Google Chrome

[Arwin]

Don't forget about Opera. It's had the best feature set upfront so far, and has been the fastest at almost everything as well.

I personally however am using Chrome more and more. I'm getting used to the unified address input thing and instead of selecting something out of a list of often used websites I now just close the tab and click new tab, and then 98/100 the website I want is on that page already somewhere. Works about as fast.

It also highlights how clean the memory management of Chrome really is - I can go on doing this forever, and it never slows down or takes up more memory. Also, the bits where it is very fast are typically things that are slow enough on other browsers to bother you. It's not faster than Opera with everything, but it is in a number of places where it counts.

When something doesn't seem to work properly I default back to Opera, but that happens less and less.

 

[The549]

For me, my inability to find a FULL SCREEN view makes this program extremely annoying, typing on an EPC. I've searched the web to no avail...can Chrome do this very basic thing? IE and FF= F11

 

[Arwin]

Doesn't look like it.

 

[Richard]

Don't forget about Opera. It's had the best feature set upfront so far, and has been the fastest at almost everything as well.

Yep. I'm a bit taken aback at all the mentions of how Chrome is so fast and how all the other browsers are so much slower. First, that's not absolutely true and secondly, how is anyone surprised that an application with less functionality is faster? Really?

I personally however am using Chrome more and more. I'm getting used to the unified address input thing and instead of selecting something out of a list of often used websites I now just close the tab and click new tab, and then 98/100 the website I want is on that page already somewhere. Works about as fast.

Well, I'm positive you know about SpeedDial. If 9 are too few you can increase the number.

Anyway, for me Chrome is missing a lot of features I've come to take for granted in a browser. The "simplicity is great" feature doesn't really fly with me since my Opera interface is nearly as clean, and has been for years (gee, tabs over address bar is a new thing?). The drive-by-download vulnerability and malicious URL problems also give me pause so I'll wait for Google to work on it some more. I just hope they give it the proper attention in the long run, unlike say Google Talk.

 

[suryad]

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/chrome-antics-did-google-reverse-engineer.ars

I thought that was an interesting article especially about DEP and x64 and the reverse engineering aspect.

 

[Arwin]

Yeah, interesting. As for the EULA, I'm fairly certain that this is one of the bits that the EU complained about giving Microsoft software products an unfair advantage, and I think the article's conclusion is very kind, reasonable and friendly ... a lot more so than I would probably be.

 

[suryad]

I wonder though nowadays with the growing complexity of software, being a software developer myself, there is so much stuff one must accomplish, but a lot of it is already one by other developers so its like reinventing the wheel over and over again. I honestly admire Google's desire to make security a priority. Though they personally dont look like they reverse engineered code but rather some rather resourceful developer went and scoured the web and got the reverse engineered api and made his decisions based on that. I do not honestly see what is wrong with that. If there is reverse engineered illegal code on the web for everyone to look at on a website without needing to download or torrent or anything, I just dont see the big deal. Maybe I am being naive since I have been in this industry for a little over 2 years.

 

[Skrying]

Yep. I'm a bit taken aback at all the mentions of how Chrome is so fast and how all the other browsers are so much slower. First, that's not absolutely true and secondly, how is anyone surprised that an application with less functionality is faster? Really?

You're taking the speed comments a bit out of context, I think. My personal view and from what I've gathered from others is that it's in relation to how fast the browser renders the page. A program can feel sluggish and render fast (Opera for me) or render slower and operate fast (Firefox).

Well, I'm positive you know about SpeedDial. If 9 are too few you can increase the number.

Anyway, for me Chrome is missing a lot of features I've come to take for granted in a browser. The "simplicity is great" feature doesn't really fly with me since my Opera interface is nearly as clean, and has been for years (gee, tabs over address bar is a new thing?). The drive-by-download vulnerability and malicious URL problems also give me pause so I'll wait for Google to work on it some more. I just hope they give it the proper attention in the long run, unlike say Google Talk.

With regard to SpeedDial; I haven't used Opera in about six months but last time SpeedDial wasn't the equivalent of Chrome's similar looking function (or flip that, since Opera was first in that "look").

As for the simplicity. Your modified Opera isn't a fair comparison against a unmodified beta of Chrome. Someone can do just the same with Firefox as well, but the fact is by DEFAULT neither do it and Chrome does.

As for Google sticking with Chrome... I can just say I don't have a ton of faith to be honest. If Google has one major issue with me it's "drive-by-products." You mentioned Talk, I'd also say nearly everything but Search for Google is treated the same way. Just visiting the "More Google Products" page and I can recall lots of news when those were announced but you never hear about them again and checking in finds minor changes at best.

 

[Richard]

You're taking the speed comments a bit out of context, I think. My personal view and from what I've gathered from others is that it's in relation to how fast the browser renders the page. A program can feel sluggish and render fast (Opera for me) or render slower and operate fast (Firefox).

I'm not exactly sure what you're saying here. I was talking about all the html/jscript/memory usage graphs and value comparison between Chrome and other browsers.

With regard to SpeedDial; I haven't used Opera in about six months but last time SpeedDial wasn't the equivalent of Chrome's similar looking function (or flip that, since Opera was first in that "look").

Well, if instead of using bookmarks you open a new tab and have direct links to your favourite websites then functionally they're the same feature. Opera's SpeedDial is limited to 9 by default though while Chrome has a few extra behaviour links on the right but this kind of info is present in Opera's tab waste basket.

