My only complaint so far is that I miss the bar at the bottom of the browser that typically displays the active link and download status. I find the little pop-up distracting.
If this survives the day without a stability issue it becomes my primary browser.
Looks like they made some minor adjustments for keyboard-only types: instead of a dotted gray box, they highlight whatever item you've tabbed to with a more visible yellow box.
And text boxes are expandable! (Or is this a News.YC feature I missed?)
Edit: Last paragraph wrong on both counts; see response.
Several things about the tab interface bother me:
- Double clicking on the tab bar to open a new tab just resizes the window because it's actually the title bar
- There is no window menu icon in the top left, so double clicking there doesn't close the browser
- Closing all tabs closes the application
It's certainly fast, though, and probably will supplant FireFox as my gmail browser. The tab switching animation is slick too. Definitely looking forward to how this develops. Seems more like a web application browser and less like a web page browser, which is obviously something Google needs to seriously attack Microsoft's desktop monopolies.
Not only does it feel much faster than Firefox/IE, but everything is much simpler. They stripped away all the unnecessary toolbars and menus, and the configuration options are much simpler.
mixmax pointed out to me awhile back that even though that's the popular impression, their visual design is actually quite in depth. For instance, he said to consider the difference between the Google front page logo with and without shadows.
It's like it's doing to Firefox what Firefox did to Mozilla. Strip away the fluff to have a slim browser that does what you want. They keep harping on how it's open source and that their great ideas will improve the web. Wasn't that the goal of Firefox (née Phoenix)?
I guess they didn't want to deal with trying to have their developers help fix Firefox. Sometimes, it's just easier to start over.
It'll be interesting to see how plug-ins play out. Google probably does not need to provide the most feature filled browser as a core offering. Providing a simple and highly robust browser is probably more ideal. Do less but be indispensable at what you do.
I see this as a move that forces standards. Google is putting its big shoulder behind increased performance and consistency on the internet. If other people want to wrap the core offering in fancier clothes, I think Google still wins.
I like the fact that by default it looks like I always tuned my Opera to look! And it borrowed the home(new tab) page from Opera. Though, on second thought, I turned off this feature in Opera. I hope I can turn it off in Chrome?
Dromaeo results http://dromaeo.com/?id=20571
Check it out. A lot faster than FF and Safari. I am not counting IE here...IE is outdated with the launch of Chrome.
On a P4/2.4GHz with 768 MB of RAM running XP (spare pc).
JavaScript Performance Tests - http://dromaeo.com/
Google Chrome - 705.00ms (Total),
Firefox 3 - 3303.40ms (Total),
Safari 3.1.2 - 3888.20ms (Total),
IE7 - Crashed the browser on "base 64 Encoding and Decoding v122" test. It was also very slow on the 1st 2 tests.
fwiw, WebKit (r36053) nightly ran the tests in 794.80ms and the latest FF3.1 nightly Gecko/20080903051823) was nearly double Chrome, running at 1343.40ms
Yeah, I dig it for real. Unfortunately, there are three Opera features that I have come to require -- direction-key navigation among links; mouse gestures for Forward and Back; and named searches* created by right-clicking search fields on sites. If plugins fill these holes, I will seriously consider using this.
* For example, right-click the field on dictionary.com and declare that "d foo" in the address bar will look up "foo" using that form from now on.
Q: It's open source, iron_ball, why not write your own?
For example, right-click the field on dictionary.com and declare that "d foo" in the address bar will look up "foo" using that form from now on.
It's not quite as easy as right clicking the search box in Chrome, but you can still do it by right clicking the address bar and going to Edit search engines. You can manually add named searches there. After the first time you search on certain sites, it will automatically add them as named searches (I noticed this with Amazon, eBay and Wikipedia--you'll see them show up in the Edit search engines area).
I just installed it - and I feel this will be the same experience as when I went from Hotbot to Google way back when. A friend told me about this wicked new search engine, and after having used it once I never used hotbot again.
For that reason alone I'm stuck on Firefox for a while. I tried moving to Safari a few months back when they updated webkit, but I needed firebug, greasemonkey, compete etc.
More features, you mean. I'm not even gonna bother with chrome when it comes out for linux. I have dozens of extensions & mousegestures alone can't be traded for any number of milliseconds.
Google will try to make switching from FF/Safari/IE as swift as possible, which means they will have to deal with the add-ons. The "Import Settings" thingy is not enough.
Welcome to WebKit, sir. It's always this fast for those of us that use it.
