f13.net

So anyone gonna use this?

http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/index.html#

Hell yeah.

Can you block ads (including google ads) with it?  If you can't, then it's a non-starter for me.

Pretty soon we will be using Google TVs and Google Microwaves. They have way too much money and have no idea what to do with it all!

I'll take a peek at it, but it'll depend on how it performs.

I cruised through their entire presentaion. I think im excited about it.

I can't read all that stuff!  Sheesh.  Someone just say stuff about it when it happens, please.

I will be all over this.

Has it gone up for download yet?

I'll certainly consider it.  I'm already using SeaMonkey over FireFox because of page 20.

They need to hurry up!

There is a link on the google front page.

http://www.google.com/chrome

It's fast!

pew pew

posting from CHROME~

Browsing from it as well.

*pew pew* indeed!

bah, no mac version yet

This shit is FAST.

Holy balls. This is amazing. Just amazing.

God damn.

Jesus. Even the scrolling feels better.

Bah. "For Windows". I'll have to wait until I get home.

Anyone find a way to get Google Bookmarks into the browser?

Holy shit, this thing is slick as hell.

Ok, and I love the Ctrl-N window.

Holy crap, this thing IS fast.

I don't really see what is so amazing .. it's faster, but you can do the same thing with FasterFox.

I thought the memory footprint might be smaller (no add ons, which is as negative) but it's running pretty heavy.. bigger than Firefox, just split into multiple processes.

I do the like the fast scrolling by default.

I  :heart: Chrome.  CTRL + SHIFT + N!

You can resize any posting box on the web with the 6 dots in the bottom right hand corner.

The downloads interface as well as the bookmark setup is vastly superior.

Also, Firefox + Plug-Ins does not really count. It needs to be a one-stop thing. Managing other shit is a pain in the ass. If FireFox actually incorporated half the good plugins in a decent amount of time, it would be a decent comparison. Unfortunately, it falls flat in that regard.

Edit: Ah, yes, and CTRL+Shift+N is monstrous, as ookii just pointed out.

Oh my  :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart:

I can't get incognito mode to remember usernames/passwords from regular browsing  :heartbreak:

Uh. No, there's no way that's as stupid as it sounds.

LOL their own YouTube videos got yanked.

Edit: videos

Clarification : I want to be able to open a new incognito window and not have to type in username and passwords to sites I've entered in normal browsing. A way of using the cookies/usernames and whatnot that already exist for sites but not creating new ones or saving histories, like a read-only mode.

Fuck me, this this is FAST. I'll have to try it at home on a non-Vista, non-multi-CPU computer. So far me likey. Anyway I can change the location of the tabs and links bar?

scores 77/100 on the Acid3 test.

there does not seem to be a mechanism to add plugins.  So I cannot get Java to work...

the official stance:

http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?answer=95697&topic=14687

The resizing the text box feature is cool. Incognito mode is pretty cool too.

I think the Firefox approach to 'use plugins to add functionality' is a particular philosophy. You may not agree with it, but their stance is probably that letting users add the features they want rather than giving them stuff they may not use is a better experience. Plus, it gives you options - what if I don't like how Chrome does the text box resizing? I can't build or install my own module to change it.

Using it, meh.

Doesn't allow middle-mouse-button click+drag scrolling, didn't ask where I wanted it to download or install either.

Gonna keep using Firefox, I can deal with slightly slower load times.

This thing is awesome.  AWEEEESSSOOOOMMEEEE  :grin: :grin:

You know what's funny, it is more like a thing than a web browser.

The speed in which this browser thing is is loading pages is making me dizzy.

I love the home page and the fact I can see my top 6 sites visited in picture form.

Oh and you can set Chrome to open up as many sites as you want the moment you load it up!  No more opening up the 2-4 different forums I keep up all the time.  Load program, boom done.  Though I may be dumb and not realize other browsers do this.  But oh well.

Javascript runs wicked fast:

641.00ms

I have stuff crunching in the background, so it's doing well even with that. Tested here:   http://dromaeo.com/

I need a way to re do the skins.  I'm not digging the blue.

Opera has something like that (I'm on my Mac right now so I can't try Chrome out). Firefox 3 does too, in theory, but it's kind of crappy.

Doesn't IE7 allow for multiple home pages?

I havn't used Opera in a long while, and I never got around to testing Firefox 3.0's features.

Fucking wow, it's shocking how fast shit loads now, I'm in love.

This is impressive.  Seriously impressive.

How do I do some serious editing of my bookmarks?  Bloody thing imported from the wrong browsers and I want to either get a folder view to add and purge, cut-n-paste, or... anything?  It's also annoying to need to move dozens of book marks from a lower level folder to a higher one.  I'm missing something, right?

