Google to release Chrome browser
:rolleyes:
Seriously, why? How many different use cases can there be for browsing?
Supposedly this is Google’s attempt to avoid letting Microsoft surreptitiously block Google searches while MS tries to lead users elsewhere.
That said Google has a partnership with Mozilla/Firefox so not sure why Google had to make their own. Guess like any corporate entity open source stuff is anathema to them. Also, given Google’s rather Big Brotherish behavior I have rather little faith in their browser. Google already collects enough info about me, I have no intention in making it any easier for them.
Chrome is open source.
Huh…I missed the comic.
Ok then, I am with the OP. Why the need for a new browser? What is wrong with Firefox that Google went to this trouble?
Well (Og! the reply page is strange-looking!) the ‘Omni Bar,’ while not unprecedented, is a decent idea.
The comic explains what they saw as problems with existing browsers, and how they want to overcome those problems in Chrome.
Whoah, sailor’s back now? Cool.
Plus, I hear Chrome is open source.
Reading the comic; Some brilliant ideas here. I could give up Firefox for this, & it’s far better than the latest IE.
Also, I like the jackbooted anthropomorphic programs on pg 8. Cute.
I don’t get the question, I would actually ask: why not another browser? Competition, the free market, more choices and all that stuff.
As a software engineer, there are a couple things that have me intrigued about Chrome:
[ol]
[li]The multi-process architecture is going to be a big win in terms of security and stability (assuming, of course, that there are no Microsoft-style security holes in their sandboxes). In theory, IE7 on Vista has pretty good security, but the implementation is horribly bad.[/li][li]The new javascript engine isn’t tied to the browser. javascript is a nice little scripting language that’s been relegated to browser scripting for too long. It’s only a matter of time before someone pulls that out and starts using it for general purpose scripting.[/li][/ol]
sailor: good to see you here again.
What is wrong with Google making another product. Most of their stuff is better than the competition anyway. I’m looking forward to it.
Listen, Google is going to take over the world one day and we might as well start sucking up to them now.
Possibly, but for now the JS engine – V8 – doesn’t seem to come with any standard library to speak of, and is only suitable for embedding. Besides that, I’d sort of echo the OP’s sentiment and ask whether we really need another scripting language: JS may be nice, but it really doesn’t have a whole lot on Python, Ruby, or Lua.
(Or Io, if you want prototypes. Or PLT Scheme, which is overlooked, featureful, and reasonably fast. Or any number of alternatives.)
V8 isn’t as fast as JITted Lua, anyway, nor very likely Python/Psyco.
For one very good reason, it represents yet one more platform for web pages to be incompatible with. It’s already enough of a pain to test for IE, Firefox, Opera, Safari, etc. If you’re going to introduce yet another browser to the world, it ought to be for some clear benefit.
I’m surfing/posting with Chrome right now… it’s OK, but I have yet to achieve an erection from any of its touted features (much like the SDMB upgrade, but that’s another buzzkill). I read the blurb about its new multiprocess architecture, and while I get that the new arch means tabs are better protected from each other and use memory better, is this really a solution in search of a problem? FF and IE rarely if ever crash on me. If they do, I just… open another window. :eek:
This just kind of gets under my skin in the same way that there are forty-leven different Linux distros out there that are all reinventing the same square wheel, though Chrome does seem to have gotten a nice fresh start at least.
Chrome and Safari use the same rendering engine, so they should behave largely the same.
…
One reason to use it may in fact be speed.
I’m on a Mac, but I just got a chance to use Chrome on my girlfriend’s underpowered XP machine that tends to chug along limply with IE7. It’s pretty impressively fast. I was able to load up Google Maps, Google Calendar, Gmail, and World of Solitaire – which isn’t even playable on her computer with IE7 or Firefox 3 – to no appreciable slowdown. Not bad. If it loads her Lolcats page without hanging for a few seconds she may even switch …
Chrome BETA is available —> http://www.google.com/chrome/
But only for Windows XP/Vista.
It seems a good solution for those who leave their browsers open all the time. If you are constantly opening and closing yours, many of their features won’t do a lot of good. I’m of the “never close the browser” mentality, so isolating slow and bloated pages from the rest of the apps is a good idea, and it means I never have to restart my browser and load up my state.
I haven’t tried the browser yet, since I don’t have Windows. But I’m anxiously awaiting the Mac or Linux version.
Agreed on this count. I’ve actually been using Mozilla’s Spidermonkey JavaScript engine for some of my projects, but I’m definitely thinking of switching to V8 now. I’m just hoping V8 will be cleaner and easier to bind than Spidermonkey is.