Part of me is a little irked that google is going to get credit with many people for things like "Inspect Element". But it's entirely Apple's fault for keeping Safari so far behind the state of Webkit.
Its scrolling, both for page-up/down, scroll-wheels and touchpads seems to be set about 3-4x more sensitive than in other browsers or applications in general.
This gives it a nice illusion of speed, but it gets annoying pretty fast once you realize you want to scroll with any kind of precision without needing to have a lifetime of training in FPSes.
I'm running it in vmware on a mac, I don't like how it scrolls. Using the touchpad on a macbook, you can scroll down a pixel at a time if you move slowly.
The smallest quanta I can scroll with the touchpad via vmware running vista is far too large.
I really hope the native mac version scrolls better.
for me it's fast loading lean webpages (like google results pages,) but on most pages i can't tell the difference between it and FF3
on a Blogger operation (hitting the preview button with a lot of HTML in the editbox, which performs some processing on it) FF3 is faster. i don't know what the difference is due to -- guessing string or DOM operations
Note: If you want to use a Chromium-based browser, you should look elsewhere. Although many Chromium modules build under Linux and a few unit tests pass, nothing actually runs.
It also defaults to whatever language locale google decides you should have, with no option to change it.
Apart from going back to the download page, and explicitly choosing it there, and then downloading the download-installer which respects that software should be in English.
No, English is not my first language, but Jesus christ things like this pisses me off.
There will be an extension API. I'm doubtful they'll blacklist extensions. I also doubt Google is worried about the extremely small minority of power users that are blocking ads. So you'll never see ad blocking built in, but I'd bet there will be an extension for it.
It's open source, and ad blocking is the #1 requested feature of browsers. There's probably a reason why it isn't baked in to start, but it will get added.
Dromaeo results http://dromaeo.com/?id=20571
Check it out. A lot faster than FF and Safari. I am not counting IE here...IE is outdated with the launch of Chrome.
Fonts definitely need some attention from a graphics person. My company's intranet time reporting app looks like it was re-rendered by a techie -- the fonts are small and seem to be designed as bitmaps with no eye to anti-aliasing. It's much more functional, but it looks like crap.
I'm guessing there are plenty of people who will dig the browser, but without the bells and whistles provided by extensions, many users won't switch.
I can live without AdBlock/FlashBlock, since I don't frequent many sites that have heavy third-party content, but as I said above, I can't live without Firebug right now.
Well, not sure I'm ringing the bells yet. I think as people play with it, they'll see there's still a long way to go.
The biggest is that it doesn't do extensions yet. It doesn't The first focus sounds like it will be the Flash engines of the world (i.e. binary extensions). Then later they'll add a Firefox-like extension model.
Next they have their other OS's to support. So it's got a lot of catching up to do.
I'm impressed with it so far, but I'm not uninstalling Firefox quite yet.
Extensions on firefox are broken anyways. Look how difficult it is to find and add an extension. I'm thinking less than 5% of firefox users actually use extensions, but I may be wrong there.
If google makes extensions work better, the have a real winner. And firefox will die quickly.
It seems to flow nicely. I can inspect dynamically created elements by right clicking on them, where in FireBug somehow the link kept getting activated.
I also like how it computes the styles, but I'm not sure how to track down the computations. However, these are all my falling-outs. The browser works nicely.
Although, Shockwave Flash just crashed while listening to pandora and using the webkit inspector. Related?
Notice Chrome is slower in the first test because of the AJAX declarations. But honestly, who is going to be worried about the speed of AJAX declarations? Look at this comparison:
Chrome:
Array object
131
Date object
30
Error handling
7
Math object
13
RegEx object
52
String object
41
DOM
51
Ajax declarations
295
Total Duration
620
Opera:
Array object 172
Date object 47
Error handling 31
Math object 47
RegEx object 109
String object 63
DOM 31
Ajax declarations 62
Total Duration 562
If we assume Google can get AJAX declaration down to 62ms just like Opera (which seems perfectly reasonable, I don't imagine they had those in mind when considering speed), ten that would bring Chrome's execution time down to:
387ms!!
Assuming it can get a few more milliseconds down (it is after all only in beta stage, now that it's been open-sourced I can imagine a good couple of improvements will stream in), that means it's 1.5x faster than Opera! (which is hailed as the absolute king of Javascript execution)
Also, Opera does some kind of caching thing I think. On some of the tests (like Array and DOM), Opera consistently scored eiter X or 2X (e.g., 90, or 180). There is no way there could be a 2x speed difference just out of thin air like that, so I imagine it's some trick that notices when it can be sped up. If Chrome did that it could have the speed gain as well.
