Google has released the very first beta of their new web browser, Google Chrome. Chrome is a browser that, for now at least, is focused on offering a full browsing experience within a minimalistic user interface. To skip past the P.R. phrasing, Google Chrome is designed to be simple to use without sacrificing any of the features required for daily web browsing. To get a little more in depth, Google Chrome uses the same rendering engine as Apple's Safari browser, named Webkit. In recent history, the developers of Webkit have made great strides in creating what is, as of today, the fastest browser engine in terms of rendering speed. Google Chrome, currently version 0.2.149.27, seems to use a slightly older build of Webkit (version 525.13, to be precise), however, so some of the recent Webkit development gains will not have made it into the first release of the browser.
Other features of Chrome include a dynamic tab system which allows you to drag and drop tabs inside and outside of the browser window, an "incognito mode" in which the sites you visit are not added to your browsing history, and a feature similar to Opera's Speed Dial, in which you are presented with your nine most visited websites, in thumbnail form, when opening a new tab.
If you wish to give Google Chrome a try, click the download link below. It's an early beta, though, so don't expect it to be perfect.
Link: Google Chrome
Download: Google Chrome 0.2.149.27
Screenshot: View
Here is the direct link:
http://dl.google.com/update2/installers/ChromeSetup.exe
I also found that the installer adds a AutoUpdate application to the system startup.
I don't like to have apps load at startup and staying in memory. Removed it using msconfig.
Last edited by Express on 02 Sep 2008 - 20:18
Same here
Same
XP SP3
+1
XP SP3
EDIT: If you go to the webpage and click the download buton and then install from there it will work.
That hotlink above does not work, go via Google web page as Exotoxic suggests.
Vista Business
It's lightweight, very lightweight in fact, but too lightweight for my taste. There are very few options, and even fewer menus. It lacks a status bar too, which annoys the hell out of me as you don't know how much of a page has been downloaded.
I do like the tabs though, I like the idea of having them at the top.
I'll stick with my Firefox for now, Chrome is decent if you don't do much with the web, but it lacks a lot of very basic functionality.
The status bar, unlike other browsers, appears only when it is needed. This may be where you are confused. When a page is loading, the status bar actually does appear. When you are loading images, it even shows a progress bar. When you are downloading files, it shows their progress with a pie and even lets you toggle whether you will open them in advance.
It really does have the same functionality, without the bloat.
How else do you know, for certain, where a link is pointing to? That's the main point of a status bar for me as my net is too fast to wonder how long pages will take to load.
Tabs being in separate processes is a new idea that IE8 is also incorporating, yes. I don't believe Firefox does this though. Google has many techniques such as these (plugins in processes) that reduce memory footprint in the long-run - these techniques do not exist in other browsers.
// Viktor Brange.
Last edited by Express on 03 Sep 2008 - 01:17
// Viktor Brange
also, the download link doesn't work and probably wont as its not the link that your browser uses to download
As for RSS... who cares. I want a web browser to browse the web. I use an RSS feed Reader to Read RSS feeds.
So far so good.
sssssssstttT thats for sure. some stuff needs adding in due course. But certainly i like it so far!!!Hosts file and Homer FTW
You mean that single process browser that Chrome has just made obsolete?
Safari has had privacy mode for a while now so I don't see how it can be a ripe off of IE.
IE8 will also automatically block webtracking urls in InPrivate mode which other implementations don't.
Also, if you want to always launch IE8 in InPrivate mode. Just add -p as a command-line in the shortcut.
Chrome has no such option.
Last edited by Express on 02 Sep 2008 - 21:33
IE8 is multiprocess. Each tab is hosted in a seperate process.
Last edited by Express on 02 Sep 2008 - 21:31
IE8 is multiprocess. Each tab is hosted in a seperate process.
[citation needed]
tried googling it, almost all the result are Google Chrome related. where did you see that piece of info?
IE8 is multiprocess. Each tab is hosted in a seperate process.
[citation needed]
tried googling it, almost all the result are Google Chrome related. where did you see that piece of info?
Perhaps you should try a different search engine
Anyway:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-...s-existing.aspx
The Internet Explorer frame and tabs run in separate processes.
- Extensions that use unsupported messaging techniques might no longer function correctly; those that use the standard COM interfaces will not be affected.
IE8 is multiprocess. Each tab is hosted in a seperate process.
[citation needed]
tried googling it, almost all the result are Google Chrome related. where did you see that piece of info?
The IE blog. http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/07/2...eliability.aspx
Edit: Beaten :p
No way to add a homepage button (at least that i know)
Its simple
Videos at google dont work
There are some things to improve but I see potential.
