a different reaction because google aint ‘evil’ like MS is?
Edited 2008-09-02 12:15 UTC
There is a big difference between not having the menu bar enabled by default and not having a menu bar. It isn’t difficult to enable the menu bar in IE 7.
I’m all for a new browser provided that it also includes an email client. I don’t know if I’m a rare exception, but I personally like a fat email client integrated with my web browser. I hate webmail, including Gmail’s interface, and I need offline availability. Opera has a fairly nice email client and still manages to be lightweight. And my personal choice is Seamonkey, which includes a Gecko browser and an email client equivalent to Thunderbird all integrated into the same program, and it still uses less memory than Firefox alone.
I know Chrome is supposed to include Gears to access Gmail offline, but this still leaves a big hole for users who don’t use Gmail or those who prefer a fat client. I wonder if they will include a plugin/extension system to allow for somebody to implement this in the future.
I respect your desire for an Email application. What I don’t respect is your requirement that a browser should also function as an email client. These are two, separate entities, and should be kept as such for many, many reasons. I’d suggest you have a look at something like thunderbird.
Firefox is and probably will be my main browser,
but it sounds really interesting for things like Gmail and things like script-heavy web-based CMS systems.
Gmail is still beta. Seriously, what is up with that? Why aren’t there jokes about gmail still being beta like there are for Duke Nukem Forever.
How many years has gmail been around?
Because Google has shipped a real, working product with Gmail and all we’ve seen of Duke Nukem Forever is, at best, some screenshots?
look up the difference between public beta, and internal beta
What about Flash and SilverLight? More and more site are using those and are moving away from Java/JavaScript.
I don’t know what’s all the fuzz about Java being faster.
I don’t believe that. A very low number of sites I visit have use silverlight, and while embedding flash content is very frequent, that doesn’t mean the same site (or others) doesn’t use lots of javascript. They do, and a lot. Lots’a’lot.
They are used as separate processes so that they don’t affect the browser. Any plugin actually (Acrobat, WMP, Real, etc…). They ship separately also.
They are a replacement for Java but not for Javascript. Java has been abandoned a long time ago. A few banking web sites still use Java here and there for client authentication
But I think more and more web sites are using Javascript, especially with the Ajax frenzy. Javascript is great and Flash/Silverlight certainly can’t replace it. Flash and Silverlight are fine for embedded video, if at all. That’s about it
Java is slow because you have to load the Java Virtual Machine each time you need to open an applet. But this wasn’t mentioned in the comic. What was mentioned is the Javascript engine. It has to be fast if you want your Ajax web sites to be reponsive.
Not to mention that Java VMs, while certainly packing much more functionality, now have become monsters.
Back in 2000 the Microsoft java 1 VM included in IE was very light. It started immediately and you wouldn’t notice a java app running in a corner for a little visual effect. The current VMs are monsters that will basically kill your browser with their starting process.
FYI: Java 6 update 10 will fix this through various means. See:
http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/javase/java6u10/
Despite these improvments is probably too late for Java (or JavaFX, or Silverlight, etc …) in the browser though. Most folk seem to want zero-deployment options these days.
Well, once you realise that Java and JavaScript have absolutely no relation with each other in any way shape or form (beyond the horribly similar names), you’ll start to understand.
something I really liked (and wanted in other browsers a long time…) is the “Task Manager”… I mean, why not? =]
“Screenshots have already leaked, and sadly, it seems as if Google is using their own theme for the application’s buttons and window borders, just like Apple did with Safari. Too bad.”
Too Bad? WTF Thom? You know how hard it has to be to implement a modular Chrome UI that adapts to each OS’s UI? I mean, damn, it took 3 releases of firefox, and that is not counting pervious pre-names that firefox used, you know, like, phoenix, ect…
and WTF took yall so damned long to report this?
http://www.winmatrix.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=19859&st=15&gop…
these guys had the info up just a bit after midnight, my time…
and why the hell is the OS News RSS so damned slow to update?
What is interesting is that although they do not use native widgets, they *did* however bother with implementing the fancy Vista aero-transperency effect.
If they bothered that, I’m not really sure if the step towards having native GUI is really that long.
Also: will be interesting to see if they on mac, if not have native-looking atleast go for a more Mac-like style. (Like Opera did.) Mac-people *hate* stuff that looks out of place, Windows-users seem to not care as much.
piss off.
I man, come on, if the webbrowser workd better and faster than any other one out there, why in the hell will any one get pissy about the face that they cant change the way that it looks?
i mean, just how shallow is that?