 :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star::star: :star: :star: :star: :star:
(http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm134/christieh67/Orgasm.jpg)
 :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star::star: :star: :star: :star: :star:

Wow.

This is amazing....

Been using it for 5 minutes and it is already pretty awesome. I really wish it had middle-click-and-drag though.

So threaded tabs is the key issue here?

I don't even know what Threaded tabs means.

SHIFT + ESC mofo, all tabs are treated separately.

That is amazing.

Another little failure: no right click->refresh.

F5

Or click the rotate arrow. I'm surprised anybody right-click/refreshes. Crazy.

I prefer the minimal context menu in Chrome to anything of the other browsers.

Cheers, now I can watch all the dirty porn I want without having to clear my history and use iexplorer for it.  :why_so_serious:

Doubt it.  Do not count out Big-G's ability track you.  They need to know.


Related: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10023958-83.html

The minimal interface and speed is nice.  I hate having even less control over options than Firefox though.  Hide it until I ask for it.

I want tabs opened from links to come to the front, not open in a window out of focus.  When I look at the properties of a picture, I want the damn properties of it, not its irrelavent container.

Got bookmarks by a yucky roundabout way.

Nice, but not there yet.

It needs a keyboard shortcut to open a link in an incognito window and make it so I can open bookmarks with it. There's not even an option to open an incognito by right-clicking a bookmark like there is with links.

Yes, I want to open a bookmark in super-sekrit mode easily. No one needs to know how much of my day is idly spent looking at porn. Hence the not having to enter a user/pass every time.

I can understand you wanting to have it remember passwords in incognito mode, that /is/ rather annoying.

But you want to click a bookmark...in secret?
What's the point of secret mode if the bookmark is right up there on the bar?

You might have something bookmarked or linked from another site (Fark?) and not want to have it keep cookies/crap on your machine, not just keep it out of browser history.

I can't hit F5 with my mouse. I'm not complaining that I can't refresh, I'm complaining that I can't do it in the way I prefer. And yes, I could move the mouse up to click the button, but I prefer it the other way. I'm lazy.

Don't be so picky! Nah, I agree, just like you can't click the mousescroll and scroll as I always do, so this is the only reason I'm not using it right now. And that tabs are on top of the screen instead of below bookmarks.

Yes. I don't care if the bookmark is there but I don't want someone looking at my history and thinking (knowing) that I spend eight hours a day there. It makes me look crazy. CRAZY. MY NEEDS MAKE SENSE IN MY WORLD.

Plus on a 24 inch screen that refresh button is way far out of the way!

We are all beautiful and unique snowflakes that want to mouse-refresh our porn from a secret bookmark.

I notice that most of the objections I have to it are related to message board use.

Right-click refresh, I only use for seeing if new posts are up.
Middle-click scroll, I use to get down to the bottom of a message board thread quickly.
Right-click image properties, I use primarily for cut and pasting direct image links into message board posts.

Etc.

I think maybe this is just something the Google people didn't spend a lot of time on yet (although you'd think with their referencing of /. in the little comic book they might be aware of the need for those kinds of tools.)

"What's the point of the internet if you can't watch weird and fucked up sex you will never have yourself?"

I think the CTRL+SHIFT+N feature was specifically designed for the purpose of porn.

I don't have any porn.  What the hell is my excuse?

Dammit.

Okay I'm on my PC now and not having configurable cookies makes this an immediate fail for me. I need to have all cookies blocked except for those sites I explicitly allow and I don't see a way to do that. So much for being a "privacy"-oriented browser (no, incognito mode is not the same thing).

On an unrelated note Microsoft must be shitting bricks over this thing. With Chrome Google can now optimize their Web apps for Chrome to provide a more seamless integration. And I'm not just talking about having custom buttons to launch various apps. E.g. Google can now create their own protocols and APIs for working around the stateless and asynchronous nature of HTTP and they don't have to worry about convincing other browser vendors to incorporate them up front since they can just do it for Chrome and the rest (except for MS, of course) will follow.

S'ok, my girlfriend is like that too. Must be a woman thing.  :awesome_for_real:

Women can pretty much get it whenever they want... So they don't really need porn!   :awesome_for_real:

It doesn't seem to operate any faster than Firefox for me. Both are fast imho.

Not having a real window frame to stick a page title really really really sucks. I can't tell any of my f13 pages/tabs apart -- they all just read "f13.net foru..."

Hmmmm, mine have the first 6 letters of the thread title, which is enough. But then, I'm at 1920x1200.

Yeah sucks to be me running at 1024 x 768 :ye_gods:

Not givin' up my ad blocker or search keywords.  But I do hope that the other browsers pillage the useful bits, progress is gud.