Just my $0.02
i just installed .. happy happy
1. No Easy Access to my Google Bookmarks(although that is bound to happen at some point)
2. Adblocking would be the one firefox extention I would really want.
Overall very impressed
Some website - save password checkboxes did not seem to be visible.
The zoom option doesn't zoom like ff3 (and opera safari and ie before that) does
update: got it.. had to get it from the website for some strange reason.
Last edited by supernova_00 on 02 Sep 2008 - 23:04
This looks like some student taken webkit and wrapped it with the most simple GUI possible.
For those who are having issues downloading..
http://tools.google.com/chrome/?hl=en-US
run it from there, don't download and save, when prompted just run it and it will work.
Firefox 09/01/2008 Gran Paradiso Nightly: 5114ms
Google Chrome: 2846ms
What the hell?
Get 4786.8ms in Opera 9.52
Chrome is too lightweighted and simple. I need more features in my browser. Ok for a beta though.
Get 4786.8ms in Opera 9.52
Chrome is too lightweighted and simple. I need more features in my browser. Ok for a beta though.
Actually both Firefox 3 and Opera 9.5 are very fast in Javascript compared to just versions before, they made some major improvements here. It's just that Google's V8 engine in this one is even faster. Look at Firefox 2 or IE for "slow" (IE 7 or IE 8 Beta 2, make your pick, it doesn't matter that much).
It seems like Google's Javascript engine compiles code into machine code quite efficiently according to their docs, I think that's behind a lot of things going on here.
Firefox 09/01/2008 Gran Paradiso Nightly: 5114ms
Google Chrome: 2846ms
What the hell?
Sorry BB but seems something wrong with your computer , your results for all the browsers you mentioned are high
I get ~1600ms for chrome , ~1200 for latest opera weekly and ~1400 for minefield.
I get ~1600ms for chrome , ~1200 for latest opera weekly and ~1400 for minefield.
Lol, nothing is wrong with it. It's an old Athlon64 3700+ running at stock.
Firefox 09/01/2008 Gran Paradiso Nightly: 5114ms
Why are you calling it Gran Paradiso? That was Firefox 3. Firefox 3.1 is Shiretoko.
And no, V8 is not that much better than the updated engine in Firefox 3.1 - see for example http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roadmap/arc...key_update.html
Shows as safari to most things
http://img524.imageshack.us/img524/3254/imgha7.jpg
Last edited by brent3000 on 02 Sep 2008 - 22:04
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US) AppleWebKit/525.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/0.2.149.27 Safari/525.13
Shows as safari to most things
http://img524.imageshack.us/img524/3254/imgha7.jpg
a phpbb3 forum on a site i help run shows as
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/525.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/0.2.149.27 Safari/525.13
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_5_4; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Vers
Looks like Chrome is using WPF since it's got very smooth animation and aero effect. I wonder what Language was it written and weather or not it used .Net framework 3.5 and WPF?
Last edited by noPCtoday on 02 Sep 2008 - 22:29
C++ apps can be written efficiently enough to also often provide smooth animations, and WPF is no prerequisite to do Aero interfaces. Check the Aero Glass API docs on MSDN. Microsoft Office 2007 also uses Aero effects, but is similarly written in C++.
PLEASE! This is a fantastic browser which is extremely fast and loads all the pages I need it to correctly. I'm now waiting for plugins so I can load AdBlock+ and NoScript, but I'm happy to wait until then. It looks great, very easy on the eyes and the tabs look/work well too.
Oh and lol @ the people claiming "but they copied etc.etc." it's funny how things work like that, y'know if another company has a good idea and you like that idea, you'll reproduce it as your own interpretation. God forbid that two browsers have two similar functions to give us, the users, more of an option when it comes to choosing what we use.
If it doesn't do everything that people want at this stage then whilst it maybe possible it's unlikely it'll be included until the next version.
GUI and the overall look and feel is subjective why flame people for giving their opinion?
Personally I love the speed, but that's about it. Too basic what for I want but i'm sure it will satisfy grandma and the likes. Hate the requirement of Gears and the bloody updater utility. Hate those sort of things. Can't say I'm too fond of the fisher price GUI either but I'll do I guess.
We are VERY far from version 1.0.0.0
BETA 0.2 (core functionalities) < BETA 0.9 (All functionalities)
You need to understand how software development goes.
If it doesn't do everything that people want at this stage then whilst it maybe possible it's unlikely it'll be included until the next version.
GUI and the overall look and feel is subjective why flame people for giving their opinion?