If you want to test the GC in Javascript, try out an infinite loop of unreferenced allocations. Generational GC should be able to handle this without breaking a sweat.
Actually, I wasn't trying to test the javascript VM at all, just how the browser handled an infinite loop of alert dialogs. Since alert windows steal focus, an infinite loop of them will keep stealing focus. I wanted to know how Chrome would handle this.
I didn't think you were barking up the wrong tree. It's another suggestion. You might need some kind of "yield" statement if you want to see how another Javascript program will act with a background window spamming it with allocations.
I was disappointed that it doesn't seem to offer support for user scripting a la greasemonkey. It seems like add-ons might be intentionally discouraged:
'The problem with revamping existing browsers to accommodate this concept is that they have developed an ecology of add-on extensions (toolbars, RSS readers, etc.) that would be hopelessly disrupted by a radical upgrade. "As a Firefox developer, you love to innovate, but you're always worried that it means in the next version all the extensions will be broken," Fisher says.'
That does /not/ say that add-ons are discouraged, merely that they chose to make a browser on their own because current add-ons (and backward compatibility) would restrict their power if they had chosen to revamp current browsers.
Everybody's really fond of their add-ons (I couldn't live without Tree Style Tabs), so either Google will implement them to grab more market share or hackers will add them.
Coool. Do you know if it is possible for Chrome to remember the font magnification for visited websites? In FF, I usually enlarge website font, and FF remembers my choice. Chrome doesn't do this automatically.
Hm, Chrome doesn't seem to fill the _charset_ hidden input. Interesting, whether it's just that the feature is not yet implemented, or they don't consider it to be useful/good.
The "stats for nerds" page is also good entertainment (available from the task manager or by typing about:memory).
Not only will it tell you where all that memory is being used (Chrome isn't exactly lightweight), but it will also spy on IE and Firefox and let you know how much memory they are using.
Worst implementation of bookmarks yet. I have over 5k of them and managing them in Chrome will be a futile process. Clicking the "Open all Bookmarks in New window" button also crashes the browser when you have that many.
In my opinion the bookmark implementation is the BEST yet. You essentially can have multiple bookmark menus for different topics, as any folder you drag onto your bookmark bar becomes a pulldown menu.
182 comments
[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 298 ms ] threadWow.
My only complaint so far is that I miss the bar at the bottom of the browser that typically displays the active link and download status. I find the little pop-up distracting.
If this survives the day without a stability issue it becomes my primary browser.
And text boxes are expandable! (Or is this a News.YC feature I missed?)
Edit: Last paragraph wrong on both counts; see response.
It's certainly fast, though, and probably will supplant FireFox as my gmail browser. The tab switching animation is slick too. Definitely looking forward to how this develops. Seems more like a web application browser and less like a web page browser, which is obviously something Google needs to seriously attack Microsoft's desktop monopolies.
The logo in the title bar is an amazing study in self-discipline. It's a mute color and 13x36 pixels!
I guess they didn't want to deal with trying to have their developers help fix Firefox. Sometimes, it's just easier to start over.
... and then people start requesting 'just a couple' of new features.
I see this as a move that forces standards. Google is putting its big shoulder behind increased performance and consistency on the internet. If other people want to wrap the core offering in fancier clothes, I think Google still wins.
Google Chrome - 705.00ms (Total), Firefox 3 - 3303.40ms (Total), Safari 3.1.2 - 3888.20ms (Total), IE7 - Crashed the browser on "base 64 Encoding and Decoding v122" test. It was also very slow on the 1st 2 tests.
Phew.. the JS rendering in this beast is wicked.
* For example, right-click the field on dictionary.com and declare that "d foo" in the address bar will look up "foo" using that form from now on.
Q: It's open source, iron_ball, why not write your own?
It's not quite as easy as right clicking the search box in Chrome, but you can still do it by right clicking the address bar and going to Edit search engines. You can manually add named searches there. After the first time you search on certain sites, it will automatically add them as named searches (I noticed this with Amazon, eBay and Wikipedia--you'll see them show up in the Edit search engines area).
I have the same feeling about this.
For that reason alone I'm stuck on Firefox for a while. I tried moving to Safari a few months back when they updated webkit, but I needed firebug, greasemonkey, compete etc.
Part of me is a little irked that google is going to get credit with many people for things like "Inspect Element". But it's entirely Apple's fault for keeping Safari so far behind the state of Webkit.
