The Next step of Google's World Domination, Google Chrome Options

[dauss]

Google to Release Open-Source 'Chrome' Browser

Are Internet Explorer and Firefox ready to do battle with Chrome?

Google announced Monday that it has been hard at work on an open-source browser known as Chrome, a beta version of which will be released in 100 countries on Tuesday.

New features will included "isolated" tabs designed to prevent browser crashes and a more powerful JavaScript engine.

"Why are we launching Google Chrome? Because we believe we can add value for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the web," Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management, and Linus Upson, Google engineering director, wrote in a blog post.

Google was apparently looking to keep news of Chrome under wraps until after the holiday weekend. A 38-page, online comic book that provided details about Chrome hit the blogosphere Monday morning, but Pichai and Upson said in their blog post that Google had "hit 'send' a bit early" on the web comic.

The comic depicts various Google engineers describing Chrome's features, including the isolated tab idea.

"By keeping each tab in an isolated 'sandbox', we were able to prevent one tab from crashing another and provide improved protection from rogue sites," Pichai and Upson wrote.

Having a number of tabs open in a single browser eats up memory. If a browser is running slow, a user's natural inclination is to close a few tabs? In some cases, however, little bits of the closed tabs remain, which eats up space and requires the operating system to grow the browser's address space, according to Google. With Chrome, there will be a different tab for each process, including plug-ins.

"When a tab is closed in Google Chrome, you're ending the whole process," according to the comic. "You can look under the hood with Google Chrome's task mananger to see what sites are using the most memory, downloading the most bytes and abusing your CPU" so you can place "blame where blame belongs."

Google also promised "improved speed and responsiveness across the board."

"We also built a more powerful JavaScript engine, V8, to power the next generation of web applications that aren't even possible in today's browsers," Pichai and Upson wrote.

Like OpenSocial and Android, Chrome will be an open source initiative.

"We owe a great debt to many open source projects, and we're committed to continuing on their path," they wrote. "We've used components from Apple's WebKit and Mozilla's Firefox, among others -- and in that spirit, we are making all of our code open source as well. We hope to collaborate with the entire community to help drive the web forward."

The team selected Webkit because it uses memory efficiently, was easily adapated to embedded devices, and it was easy for new browser developers to learn to make the code base work, according to the web comic. "Webkit keeps it simple."

Google recently extended its financial deal with Mozilla until 2011, according to a blog post from Mitchell Baker, chair of the Mozilla Foundation.

Tuesday's beta release will be available for Windows users. "We're hard at work building versions for Mac and Linux too, and will continue to make it even faster and more robust," Pichai and Upson wrote.

"This is just the beginning -- Google Chrome is far from done," they wrote. "Google Chrome is another option, and we hope it contributes to making the web even better."

Last week, Microsoft released Internet Explorer 8 beta 2, which includes improved security and new browsing aids.

Earlier this summer, Mozilla released Firefox 3, which garnered 8 million downloads in 24 hours.

[impala454]

They made some comic book about it to officially release the info on it. seen here: http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/

I'm sure I'll try it out but not really expecting anything revolutionary.

[impala454]

Their big idea of separate tabs & windows in separate processes has been around forever. I know I have set the option "open windows in a separate process" forever, I think back to windows 98. I'm also not really sure what the point of "multithreading" javascript is... what is there that you're going to have javascript do that you don't need the return value from before you display the element that called it??

[James]

Their big idea of separate tabs & windows in separate processes has been around forever. I know I have set the option "open windows in a separate process" forever, I think back to windows 98. I'm also not really sure what the point of "multithreading" javascript is... what is there that you're going to have javascript do that you don't need the return value from before you display the element that called it??

Tell me how to enable then? I'm tired of every tab closing just because one tab glitches.

[impala454]

I shouldn't have said tabs that wasn't correct. I personally don't use tabbed browsing. Don't really see the point when taskbars have been around forever. As for separate windows, just open a second instance of IE and you're set (note, ctrl-N for a new window keeps the new window in the same process). Other apps like Firefox will attach new instances all to the same process.