Personally I love the speed, but that's about it. Too basic what for I want but i'm sure it will satisfy grandma and the likes. Hate the requirement of Gears and the bloody updater utility. Hate those sort of things. Can't say I'm too fond of the fisher price GUI either but I'll do I guess.
You know that this is v0.2 right? When it turns v1.0 then you might call it complete product. Heck, remember the firefox days back then?
That's what he was talking about
I'd say it's this: a new browser *tuned* for the web as it looks like today, heavy in web services. But of course Google would like it see replace other browsers, they aren't that stupid to not want this either.
I'd say it's this: a new browser *tuned* for the web as it looks like today, heavy in web services. But of course Google would like it see replace other browsers, they aren't that stupid to not want this either.
I think these features are just google's strategy, they want to attract people to use it, and slowly people will realize how powerful it can handle apps and yet it is not a fantastic browser for web browsing. then people will start using Chrome for email etc, and FF for web browsing
<quote> not supposed to be our everyday broswer. It is designed to run Gmail, Calendar etc web applications. </quote>
Um, a browser is used to BROWSE THE INTERNET - maybe if your new to the internet you can be forgiven, but actually Google isn't the only content provider / web 2.0 developer on the net. Designing a browser means it should be fit for browsing the net, not just Google's corner of it. That means RSS, flash, customisation, etc.
<quote>It's meant to discover a new territory of browser.</quote>
There's nothing new about Webkit or displaying web apps in a browser. Other stuff is great - like the isolation, but may I suggest getting some perception about Chrome?
And there's not a hope in hell of it taking off if it's not supposed to be your everyday browser - IE8/FF3 work fine for Google apps - why use two browsers when the more feature rich ones already do it?
Not knocking Chrome - competition is good, but your post really is very ignorant IMHO.
<quote> not supposed to be our everyday broswer. It is designed to run Gmail, Calendar etc web applications. </quote>
Um, a browser is used to BROWSE THE INTERNET - maybe if your new to the internet you can be forgiven, but actually Google isn't the only content provider / web 2.0 developer on the net. Designing a browser means it should be fit for browsing the net, not just Google's corner of it. That means RSS, flash, customisation, etc.
<quote>It's meant to discover a new territory of browser.</quote>
There's nothing new about Webkit or displaying web apps in a browser. Other stuff is great - like the isolation, but may I suggest getting some perception about Chrome?
And there's not a hope in hell of it taking off if it's not supposed to be your everyday browser - IE8/FF3 work fine for Google apps - why use two browsers when the more feature rich ones already do it?
Not knocking Chrome - competition is good, but your post really is very ignorant IMHO.
<quote> not supposed to be our everyday broswer. It is designed to run Gmail, Calendar etc web applications. </quote>
Um, a browser is used to BROWSE THE INTERNET - maybe if your new to the internet you can be forgiven, but actually Google isn't the only content provider / web 2.0 developer on the net. Designing a browser means it should be fit for browsing the net, not just Google's corner of it. That means RSS, flash, customisation, etc.
You need to read the comics they published to present their browser to understand what he meant. And he is right in regards to what google wants according to google's press release.
I'd say it's this: a new browser *tuned* for the web as it looks like today, heavy in web services. But of course Google would like it see replace other browsers, they aren't that stupid to not want this either.
I think these features are just google's strategy, they want to attract people to use it, and slowly people will realize how powerful it can handle apps and yet it is not a fantastic browser for web browsing. then people will start using Chrome for email etc, and FF for web browsing
I think the risk in that strategy is too great that people will want to switch back to Firefox entirely. I don't think people in general want to use multiple applications to browse the web.
Also nice to have tab isolation like IE 8, but in a high performing WebKit-based browser.
Shift+Esc with the browser window active for individual tab memory info = great. Tab memory freed immediately as tabs are closed = awesome.
"Inspect component..." on the right-click menu is great for web developers.
But all isn't shiny, it's a very basic browser in this first beta at least, and with no extension support like in Firefox to make things better for the power users. But it's a very solid browser foundation at least. This wouldn't be too exciting if it was proprietary, but this time it's an open source browser. Just wait for people to fork this project and add extension support. Yumm, Mozilla would have a serious competitor on their hands. The HTML renderer and Javascript engine both seems more impressive than Firefox's at this point to me. (and of course, even IE 8 Beta 2 is still miles behind, unfortunately) I'm starting to like WebKit more and more, heh.
i might be wrong tho... just my understanding.
A long time ago, I wrote a regular expression engine to generate machine code.
When you repeatedly use the same regular expression in a loop it turned out to be very fast.
However, if the loop generated a new regex pattern every time you call the regular expression function, my implementation was slow -- the compilation time made it slow.