After some standstill, dillo seems to have become an active project again. I’m ready to bet that dillo2 will be THE fastest browser for Unix-like systems.
http://lists.auriga.wearlab.de/pipermail/dillo-dev/2008-May/004284….
real cross-platform and with real value to the community, Lobo would be a good start. Otherwise there are more than enough browsers out there (I love epiphany and kmeleon). I would be more pleased if they created a crossplatform driver kit.
FYI, as of about 1:45pm central time, Chrome is now available for download:
http://www.google.com/chrome/
It’s VERY slick and so far with 5 tabs on all doing heavy java crunching, isnt crashing.
Please tell me you aren’t confusing java with javascript!
Javascript is 1.6 times faster than on firefox. String handling is only slightly faster than on firefox, which is not surprising since it is probably all done by C library functions in both cases.
But some things, like math and control flow, are much faster.
** TOTAL **: 1.65x as fast 7886.6ms +/- 0.5% 4780.2ms +/- 4.6% significant
It will have a new Javascript engine from Denmarkk called V8, which uses a ‘multi-process’ design, which probably means that you can kill individual pages without bringing down the entire browser – at the expense of slightly more memory usage. In a blog post posted after the leakage, Google explains that each page lives in its own sandbox, so that one rogue website can’t take down the entire browser.
Which is essentially as it always should have been. No faulty or malicious webpage should be able to chrash the browser. Sometimes it feels like we live in the era of Windows 3.x with its cooperative multitasking.
Funny that we had to wait for Google to implement JavaScript in an acceptable way.
I hope other browsers will follow with regards to sandboxing webpages/tabs.
I can’t seem to download it from my linux box.
Has anybody tried it in wine?
cannot dl it on Vista from Firefox
Use google.com/chrome not gears.google.com/chrome. The latter was broken for me when i tried.
wine no workie. Missing some .dll’s. To download change user agent to IE on vista or XP. The downloaded .exe is only about ~500kb and that exe-file tries to download the rest of the program.
guess we have to wait.
I’m using the browser now and I like it. I will probably stay with firefox purely for the foxmarks extension, which I use a lot, however.
It does all remind me of Bill Gates’ book “The road ahead”, released over 10 years ago now. He mentions Netscape as being a competitor and how they were planning on building an OS based around the browser. Using Chrome, especially with the lack of title bar and the ability to add the tabs (“Applications”) as shortcuts to the Desktop/Start Menu, I am starting to think this is beginning to happen.
The best part of this is that there is open source project behind it Chrome (called Chromium). Just trying to compile it, but not sure if it’ll work on Linux 64… anyway, all of your Linux 32bit / Mac users should be able to build it, which is great!
I’m writing this very first post from Chromium. It looks slick, it’s definitelly fast – but lacking many features known for example from Firefox.
Anyway, I hope I can make it work on 64 bit Linux today… well till early morning when I must start my regular work!
Linux port does not “work” at the moment at all. You can compile it but there’s nothing more that you can do with it in it’s current state right now.
Agrh, yes thanks for this. There already put warning message in red box on Chromium docs saying the port is not complete (wasn’t there from beginning).
Okay,
I laughed out loud. Go to the Task Manager and there on the bottom left is a link (I’m using Finnish version) that translates to “Statistics for geeks”. Pretty funny.
This baby is sleek, fast and refreshing but boy-o-boy:
“Hello ads, it’s been a while.”
It will be interesting to see how adblock-like function will be ported for the plug-ins.
Google makes its money form ads, it is basically an advertising placement company.
I can’t see Google being interested in blocking ads, somehow.
kragil:
Agreed.
For now, if you want to actually use the Google Chrome browser, I would suggest installing privoxy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privoxy
and directing the Chrome browser through that proxy.
Edited 2008-09-03 00:11 UTC
Yes and the sun rises from the east.
I could have been a bit more clear but that was my point. Naturally no built-in function for blocking ads is included as this is Google and so, I once again saw the web unfiltered which is not the normal state for me.
That’s why I also used the term “plug-in” ( as in usually made by a third party ) in connection to the AdBlocking.
Just because it has “Google” on it doesn’t make it an automatic success.
Show me the money! This like many other mediocre
google ideas gets lots of press but goes nowhere.
At the end of the day you need to generate some sort
of cash. Ever since MS made their browser free and put
the last nail in Netscape coffin, no one wanted to
create a “no revenue” product.