Is there a legal issue with them putting in an ad blocker?  I mean they run a vast ad network and they'd never block their own ads.  If they started going out and blocking everyone else's ads then they'd be in a huge shitstorm with the rest of the internet, I assume someone would bring legal action against them.

It's neat but a bit feature-light and I don't dig the interface quite yet.  It's pretty cool though.

If I was an add-that-quotation-to-my-signature kind of guy, that would go there.

Anyone know if there's a way to modify the search window?  I'm glad that it goes to google by default, but I'd like the option of adding wikipedia.

Edit: Also, it'd be pretty rad if F13 would show up as something other than a broken camera in my most visited list.  Schild..?

Edit Edit: First irritation: I have my Vista taskbar set up so that it hides itself unless I mouse to the bottom of the screen.  When I'm in Chrome and I move the mouse, the taskbar doesn't show up.  Makes finding out the time a little bit trickier.

I can highlight text and then Right-click to select <Search Google for 'such and such'>. Nifty.

Initial reactions:
1) Why the hell doesn't it ask me where to install? I manually copied the files to where I want them. (though, I guess I can't really argue with putting things under Documents and Settings by default. Makes it more Linuxy)
2) Would it fucking kill them to just use the normal window dressing? I like title bars and file menus, thank you.

Still, might be worth it just for the task manager. Finally being able to know what retarded flash/java app is eating all my CPU is a godsend.

They do vitally important things like pay me to develop mobile operating systems, which keeps me off the streets!  I cannot comment on unannounced Google Kitchen Appliances.

- Q

Need to see a screencap. I see the thumbnail of the forums list on my Most Visited section.

Not massively impressed so far. Speed is a non-issue, firefox is fast enough. Needs a lot of work before it becomes usable for me:

No cookie management. Like Trippy I want all cookies blocked except ones I whitelist.
Need to be able to move UI elements. At the bare minimum I like my tab bar at the bottom of the screen, not the top.
Bookmark management (see firefox).
Configurable shortcut keys. CTRL+N is new tab for me, I hate it opening a new window.
Mouse gestures/mousewheel for scrolling between tabs
Vista window style = ugh
No choice on install location

So far it doesn't offer any improvement over firefox (for me) and has a lot of irritatiing limitations.

I gave this a go, but it wasn't significantly faster than Firefox, and since I usually tab-hop while stuff loads (if it takes time) I didn't really see a massive benefit. Seeing ads on pages that I have never seen ads on before actually came as something of a shock, so now I'm back using FF3.

Also ditto on the already-mentioned complaints.

Is this just another Step on Google's world domination plan? Or merely Google being fed up with all the current browsers out there?

Can't it be both?

I think it's more of a result of Google letting individuals and teams work on practically whatever the fuck it is they want. Googlepages and googlesites existing at the same time despite doing the same thing is a good indication of this...even if googlepages is way better than sites, which Google publically supports.

One weird thing I'm seeing on several machines - check boxes are coming up as a mess of pixel puke instead of looking like boxes.  It's very odd.

Did anyone bother to read the EULA (point 11 specifically)?


It's a nice browser already in beta, but sheesh...

Doesn't show up as a broken camera for me.

I love this feature.

The install process was a bit weird, but Gears installs in the same way so I was expecting it.

Having played with Chrome again today I'm still really impressed by it, but without a Delicious plug-in/extension/whatever, it's pretty useless for me.

For those who asked earlier, yes you can have multiple homepages setup in IE7, they all just open up in tabs.

Chrome looks pretty enough, seems to run pretty smooth. Almost runs our online software - the main app opens and runs fine, but it gives a Null error when you try to use the editor plugin (IE or FF would ask you to install the plugin at this point).

I don't see the big deal.  And I really don't get those of you saying how fast it is, most everything already loads so fast I can't even notice it.  I also really don't want to have to code for another fucking browser at work, I've been able to ignore stuff like Opera because it's so unpopular and works well enough but a Google browser would easily take up as much market share as firefox.

Compared to firefox chrome also reverses the open in new tab/window order which is what I always use on this site and is driving me nuts.  Would it be possible to change the little new buttons in "unread posts since last visit" to open in new windows instead of the current one.  It doesn't really make sense to give people a list of twenty links and then have each link open in the same window, blowing away the rest of the list.  I would love that.  Love.  :heart:.

Why is their a need to work around stateless and asynchronous nature of HTTP?  Browser apps can do state and complex transactions and the difficulty in implementation is not dependent on it being done on a client or server or language.