Very nice indeed.
This gives it a nice illusion of speed, but it gets annoying pretty fast once you realize you want to scroll with any kind of precision without needing to have a lifetime of training in FPSes.
The smallest quanta I can scroll with the touchpad via vmware running vista is far too large.
I really hope the native mac version scrolls better.
on a Blogger operation (hitting the preview button with a lot of HTML in the editbox, which performs some processing on it) FF3 is faster. i don't know what the difference is due to -- guessing string or DOM operations
no noticeable differences with Gmail
Roll on the mac version.
On the same system, running in Safari 3.1 in OS X gives 2749.00ms (Total).
It does not work on Linux. :(
edit: http://dev.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/build-instruction...
Are you using the standard Windows installer or the buildbot waterfall ?
Apart from going back to the download page, and explicitly choosing it there, and then downloading the download-installer which respects that software should be in English.
No, English is not my first language, but Jesus christ things like this pisses me off.
EDIT: and the "new tab" button is in exactly the right spot
chrome: 393.20ms
leaving a browser that already felt fast in the dust: priceless
(This comment posted via Chrome)
*edit: whoops I hadn't refreshed for a while and I didn't realize this was already answered.
http://www.google.com/
This is a really big deal.
Extensions.
I'm guessing there are plenty of people who will dig the browser, but without the bells and whistles provided by extensions, many users won't switch.
I can live without AdBlock/FlashBlock, since I don't frequent many sites that have heavy third-party content, but as I said above, I can't live without Firebug right now.
http://www.proxomitron.info/ was the old standby
440,000 people download it a week. That's a lot of people not even seeing their search ads!
The biggest is that it doesn't do extensions yet. It doesn't The first focus sounds like it will be the Flash engines of the world (i.e. binary extensions). Then later they'll add a Firefox-like extension model.
Next they have their other OS's to support. So it's got a lot of catching up to do.
I'm impressed with it so far, but I'm not uninstalling Firefox quite yet.
If google makes extensions work better, the have a real winner. And firefox will die quickly.
I also like how it computes the styles, but I'm not sure how to track down the computations. However, these are all my falling-outs. The browser works nicely.
Although, Shockwave Flash just crashed while listening to pandora and using the webkit inspector. Related?
http://www.celtickane.com/webdesign/jsspeed2007.php http://andrew.hedges.name/experiments/speed_test/index4.html
Needless to say, it's fast...
Chrome: Array object 131 Date object 30 Error handling 7 Math object 13 RegEx object 52 String object 41 DOM 51 Ajax declarations 295 Total Duration 620
Opera: Array object 172 Date object 47 Error handling 31 Math object 47 RegEx object 109 String object 63 DOM 31 Ajax declarations 62 Total Duration 562
If we assume Google can get AJAX declaration down to 62ms just like Opera (which seems perfectly reasonable, I don't imagine they had those in mind when considering speed), ten that would bring Chrome's execution time down to:
387ms!!
Assuming it can get a few more milliseconds down (it is after all only in beta stage, now that it's been open-sourced I can imagine a good couple of improvements will stream in), that means it's 1.5x faster than Opera! (which is hailed as the absolute king of Javascript execution)
Also, Opera does some kind of caching thing I think. On some of the tests (like Array and DOM), Opera consistently scored eiter X or 2X (e.g., 90, or 180). There is no way there could be a 2x speed difference just out of thin air like that, so I imagine it's some trick that notices when it can be sped up. If Chrome did that it could have the speed gain as well.
http://www.paulbutler.org/projects/chrome/test.html
It passed! I'd be curious to know how Opera and Safari do on the test. I have a hunch Opera might pass it.
'The problem with revamping existing browsers to accommodate this concept is that they have developed an ecology of add-on extensions (toolbars, RSS readers, etc.) that would be hopelessly disrupted by a radical upgrade. "As a Firefox developer, you love to innovate, but you're always worried that it means in the next version all the extensions will be broken," Fisher says.'
--- http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-10/mf_chrome
Another example: When the browser window is maximized with multiple tabs, there is no space wasted on the title bar!
And the task manager is amazing, exactly what I've been wanting.
(all the good stuff is under the Page menu, then the developer submenu. Took me a while to find).
Not only will it tell you where all that memory is being used (Chrome isn't exactly lightweight), but it will also spy on IE and Firefox and let you know how much memory they are using.
Sad that no one really knows what's going on with WebKit.
It is nice and fast though.
Some freaks (no offence) with thousands of bookmarks have radically different needs to others.