Google Chrome: discuss
14 comments Latest by Paz Sat, 06 Sep 2008 06:11:16 GMT
I’m sure that most of you heard the news that Google is releasing a new web browser named Chrome. Their comic for the announcement was very refreshing and entertaining read. Granted… nobody that I know has seen it (as of today)...
For me, I’m really interested in seeing what they’ve done to hopefully improve some of the short-comings of the user experience through their interaction design process. For example, tabs containing their own url/search fields sounds refreshing (I really dislike the hierarchy currently). Also, I’m really looking forward to their dashboard-like default page.
From a web development standpoint, it definitely raises questions about what we’ll be able to do in the coming year(s).
What are your initial thoughts on this? Discuss…
Update: Gary came across this amusing quote from a response by a representative at Microsoft.
“The browser landscape is highly competitive, but people will choose Internet Explorer 8 for the way it puts the services they want right at their fingertips … and, more than any other browsing technology, puts them in control of their personal data on-line,” Hachamovitch said. (read article on CNN)
I’m really not sure what that even means. Don’t we already have our online services at our fingertips? I suspect CNN interviewed the wrong person.. because this person said nothing.
Update #2: Only a PC version available… OSX / Linux are in development. Oh well…
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You got to be kidding me. After using google web DEcelerator and finding that you not only have no support for when it locks up your computer, you do not even follow the google web accelerator group.
I suppose as in web DEcelerator, all web pages go through your servers where you copy everybody’s information including bank accounts and passwords and then display out of date web pages.
I am so done with google. It was bad enough that you kept copies of my emails and allowed people to download files I has sent in my emails, but this is just about as much as I can take. I wouldn’t use google to collect my spam..
I think one of the primary things I’m looking forward to in the tab-is-a-separate-process design is that loading a page with high latency on external objects, especially JavaScript, won’t block the entire browser. It will be really nice to have the option of killing just blocked tabs instead of the entire application. (I notice this mostly on pages with external advertisements that come with JS that hangs for whatever reason.) Same with plugins like Flash.
I don’t recall seeing it mentioned, but assuming that their browser processes are or map to OS processes, it will make the browser (Through the OS’s process scheduling) able to utilize multiple cores.
The only thing that might be missing as compared to Firefox would be the large base of extensions such as Firebug, Greasemonkey, etc. Can’t imagine web development life without Firebug.
This looks fraking incredible. Most of my development time has shifted from Ruby on the server to JavaScript on the browser (with the awe inspiring Ext JS library), so this development comes at just the right time!
I can’t wait
This is quite a nice surprise for me, since I am also one of those people who is developing web apps with a heavy-duty load of JavaScript (loves jQuery)
It seems that web browsers have become a major annoyance these days for people. If I had a nickel for every time Safari and/or Firefox hung on me after using it for a day or two of heavy usage. I don’t remember them being so unstable in the past… but we’re also pushing browsers a lot harder with the applications that we’re using today.
On a day-to-day basis, I’m using Safari for my web-browsing and use Firefox for development as I (echoing Isaac)... couldn’t image using anything besides Firebug. With the potential to keep those contexts separate between tabs… I’m quite eager to play with Google Chrome.
Quite a nod to WebKit. Apple continues to induce change. Is Google the 800-lb Gorilla that the browser-battle has been awaiting ?
I think it’s good… the browser market needs some shaking up. If chrome grabs significant market share and gives priority to standards processes it’ll increase pressure on IE not to stagnate and hold back innovation on the web.
Great, another vehicle for Google to run “contextual, on-demand” (stick a few other keywords here) ads directly in my browser.
Is it just me or does no one realise they are only releasing this browser so they can circumvent AdBlock in Firefox by directly serving ads on your browser?
Sarat,
Given that it’ll be open source and allow for plugins, I don’t see why Adblock wouldn’t be able to be ported to it. Also, if they were to clutter the UI with ads… then people would just fork it and provide a non-ad based one. I really suspect that their aim is to help improve the browser-landscape… not stifle it with the failures of the past. (think.. Opera)
Wow: right-click context menu has “Inspect element” which brings up a very nice DOM/CSS/Javascript inspector. You can drill down to the component you are interested in and it will highlight on the web page.
So far, so good. I like being able to drag tabs out. Comes with Gears and Flash plug-ins.
Google is trying to protect their web-based business by not leaving the access to their domain in the hands of their rivals. They make their money from searches, but people search from browsers.
according to my very unscientific observations, it would seem that Chrome is a lot faster than FireFox and IE… though i do miss the “previously closed tabs” feature in Firefox
I like most of the features it provides, except one – The Google Installer (googleupdate.exe). It is configured to load on startup. I thought that was fine because I could disable it.
Well, I was wrong. It will load itself automatically and repeatedly even if you remove it from the startup or kill it in windows task manager, and tries to access the internet throughout the day!
I keep getting the “google installer is trying to access the Internet” message from my ZoneAlarm firewall. This concerns me. Quite likely it’s benign, but I can’t help get suspicious when an application keeps trying to access the Intenet on a regular basis.
I downloaded it after reading the comic and I feel like I’ve been lied to. After about ten minutes of using it, one of the tabs went into a waiting mode (there was a video on the page) and I was unable to click on any of the other tabs. The entire browser was frozen.
Now I clearly remember the part of the comic that went into how “one tab won’t affect the others” and how one can freeze up and everything else is independent.
Yeah, well, it’s not true. The architecture is not the way they say it is, or that just couldn’t happen. Whatever. Maybe in a few years I’ll try it again and they’ll have figured it out. As a computer scientist, I would appreciate not being lied to about programming archiecture in the future though.
In other words: thanks but no thanks, Chrome.