Still loving it, but it definitely needs work. Let me customize the UI so I can switch around the tab locations, give me easier bookmark organization, and give me my mouse gestures, and it's all good.

Creepy...
http://gizmodo.com/5044871/google-chrome-eula-claims-ownership-of-everything-you-create-using-chrome-from-blog-posts-to-emails

So I should upload a bunch of licensed material in the name of google? I'm sure that wasn't meant to be put in the EULA in that way.

LOL.

EULAs have been abused so much in the past that I wouldn't be shocked that what is says is what they meant. They do, after all, have a pretty damn big legal department.

Maybe they weren't expecting 4chan to have threads about uploading Google-Branded CP. This EULA will get changed, just watch.

Any mouse gestures? They are hard-coded into my DNA now.

Cause the workarounds right now (e.g. AJAX or Flash) are a fucking pain in the ass.

I am happy with the speed and features of FF3.  Sure if I was still on FF2 I'd be look for something else.  There is merit to the idea of sandboxing the tabs.  I hope we see it in FF in the next year.

Mouse gestures? What kind of dorkery is this?

Article is wrong. Google is not claiming that ownership of copyrights are being transferred over to them using Chrome. They are saying you are granting them a perpetual non-exclusive license to do whatever the fuck they want with your (copyrighted) content.

If you code for Safari then things should be fine in Chrome (for now, until they diverge).

If you have a fast enough computer you might not notice how crappy Geko, the rendering engine in Firefox, is. There's a reason why nobody wants to use Geko for handheld devices and are using Opera and WebKit instead.

No.

Also: use your middle mouse button to open links in new tabs.

Thank god I have a crappy computer then :)

Speed on this is alot better then with Firefox for me.  I'm happy, could use a few more features but I think I'm gonna stick with it. 

Magic wand! (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/39). It is kind of amazing how fast I was using the basic ones with no conscious thought.

Have you looked at the "About" yet?

For which? Not on my PC right now so I can't look at Chrome's.

(http://img167.imageshack.us/img167/9486/aboutchromeml2.png)

so when's the all appliance Android planned for?  Clearly this is a proto-desktop.

It's not using Geko. That's the User Agent string. The "KHTML, like Geko" is in there for historical reasons (Konqueror, which was the first to use WebKit had that). Safari has that same "KHTML, like Geko" in it's user agent string as well.

Yeah i know. I just found it odd. Also, songbird uses webkit.

WebKit is same engine that powers Safari browser…

<-- called it.

Yeah, i was telling a coworker, "its like Firefox and Safari had a child".

Safari is the shittiest browser on the face of the planet. I'm glad to see Chrome did something worthwhile with both it and Firefox.

I just read the Google Chrome comic (http://blogoscoped.com/google-chrome/)

I found it rather creepy

Yeah, it's totally got that passive-aggressive airplane crash instruction pamphlet thing going on.

http://www.scottmccloud.com/store/books/uc.html

Which begs the question which other Google services have that clause in them.

More importantl than speed is memory footprint, and webkit has been a winner there, too.  A new mobile firefox project kicked off recently, so maybe there's some hope of a firefox derived mobile browser that can run in < 32MB of ram someday...

Its fricken Awesome for a beta release. Since its done by Google I am expecting them to fix some of the little ergonomic issues for non beta release.

Chrome Vs. IE 8  (http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/09/03/2244226.shtml)

the EULA language has already been changed:

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-chrome-license-agreement/

My 1st thought was great just what the world needs another friggen browser.  Then I saw that it was based on webkit which the next version of dreamweaver will also be using for the designer view.  So my next thought was wow we will actually have access to an accurate WYSIWYG web editor.

HA!  I was just about to post that.   :awesome_for_real:

I installed the browser and the lack of speed scrolling is pissing me off no end.  It turns out I use it a LOT on forums to wade through posts.  Going back to FF.

Stop thinking of it as a browser and imagine or model your use with it as a desktop.  The first page stores (ripped off of Opera) favorites -- desktop icons, etc.  Clearly this is the path of intent.  Everything else (scrolling etc) will be added as optional preferences.

Edit: removed rant

Since it's Google, when exactly do you expect it to leave beta, though?

Doh, no extensions and configuration options (also installing in documents and settings; no way to export bookmarks - so when you switch, you're in for life...), horribly, horribly slow on PC with old harddisks (as in, "totally unusable" slow). The only good thing aboutis nice, shiny icon.

I do like the shiny icon.  Anyway, I'll wait until they beef it up a bit.  It has too many thingies missing that I use a lot.

Meh.  Looks nice but I miss NoScript.  Feels like I'm not wearing pants on the Internet.