As for the simplicity. Your modified Opera isn't a fair comparison against a unmodified beta of Chrome. Someone can do just the same with Firefox as well, but the fact is by DEFAULT neither do it and Chrome does.

Well, sure, but being able to customise the browser is one of those features I can't live without. For instance, Opera and Firefox on my lappy have a different toolbar/skin/layout from my desktop PC because the former has a widescreen display and the later has a 4:3 CRT.

The default, out of the box, look/layout of a browser is important but it's not like Google necessarily has a choice in this: they lack the featureset to do anything but minimalistic design at this point.

As for Google sticking with Chrome... I can just say I don't have a ton of faith to be honest. If Google has one major issue with me it's "drive-by-products." You mentioned Talk, I'd also say nearly everything but Search for Google is treated the same way. Just visiting the "More Google Products" page and I can recall lots of news when those were announced but you never hear about them again and checking in finds minor changes at best.

Well, I agree but I specifically mentioned GTalk because back then it also generated a lot of hype and how it would destroy AIM/Messenger/ICQ because "it has the power of Google behind it". (as an aside, I think it's more than Search: Google Desktop Search and Google Earth have also been polished into fully usable products.)

 

[Scott_Arm]

Well, I agree but I specifically mentioned GTalk because back then it also generated a lot of hype and how it would destroy AIM/Messenger/ICQ because "it has the power of Google behind it". (as an aside, I think it's more than Search: Google Desktop Search and Google Earth have also been polished into fully usable products.)

I thought the plan for Gtalk was to get it to coexist with the other messengers by allowing you to message to any of them ...... which never happened.

They put gtalk on the android phone, so maybe they'll start giving it more attention again?

Anyway, I think Chrome is pretty good. It suits my needs mostly, but it does have some performance issues on older single-core PCs. It renders pages fast, which is all I really need. I mean, I like just about every browser except IE, but maybe IE8 will be different.

They also said the android phone uses Chrome "lite," whatever that means. I thought it was supposed to have webkit based browser, but I'm not sure what else they'd share in common.

 

[suryad]

I dont understand the term 'renders pages fast'. How exactly can one know if a page was rendered fast? I mean most of the time if you have a sucky internet connection THAT is what your browser will be waiting on. I use IE exclusively at work and Firefox exclusively at home and work has a significantly faster connection but there is no performance/surfing differences that I have noticed. Care to explain?

 

[Arwin]

A matter of looking regularly at the same pages on the same computer with different browsers should give you an impression quickly enough. But even then there are ample benchmark tests that measure how long it takes a browser to put things on the screen, even if all the data was already offline. Often enough the bottleneck isn't actually downloading the page, but javascript or dhtml/css parsing and screen drawing, etc.

 

[suryad]

Hmm thats interesting. Thanks Arwin.

 

[Gubbi]

I dont understand the term 'renders pages fast'. How exactly can one know if a page was rendered fast? I mean most of the time if you have a sucky internet connection THAT is what your browser will be waiting on. I use IE exclusively at work and Firefox exclusively at home and work has a significantly faster connection but there is no performance/surfing differences that I have noticed. Care to explain?

Watching a database result set, ie. *big* html-tables, over a 1Gbit LAN connection. Takes multiple seconds on IE 7, appears instantaneously (< ½ second) with Chrome and Opera.

Cheers

 

[Sound_Card]

I'm really digging Chrome. Very fast, no bells and whistles browser that is very pleasing to the eye. I keep having stability issues with firefox and opera, and so I was finally pushed over the edge to go ahead and give Chrome a try. Very stable, so I'm pretty impressed.

 

[Sazar]

I'm really digging Chrome. Very fast, no bells and whistles browser that is very pleasing to the eye. I keep having stability issues with firefox and opera, and so I was finally pushed over the edge to go ahead and give Chrome a try. Very stable, so I'm pretty impressed.

This is precisely why I am only using Chrome on my new Win 7 install

I have IE8 to allow for downloads from MSDN, but my system is going to remain FF free. Too many stability issues.

Opera with it's new updates is actually about as fast as Chrome and very stable so I have it as a back up

 

[suryad]

I have been using SRware's Iron release of Chrome and I quite like it. Its super freaking fast. Thats the main reason why I have it. And I have IE 8 for updates No other browser needed.

 

[Blazkowicz]

I dont understand the term 'renders pages fast'. How exactly can one know if a page was rendered fast? I mean most of the time if you have a sucky internet connection THAT is what your browser will be waiting on. I use IE exclusively at work and Firefox exclusively at home and work has a significantly faster connection but there is no performance/surfing differences that I have noticed. Care to explain?

Restoring a session. I've been used to just log out when leaving the computer, not closing firefox, and when I come back at it there usually are like 20 tabs that are reloaded. It's pretty CPU demanding, so I prefer to do a ssh -X (or use a P2 233 turned into a thin client) to run it on a C2Q Q6600 rather than on the local machine.

no linux version of google chrome, so I haven't used it yet.
I've noticed Midori, which is another webkit browser, written for GTK+ and looking lightweight. But it's early yet and I haven't bothered with the dependencies to build it.
http://www.twotoasts.de/index.php?/pages/midori_summary.html

 

[Tchock]

I'm having stability issues with Chrome and Shockwave Flash (in Gmail.)


Looks like the honeymoon is officially over.

 

[Scott_Arm]

I'm having stability issues with Chrome and Shockwave Flash (in Gmail.)


Looks like the honeymoon is officially over.

Where is flash used in gmail?