Also just a quick tip Windows itself lets you open explorer windows in a separate process as well, option under tools > folder options > view. Useful for if you have some USB key or network drive that's borked, so it only hoses that one window.

[chook]

sweet, I never knew it existed Chuck!

[impala454]

So anyone using it yet? So far I like the simplicity. Though I haven't found where my bookmarks are yet...

[Seeker]

heh, no adblock, back to firefox

chrome is ghey and doesn't offer me anything

[impala454]

Is there seriously no way to move the bookmarks area around? Is it stuck in the right side for yall too?

[blaarg]

Thought this was interesting

...and it's pretty cool that a lot of it was made in Denmark. Can't say that anyone over here is going ape shit about it though...

[chook]

Its not bad Lance, to me it seems like a concept that will be implemented in a future firefox (which is the best full on for PCs)

[impala454]

Thought this was interesting

...and it's pretty cool that a lot of it was made in Denmark. Can't say that anyone over here is going ape shit about it though...

Well, its a bit of a misnomer... Javascript isn't exactly the slow part of the browsing process. When I read their comic book I was wondering why they thought that was a big deal. In fact with all their mention of security I was surprised to find that they were actually compiling Javascript to run as some kinda machine code. That to me seems mega unsecure.

[Hartmann]

I won't download it until the EULA is explained in more detail: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10030522-2.html

As far as Javascript is concerned, it really depends on how the Javascript is used and called. If it's loaded and run when the page loads then yeah, it could be a huge problem...

[impala454]

I would imagine they probably scan the whole page for Javascript and compile it first and insert some function calls before it parses the HTML itself.

[Seeker]

after reading that eula i will NEVER use chrome

it looks like google is up to their old tricks again, do no evil my ass

[impala454]

Looks like mostly stuff to allow them to put ads in the browser and let them use your browsing habits directly from the browser rather than using cookies. After first use I didn't really like it and probably wouldn't have used it anyways.

Oh and just FYI, don't download the IE8 beta... was pretty buggy when I tried it out. (not a complaint really, I have no problems with betas being buggy )

[impala454]

well thanks to IE8 not being removable from my work PC, it looks like I'm now officially a firefox convert.

[Seeker]

ouch, microfucked

[impala454]

One semi-major annoyance with Firefox 3 though. Why in hell can't I have it automatically sort my bookmarks alphabetically?!?! You tell it to sort but then every time you add a new one you have to resort it, and you can't right click->sort like you can in IE. Just a bug?

[Seeker]

nope, i have the same problem and i've been hating firefox's bookmark manager since 1.0... it's still better than the alternative though (IE)

[Hartmann]

Google on the EULA: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080...-change-it.html

Oops!

[Seeker]

they changed the eula... safe to use chrome now right? WRONG!

chrome has a keylogger that logs all of your keystrokes and sends them back to google's servers

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10031661...tml?tag=nl.e433

[zetec]

with the firefox 3.1 beta's new javascript engine (tracemonkey), it now rivals chrome in speed, although it's disabled by default. Make sure you turn it on in the about:config if you're looking to try it out.

http://www.thesecondpress.com/blog/enable-...firefox-31-beta

[Seeker]

i'm still using 2.something, cause firefox 3 has the gay ass address bar which is gayer than duane

[Spectatrix]

I thought the new address bar was a little weird, but I really like it now. You can also change some about:config settings to get it to act more like the old one.

[Seeker]

they should have an option in the menu for it, i hate developers forcing un-needed and un-wanted "improvements" on users, firefox has really gone downhill and it's good-guy image has been destroyed in my mind

[pebkac]

they should have an option in the menu for it, i hate developers forcing un-needed and un-wanted "improvements" on users, firefox has really gone downhill and it's good-guy image has been destroyed in my mind

Is there any software you DO like?

[Seeker]

Is there any software you DO like?

tcp/ip and microsoft paint

[Mommy]

microsoft paint

heh, yeah that is one magnificent piece of software