Interesting comparison of Flash CPU usage on FF, Chrome and IE 8:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080904/ap_on_hi_te/tec_tech_test_google_chrome

I started using it last night at home (Mac at work).

I like FF3 but I find it a bit bloated feeling, and I have hardly any add-ons. Also, FF3 does this weird thing. Every time I start it up, it will run fine for 5 to 10 seconds, then it will freeze my entire computer for 10 to 15 seconds. After that everything is fine, but its a pain in the ass.

Chrome does not freeze my computer and runs pretty damn fast. I just wish there was an easy way to change the skin. The blue is really bugging me, and doesnt go with my desktop theme at all.

Modify the source and recompile it  :awesome_for_real:

Doesn't play nice with Sandboxie, which I've taken to using whenever I visit a site that may be dodgy (not that, pervs, I'm mostly talking about indy game stuff).  Just doesn't reach the internet at all for some reason.  Yeah, I know that right now there aren't any exploits specifically for Chrome, but most of them are using Flash.

--Dave

Speaking from personal experience, though, that's a mighty fine feeling.

I wish there was a way to just open files instead of being forced to download them, sometimes I don't want to save it on my hard drive, damnit!

I just tested FF3 on YouTube w/ Vista and a year old Quad Core. 5% CPU usage. I don't know where they got 95% usage from YouTube's Flash. Is XP on a 3 year old laptop really that crappy? FF2 limited Flash to a single core. FF3 lets Flash use all cores.


Chrome is pretty meh for me. Why are tabs even farther away from the center of the screen (where my cursor lives) better?

I would not call you tubes use of flash, Standard flash.

Played around with it, like it. But to be fair its not that much faster than Firefox with Tracemonkey. I think when the novelty runs out this will be relegated to my second browser for more unsavory websites instead of Opera.

Tried this when it launched, then picked it up again today. Seems to have improved some in terms of support, but otherwise the same lightning-fast clean browser it's been billed as. I've so far experienced nothing that would prevent me from dropping Firefox.

Is this a serious attempt by Google, or a soon-forgotten 20% project built just to compel Mozilla and MS to stop bloatifying their browsers?

Probably a warning shot over the IE8 offsite cookie blocking default that would make Google's purchase of DoubleClick a complete waste.

--Dave

Um. If you're opening it, you're saving it. You might not know it but that's what's happening. Better to be informed, no?

Yep. I've long since gotten tired of all the hidden folders Microsoft hides all over the drive to facilitate the download/open process. Can't tell you how often I've had to find those files after having mistakenly made edits without moving them to a real folder. MS Outlook is the worst of the bunch: you can't actually get to the folder unless you manually type in the path, as two folders in the hierarchy don't even appear when hidden items are shown. At least with IE, I can navigate to where it's caching files.

Oh, and is there any way to get back to the "Most Visited" GUI page short of restarting the program? I currently just open a new tab but it's an extra mouse click to close the prior one. A whole extra mouse click!!!

From what I've heard, this isn't so much about directly competing with other browsers (for now) but for laying the groundwork for their future apps.  With this, they can specially develop all their new applications for the browser, in a much more powerful way (as Trippy said, getting around shit like AJAX).  They will integrate Android with the whole thing.  So it's more about them creating a development platform with which to continue their virtualization drive, which is just awesome to me.

In Short, hopefully it's the start of that Google OS we always talk about  :awesome_for_real:.

They made it specifically to combat Ad-Blocking in firefox. The lack of ad blocking makes it totally worthless to me.


It's pretty fast though.

The day google makes an OS is the day the world ends.

Wednesday?

No, the LHC will end the world on Wednesday... Google will have to wait until AFTER the earth is swallowed by a man-made black hole.

Right.  They will be our overlords in the next earth.

Officially banned at work.

Not surprising because it sends everything you enter in the "Omnibox" to Google where it's stored until the heat death of the universe (actually only 5% is stored until the end of time but of course they never tell you which 5%) and it indexes everything you view including sensitive information (like your banking account information) that anybody can then see by typing in said box.

Edit: whoops it's 2% not 5%:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10031661-56.html

wait, what? who types bank credentials into the URL bar anyway? the url or the bank's name, sure, but if your daft enough to put in username and password into the URL/Omnibar/whateve, you get what you deserve. There's no keeping that type of person safe.

No that's not what happens. Chrome is indexing the contents of the pages your visit while your surf so you can retrieve that information when searching:

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/39176/108/

ook. well, yep, that's pretty wack

Anyone else having flash issues with it?  I have the latest flash but sites that display fine in other browsers show plugin not installed in chrome.

Yea, ok, well this browsers dead to me.