How many paid $75 for a browser 10-12 years ago?
Eventually two hours ago the browser Chrome is released.
For multicore machines it runs great because of multi-processes architecture. (I have quad core) Yet, opening a new tab is slower for the same reason.
Another strange thing is the interface, is really minimalistic, as you will not know where is your history (excluding back-forward) and the interface strides to match the Google’s look and feel.
Safary performs bad as it does not get the latest release in Acid3.
For sure the first impression is that Google wants to blind the IE8 Beta 2 launch by targeting more focus on it.
Anyway, the browser sounds to be enough good for daily usage, yet not spectacular.
Another great thing is that tries to import the Firefox settings (and it does flawlessly) and JavaStript performs great (SunSpider site does not run at the moment but any other pages seems run right).
Good job Google, because it match on matter of power (and future market share) with Opera. Means nice, shiny but will not replace de-facto browsers today: IE and losely Firefox. Safari will remain strong as much as is the default OS X browser, but elsewhere is nothing you will say that Google browser is a musth have.
… or is scrolling with a touchpad on a laptop extremely broken? All I get is spurts of vertical downward scrolling, with no upward scrolling.
That aside, so far I am very impressed! My post below is repeated from another forum I frequent:
Ok so first impressions after installing …
THE AWESOME
Seriously, the “New Tab” page is fantastic. It’s like Opera’s speed dial, but without the hassle of managing it yourself. Chrome just keeps a 3 x 3 grid of your favourite / most visited sites in the form of screenshots and presents them in a stylish, minimalist and most importantly FAST layout as soon as you want a new tab.
THE GOOD
It is speedy. They really have nailed Webkit and the javascript engine seems to be as fast as they claim it to be. The more “web2.0” sites are snappier and you experience much less locking up while they think.
It is plain and simple. Once you get rid of the annoying bookmarks toolbar, the tab/url arrangement at the top of the window looks great and (in Vista at least) it makes use of Aero so you have a funky looking window. Full screen is where the browser shines however, as windowed on a smaller laptop screen, that funky Aero-ified area just wastes far too much space. The URL bar font is also HUGE (looks around 14pt compared to a standard 10pt everywhere else on the desktop) which is fair enough when you consider the toolbar buttons have to be a certain size. There is unfortunately no right click > customise option to use smaller buttons as with IE and Firefox. Hopefully that will come.
The URL bar is pretty cool. I think I actually prefer it to the messy “awesome bar” in Firefox.
The tabs at the top of the window make a lot of sense. The new tab button is obvious but non-obtrusive. You could have a bit of trouble hitting it on a high-res screen however.
Data Import. Yep, it nicely imports all of your Firefox setup, including browsing history, stored passwords etc. You can pick up where you left off in Firefox without worrying about what your password to that forum was, or what the url to that specific site looked like. The URL bar search works for your “historic” history too.
System performance overall doesn’t take a hit when you load the browser up with tabs. This IMO is a massive improvement over both IE7 and Firefox.
Pages look how they should do, thanks to Webkit. I always did like how it handled overly complex mixtures of tables and CSS layouts, but hated the Windows version of Safari.
THE BAD
Scrolling is bad. It seems to get confused when you scroll and accelerates massively, then stops scrolling altogether. That could be an issue/incompatibility with my laptop trackpad, but it is highly annoying. I can scroll down, but not up!
There is no real status bar. This means, when you are waiting for a page to load, you have to strain your eyes down to the bottom left of the screen to try and make out what’s going on. It doesn’t help matters when you mouse-over the status “popup” that it flips down on you, not actually showing any useful information.
No extensions. The first thing that struck me when giving Chrome a go was how many sites are crammed full with adverts. How I miss adblock.
Overall, I am highly impressed (as you can probably tell). Considering this is a completely open product too, I can see good things coming as it develops over time .
Edited 2008-09-02 21:24 UTC
Yeah, lots of people are having mouse-scrolling issues with Chrome right now. Stuff like not being able to scroll up, the scroll directions behaving upside-down, etc. It varies from person to person. Presumably Google will be working to fix this.
I must say, it looks VERY good, is fast and seems really like something I’ll probably start using very much. There’s two downsides at the moment, however: scrolling is somehow a little jumpy, and Flash plugin seems to crash every time I tried to get to OSNews. I have no idea if it’s Chrome-bug or Flash-bug. Though, I use Flash so rarely that I’ll probably end up removing it if it doesn’t start working
I am using Chrome now and I like it. It is very fast and lightweight. I really like the simple UI.