Other than that, it seems to be fine. But not enough to make me switch from FireFox. Will Chrome have plug-ins like FF? I love DownloadHelper!
Looks like an old electronic "Simon" game... *lol*
Looks like an old electronic "Simon" game... *lol*
hahaha
they had a blue quarter too did they not...or am i mistaken.
1. Needs to have Shift+Enter for *.net
2. Needs to have Ctrl+Shift+Enter for *.org
3. Needs to support extensions like Firefox.
Acid2: Passes
I'll continue to use it.
When you create an application shortcut it displays the webpage without any tab options and menus etc. When google gears is enabled on gmail should be an intresting combanation.
with that set I find FF3 loads pages, and multiple pages far faster, but the lack of JS holding things up in chrome is great.
I'm not entirely sure if the results on http://limi.net/articles/google-chrome-benchmarks-and-more/ are more or less interesting than the fact the page refuses to load at all in Chrome.
needs plugins, and FF/opera style history and bookmark side bars, FF3 style fullscreen mode.
Last edited by Magallanes on 03 Sep 2008 - 01:31
The only things bothering me are the lack of middle mouse scrolling and smooth scrolling. But otherwise, UI is nice and clean.
Besides, WebKit is also so high performing, so it's nice to have and watch what'll happen with it in the future.
Can someone give me pros n cons about a new google browser, will it be a forever beta?????
why n why not???
What's really great about this is that Mozilla are free to take what they want from the Chrome codebase and apply it to whatever they want... and vice versa. Open Source FTW!
Well I just made a blog post about the things to hate and love about it if you want to know
So crying about it being largely featureless is pretty damn ignorant.
Firefox is already available for Mac, isn't that one a greater threat since it has evolved more than Chrome?
:-( :-( :-(
Same for me. On the desktop where I work (no games, no crap apps, no mp3 music and fun stuff... just "office" software) I must admit Chrome renders the pages a lot faster than IE/FF, but at the cost of general slowness and choppiness. Dragging a Chrome windows is ok, while resizing it looks choppy. After some minutes, a basic webpage tends to freeze the tab/window for few seconds. Two times I had to close the app and re-start.
Overall it looks promising (the 30+ pages story was fun and very interesting indeed) but on my sistem it just does not work very well (Windows XP sp2 on a Sempron 3000+, 2Gb ram, GeForce 6800 AGP).
One of my personal quirks when I install Windows is to revoke the Execute permissions from the areas that a user has Write permission for: that is, everything under C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\. That just means that a luser can't download something and execute it without requiring Administrator privileges, which effectively cripples almost all malware.
Unfortunately, it also assumes that programs will install their executables into Program Files, which makes perfect sense on a multi-user OS. Nothing should really be installed into a user's Application Data folder except - you guessed it - data that's specific to that user's settings for the program. Only some developers, who seem to be stuck in 1995, have not yet woken up to this idea of separation of program files and user data. Symantec and Sage are two prime offenders, though the list is massive. And now Google join that Hall of Shame, with the Google Update program file being installed under Application Data.
I spent at least half an hour sitting through that comic of theirs, wherein they drench us with hyperbole about their high ideals and best practices for the browser. Shame it didn't extend to the %*^$ing installation!
By the way, there is a forum dedicated to Chrome. Here is the link http://www.chrome-forums.net/phpBB3/index.php
Not trying to steal anything from neowin though...just making it known.
By the way, there is a forum dedicated to Chrome. Here is the link http://www.chrome-forums.net/phpBB3/index.php
Not trying to steal anything from neowin though...just making it known.
It's not a question of being able to run the installer exe itself (or the installed exe for that matter), it's that the installation is putting the executables into a place where they should not be. Since I posted this, I've learned that the whole program, not just the updater program, gets put into the Application Data folder of the user that installed it. That means (a)it can't simply e installed once for all users, and (b) it could possibly be installed by a Limited User with the default Windows permissions, which sysadmins will not like.
The clues are in the names, really: Program Files. Application Data. You'd think Google could work that out.
All your posts are belong to Google.
They have now changed their EULA to please you.
It's an open-source browser - the code is in full view. Google only gets information that you send to google servers. Wake up.
Last edited by Sacha on 04 Sep 2008 - 09:55
/fail
/fail
Not to undermine the security problem but I'm pretty sure it just downloads, without executing, them without user input.
NEVER
*cough*gmail*cough*
The thing doesn't even scroll the correct direction when you use your mouse wheel. I assume they did this on purpose to give the illusion the browser is unique.
it's also looks like it use some critical holes in firefox. when you click install it doesn't ask me to save the file - it's just save it and run it...
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