Nice try Google... whatever happened to you? You used to be so friendly.  :sad:

Google has always been about hording personal information about its users. They used to store all searches associated by cookies/IP/whatever other means of tracking you until the end of time. Under pressure from the EU they've shortened it but basically they have been and continue to accumulate massive amounts of personal information from all of its users. And to top it all off they have vague, missing, misleading, out right incorrect privacy policies about all this information they are hording.

No they have never been friendly, they are just marketed as such and people eat it up.  They are just as bad as microsoft, maybe worse since all microsoft wanted was your money, Google wants your soul.

Speaking of the devil:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/another-step-to-protect-user-privacy.html

I read that but don't quite get it. I see my History being updated, but I can't actually load any of the https sites I use. Any time I click them they present the login page (because I never stay logged in to the important sites). What are people doing that they can pull info from pages locked behind a login page? And yea, I feel dense asking that.

Open up a blank tab and in the Searches box on the right type in, say, "Darniaq" (assuming you've surfed f13.net with it). You see the little text snippets around your keyword that show up in the search? That's the text it's indexing.

This has been blocked by work. People weren't happy with the autoupdater and other stuff apparently.

Jeezus. Thanks man. That's some pretty unfortunate stuff. Yea, that's the end of Google Chrome for me.

Isn't it just searching your browser history pages? Firefox and IE both store all that crap too. They just don't make it searchable. Chrome probably just indexes it like Google Desktop search does.

Its not simply your history, its EVERYTHING that can be parsed into raw text that you've visited. Like what I'm typing right now. And what you'll later read. Unless the text is actually an image file without actual 'texty' components, that is. At least that's the impression I'm getting.

Hummm...

I am not sure if I should be upset by this, or consider it a big "meh" and go on using Chrome.

IE and FireFox store all of that too. Any page you ever visit with major browsers is cached on the hard drive in plain text. You entered the text and then hit post or preview; a new page was created and cached. Chrome would only be different if it stored text as it was entered character by character (like a keylogger would). The autocomplete functionality (where it does a search every time you press a character in the search box) is the same functionality which is in the Google ToolBar. Google is actually much more prone to sucking everything up into their cloud than Microsoft though.

Just as an example Internet Explorer has had a file for the longest time which is called index.dat. It stores every URL you've ever been to (and other things). Clearing history does not clear it. It is a hidden system file. The only way to delete it on XP is with a service that has System level permissions. I've never figured out how to get the permissions to delete it on Vista. On 98 and ME you had to reboot and delete it prior to the OS starting. I know all this because I've developed and updated a desktop browser history clearing application for the last 6 years. There are files full of information hidden everywhere (not to mention the Windows registry).

Are you saying this concern over the Google thing is more due to the fact that more people see the cache in their face because Google is actively searching through those files too? I never knew about the IE thing you just mentioned nor the equivalent for Firefox. I guess I wouldn't be surprised, particularly not from Microsoft.

I guess what I'm asking is this: is Google is doing anything more potentially-untrustworthy than MS or Mozilla? I would really LIKE to use the browser, because it's clean and fast as heck. But I'm waiting more info on that. Like, say, from here :-)

There are two big privacy problems. One is the Omnibox which is sending everything you enter in there to Google, just because (nominally it's for them to send you back suggestions). Supposedly you can turn it off but I don't use Chrome enough to have figured that part out yet.

The second problem is the one we've been talking which is that it's indexing those files, which goes beyond what other browsers do. I.e. Google is making it a lot easier for "non-experts" that might use your computer to see sensitive information. If you or your family (assuming you trust your family :awesome_for_real:) are the only ones that touch your computer then this isn't a problem. In corporate settings its much more troublesome which was the original context for this discussion.

Trippy makes a good point that Chrome just makes access to the information easier. That is one of the reasons I don't use Google Desktop Search and have the file search indexing feature disabled in Vista.

Just another example of how Google manages access to information is MP3 files. Google has all kinds of URLs to MP3 files which possibly infringe copyright in their online index. However, they disabled the ability to search for MP3 files by file type. You can still access the information if you know how to tweak out your Google search string but it isn't accessible if you just search normally. Keeps the RIAA complacent I guess.

Had a play with it. I love the speed.

Just about everything else about it is annoying, missing, or shitty.

I've been using it since it came out and love it. I don't have anything to hide so I'm not worried about the indexing (and others index too as noted, so it's no big deal to me).

Work could care less either. I'm posting from work in Chrome.

I've seen very few places where it does not work well as a full substitute, and the features that it offers are a bonus to me. Plus I like the ergonomics.

Latest dev version no longer indexes SSL pages:


http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10042670-2.html

Slashdot today points to this article (http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2008/10/at-the-beginning-of-september.html).

tl;dr: Use of Chrome has fallen off. And Google is no longer advertising.