The Options window is simple with only three tabs, yet provides some nice features.
I am definitely going to investigate porting it to Haiku, since I already have a lot of the work done in porting WebKit.
Amen to that!
Seems pretty decent for a beta version of “new” browser. I am slowly figuring out the best ways to manipulate my bookmarks.
I am running it on Windows XP via Parallels on my Mac. Seems pretty responsive.
Read Google’s comic book and their press release more carefully and you’ll see that they’re wanting some specific things from Chrome:
(1) to have a browser they can control and write webware apps for;
(2) to serve as an OS layer from which to run AIR apps through; and
(3) to compliment Firefox, “the browser.”
Firefox will continue to be a rich browser, wholly extensible, and will continue to grow because of the strength of its contributors. Chrome will be a lean environment in which to run apps and conduct search, email, etc. This will be even more important for mobile devices.
I think this is a pretty slick implementation. I like the minimalistic appearance, manipulating book marks via drag and drop and right clicking… Love the URL box… All good to me so far.
I will definitely be giving this a serious whirl when it is released for Mac OS X. Right now I use Flock/Firefox for the most part (I really enjoy add-ons like interclue, greasemonkey, etc.)
But because this is quick, simple and will likely have a future with something similar in concept to add-ons through gadgets, I think it will be conceptually extensible while still remaining light weight.
Ditto – especially on the URL bar. Inline auto-completion FTW (I’ve really never liked the drop-down list style of auto-completion.
A few other nice touches:
– the border / stroke around active form fields
– the “grippy-dots” for resizing textareas
– the way they’ve implemented status bar functionality (there is no ever-present status bar, but an equivalent pops up when you mouse-over a link)
– uses Windows’ native text rendering, in contrast to Safari Win32 (which constantly gives me an urge to reach for my reading glasses)
– it appears to have fewer rendering quirks than Safari Win32
Seems pretty decent, overall.
To be fair, those are WebKit features, though I like how Google has used them (the rendering style for both is controlled by platform code in WebKit.)
I like that too, though I first saw it in the QtLauncher in the WebKit repo.
I am one of the odd people who likes the Safari Win32 text rendering, but I don’t mind seeing the native rendering in Chrome. It makes more sense to use the platform text rendering anyhow.
That seems odd since they probably use a similar code base. Though maybe Google forked their own WebKit and made a lot of fixes.
Ah yes, just checked Safari and I see what you mean. Small difference, but I think the orange used in Chrome (as opposed to the “aqua” in Safari) is a bit more noticeable.
It’s strange, I don’t mind OS X’s text rendering when actually using OS X. But something about having it mixed with Win32 apps gives me this constant impression that the text is just a bit out of focus.
The main difference I’ve noticed so far is with beosnews.com – in Safari, the border of the lefthand column extends about 10-15px too far to the right, but the problem doesn’t seem to be present in Chrome.
“it appears to have fewer rendering quirks than Safari Win32 ”
“That seems odd since they probably use a similar code base. Though maybe Google forked their own WebKit and made a lot of fixes.”
Really?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kurafire/2822606444/
Well I ran the Acid2 Test on IE7, Firefox 3.0.1, and Chrome 0.2.149.27
Here’s the results.
http://www.freeimagehosting.net/image.php?329a4720f6.jpg><img
Perhaps you should use IE8 , just to be just
I loaded up the same 45 tabs I have open in Firefox3, and it was a bit of a mixed bag.
The Good:
Everything was noticeably snappier. In fact, I couldn’t notice any slowdown at all compared to when I only had a single tab open.
The Mixed:
Memory use was about 60% higher. However, that was without AdBlock. Killing the Flash process dropped that to 29%. Of course, FF also gives you a lot of extra functionality that Chrome doesn’t, and I had several extensions running which would only add to the total.
The Bad:
No tab overflow, so they all just get scrunched up smaller and smaller until not even the page icon shows. So the UI isn’t really usable when you have that many tabs open at once, even though the browser is completely capable of running them.
Overall, I have to say that I’m impressed. Chrome has a lot of rough edges right now and won’t be replacing FF anytime soon for me, but I can definitely see where they are going with this.
Edited 2008-09-03 01:29 UTC
Just to confirm, you are saying that when loading the same 45 tabs in Firefox and Chrome that Chrome users 60% more than Firefox, or the other way around?
I tried Google’s new browser, Chrome. I downloaded the installer with Firefox on Linux. I used an extension to tell Firefox to report it was Internet Explorer 6, running under XP. I tried running the installer under Wine – didn’t work. I ran it under a limited account in XP under VirtualBox. That did work, and Chrome installed.
I played around with some of the settings, and then went to Slashdot. The very next thing I did was install the extensive hosts file I use into Windows.
Yikes!
Some observations: Chrome uses Webkit, aka KHTML, to render pages. Many of the setup dialogs, however, look like Firefox (the cookie management dialog is a case in point). While Webkit may form the basis of page rendering, Google uses a different Javascript engine than Safari. I wonder if it shares code with Firefox 3.1? Regardless, it’s supposed to be blisteringly fast. I haven’t benchmarked it, and tend to control which Javascript runs quite closely. The lack of Javascript control in Chrome is an issue.
One area where Chrome may have done something unique is in its tab handling. On the surface, it’s no better than any of the other browsers. Underneath, each tab has its own process. One complex page doesn’t hang the rest of the browser. Google says they put out Chrome to run Web apps efficiently, and at speed. This shows promise…
…but that brings me to my main gripe with it as a browser. I don’t like it. It’s missing too many things. Leaving out the whole area of extensions, it’s missing little things, like comprehensive text size adjustment (yes, you can specify text sizes, but most Web pages override this). Did I mention extensions? And how about Firefox’s native, fine grained control of Java, Javascript, cookies, image loading, bookmarks? Did I mention extensions?
So maybe it will be a good way to run Web apps, but as a browser it needs some work.
Those on Linux (as I am) may want to try another webkit-based browser while waiting for Chrome for Linux – Midori. I’ve used it and it is **FAST**….
Here’s the link-
http://software.twotoasts.de/?page=midori
For those on *buntu who just want to try out WebKit itself, a very good guide is here –
http://blog.kagou.fr/post/2008/04/21/Test-Webkit-on-Ubuntu-Gutsy-an…
– obsidian
What toolkit does it use? Is it possible to compile on Linux?
Edited 2008-09-03 08:30 UTC
Don’t ask, read the announcement instead:
“We’re releasing this beta for Windows to start the broader discussion and hear from you as quickly as possible. We’re hard at work building versions for Mac and Linux too”
Why do you need to open a new tab to view your bookmarks?
I know you can show it all the time but it add another line to the toolbar – I would have thought a small Icon to the right of the tools icon is enough – the address bar does not need to be that long.. plenty of space.
it seems to break my new website – the layout is using tables and its 950px wide.
Chrome seems to add extra padding to the 3 colum table… how odd.
– its fine in IE (including IE8) Opera and FF. Need to look into this – its probably my fault and should realy use CSS but I am still learing HTML.
Edit: Also cant seem to allow excude certan sites from the popup blocker.
Edited 2008-09-03 11:48 UTC
* Open an IE window.
* Open an Opera window.
* Open a Firefox window.
* Start Chrome and go to “about:memory”.
Quite funny.
BTW, if you miss Adblock-like functionality… there is always http://www.privoxy.org/.
Edit: privoxy ref.
Edited 2008-09-03 13:03 UTC
I think this poses a significant threat to IE. Most people use IE because it is the default browser that is installed on their system. AFAIK, no one else is currently installing browsers on new Windows PCs.
It appears Google have managed to get themselves into the OEM market. I have seen a lot of new Windows PCs from large manufacturers with Picasa and Google Desktop pre-installed. I don’t think it will be long before we start seeing new Windows PCs with Chrome pre-installed and set as the default browser.
I think you are _so_ right. Chrome would make a good default browser, and people could download Firefox if they needed more.
So will Google add support for Windows Group Policy and .MSI so that their browser will be able to make inroads into the Enterprise market? I still don’t understand why Firefox has not been made compatible in this way. IMO, until the Enterprise market can be cracked we will be stuck with Internet Explorer and the only to get into such environments is if someone makes an alternative web browser that is easy to control through Group Policies.
I am just plain mad at google for all this. they blatently ripped off all teh good features frmo Opera, who will get no credit for this… you know what instead of my long rant I was going to write read at least the first link, you will see what i mean.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/03/opera_boss_on_chrome/
even though he thinks that imitation is flattery, this browser will take what market share opera would have rightfully deserved by having the same if not better feature set and push opera further away from general public knowledge.
also, for all those who have seen the little cartoon google has, here is a more acurate one.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/02/google_chrome_comic_funnies…
Nice to see more browsers to help spur innovation!