Does this substantiate the opinion of some that this was little more than a stunt to compel MS into changing something they were doing in their new browser? Or was this just a 20% project that was never destined to go anywhere?

They added SVG support! lol.

I suspect they'll slowly plod away on it, but I think it probably was just a stunt to force MS to make their browser more standards compliant and to keep on top of web technology. Google has a fricking powerful brand. If they want to get into a browser war with MS, they'll have a good chance of winning.

No.

It's Google first foray into Google OS — will probably be a custom Linux variant of Ubuntu, prepopulated with Chrome to drive the Google Apps.

The browser is the biggest desktop application.

And their guard against both MS IE and Firefox ad blocking, and although people think Google is about Search, they're really about advertising…

Google can afford to ignore the dropoff numbers since Chrome isn't making money. This leaves it in the hands of the open source developers to do fun things with  it (and Google) which is already happening.

Portable Chrome (http://lifehacker.com/5045439/portable-chrome-puts-chrome-on-your-thumb-drive)

I have it on my thumb drive and it's working fine. TBH I use Chrome on every machine I have and have yet to find anything it won't do to my satisfaction. I was an avid FF user, but found Chrome to be a winner and was too lazy to switch back. It won't go away, despite the numbers.

I'll pitch in that I like Chrome, I loved the minimalist take on the window itself and the favourites bar. I found though that it really slowed my PC down when I was trying to stream videos, I think because of having each tab operate as a separate process but I'm not sure. It would sometimes leave my comp waiting around for 10 seconds or so after switching tabs or coming out of a full screen before I could do anything.

I'm back on FF but having to use it F11'd to keep that lovely feeling of openness Chrome gave me. It feels a little less polished using it that way but everything runs so much faster. Maybe if I had a faster comp or quad processor it would have been worth continuing to use.

Geez... I thought it was still just a beta?

As stated earlier in the thread, this is google, they only make betas.   And I went back to FF too, chrome just crashes too much.

Chrome crashes too much? I've never had it crash once. I'm no developer so am not going nutso with things, but I am running Vista so you'd think I'd have problems or some such.

I have to relog much more with chrome.  Is it an option I can tweak?

Where's a good Chrome resource site? I tried Google'ing up one, but I entered some sort of vortex of recursion  :grin:

Same here. It runs fantastic on my Vista Home Premium rig at home. Really really fucking fast. Cold boot its like 0.5 seconds to start up. I hope they don't abandon it. I don't want to go back to FF.

I was using it for a while.  I have an old crappy Barton 2500+ w/2gigs.

Flash was doing some really annoying stuff, like freezing the briowser for upwards of 30 seconds, pretty regularly.

Java was a lot slower in Chrome than in Firefox.  Other than that I loved it, went back to Firefox tho as the freezing was just too damn annoying.

Yeah I had alot of that too, almost the same crappy cpu as well.  So I don't really blame the browser but hey firefox works so I'll use it.

Good question, on vista64 my only gripe with Chrome is that Flash plugins seem wonky as fuck sometimes.  Also how do I tell it to allow a pop up?  Shift clicking the link doesn't do it.

If your Flash plugin is being wonky in Chrome, you can just kill it.  Do Shift+Escape to get to the internal Chrome task manager and kill the flash plugin.

To allow a popup, just click on the popup's header.  It should show up in the bottom right corner.

Random annoyance: You can't copy the contents of the history tab, which leads to images like the following. (2.2k px height picture in spoiler.)


Also, Facebook continues to act wonky with Chrome (specifically Causes as of late).  Outside of that, everything's pure-awesome at the ~two month mark.

OK normally I don't bookmark much stuff, mostly because I can find it again by google and there is not much I want to rereference quickly.  However, is there really not one fucking way to bookmark the current site without copy/pasting the address and entering it in the "add page" dialog?   
 :uhrr:

Uhh, I'm pretty sure there's a nice button just left of the address bar that bookmarks the current page.

Yup. It's a star and easy to find.

wow, I was clicking on everything but that.  GG

Thanks.  I still don't feel that's a logical place for the button but maybe I'm wierd like that

Heh, I though it was a bookmark folder at first, hence clicking on it and discovering it's true, hidden purpose. It's not like anything in any other default browser set up but I quite liked it once I got used to it. Like I said I really like the chrome layout, if it didn't start making my computer eat itself when watching streaming video I'd still be happily using it.

I always press Ctrl-D, which works in just about every browser. I rarely bookmark things though.

And, in a surprising move, Google Chrome is now out of beta (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/google-chrome-beta.html) (hey, it's Google, after all :P).

Still no Mac version, unfortunately.

I love Chrome, but went back to FF as well. Couldn't do without delicious plugin and Adblock.

What you said, plus I use NoScript.  Seems unlikely that I could use an addon which blocks scripts from google-analytics.com with Chrome at any future point.

It's more "political" than anything. I.e. some companies won't standardize on "beta" products, which was a problem with Chrome so the easy fix is to stop calling it a beta.

Chrome is my default browser, because it launches fast when I click on something from an email/elsewhere. But Firefox is the browser I spend most time in.

Does this sound slightly dangerous?  I don't know how insecure Chrome is.

If you are using Gmail they already know everything about you.  :why_so_serious:

Oh, I meant dangerous as in "remote code execution" way, not a "gubment is steeling my fluids" way.

Chrome is specifically designed to make hackery hard.  You didn't read the comic book/instruction manual.

I read it, I just didn't take it as fact.  Maybe I'm a tad cynical.

As cynical as I am gay.

Oh, damn, I'm going to have to call my therapist today. :awesome_for_real:

Type "about:internets" in Chrome's address bar.  :drill:

RIIIISE!

OSX beta is out now.

Was just coming to post that.

Extentions went official on the Windows and Linux Chrome too.

None for mac yet (http://www.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/mac-detailed-status).

My kids think using Chrome in paranoid mode will keep me from keeping track of what pages they hit.  Me and my Ubuntu gateway think that's funny.  Not that I actually look at those logs, but that they think they can use tricks they learned from their friends at school to out-geek a "War Games" era hacker brat is a giggle.

--Dave

Been using Chromium (Chrome without the auto-update installer) developer releases on Mac for sometime now and it has supplanted Firefox as my #1 browser. Snappier and stabler.

http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/

Now that's a snappy browser.

Chrome extensions are awesome.  Google Mail Checker (https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/mihcahmgecmbnbcchbopgniflfhgnkff) and Reader (https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/apflmjolhbonpkbkooiamcnenbmbjcbf), Wave (https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/aphncaagnlabkeipnbbicmcahnamibgb), and Voice Notifiers (https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/kcnhkahnjcbndmmehfkdnkjomaanaooo) essentially function as PermaTabs would in Firefox and there's no performance loss I can see.

The one I'd recommend without hesitation though is QuickScroll (https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/okanipcmceoeemlbjnmnbdibhgpbllgc).  It doesn't seem like much, but it's damn useful.

So far my only gripe about chrome is that it flips 'open in new window' and 'open in new tab' from the firefox positions. Muscle memory and all that, keep opening new windows, dernit.

Is there any integrated functions with delicious?  That is my biggest issue so far-  I use a lot of different computers and like to be able to not worry about my bookmarks.

There's a couple of Delicious extensions (https://chrome.google.com/extensions/search?q=Delicious) although nothing that seems more useful than the bookmarklet (http://delicious.com/help/bookmarklets) so far.

If you're just using Chrome, there's Bookmark Sync which is pretty straightforward.

Chrome is the most secure browser available today. (http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2009/03/chrome-is-the-only-browser-left-standing-in-pwn2own-contest.ars)

I've become a big fan of Xmarks, which is supported by both Chrome and Firefox.

Tried the beta with the extensions. I've been using Xmarks with Firefox for a while now, so when I saw it had an Xmarks extension, I immediately switched to the Chrome beta. Had to switch back this morning, as some sites cookies apparently do not agree with Chrome.

I'd say Safari is safer on OSX.  And faster.

Or it was the fastest to be exploited at Pwn2Own this year :oh_i_see:

truly?   :heartbreak:

Read the article for yourself?

nope, my fail.  Carry on.

Mac OS X's "security advantage" over Windows is mostly just "security by obscurity". The OS itself lags considerably behind Windows in terms of implementing security features. It wasn't until Snow Leopard that Mac OS X added their version of Data Execution Prevention which Windows has had for many years and OS X still hasn't implemented Address Space Layout Randomization (they are working on it).

Security comments aside, faster is not true either about Safari.

My brother runs chrome through parallels (on Win7) because he says he can tell that chrome is being that much faster than safari.

Anecdotal, yes but he's been using windows chrome on his mac for the past 3+ months.

I just did a quick test between Safari and Chrome using the very Javascript heavy app I'm developing. Chrome loaded it in less than half the time.

Now that it plays nice with Sandboxie, Chrome on Sandboxie is what I use to browse sites I consider dodgy (hacking sites, anything hosted in China or Russia, casual games sites).  I realize that means I'm running about 3 virtual machines deep, but I've got the horsepower for it and I really don't like having my computer zombified.

--Dave

I don't know about the security, but I have found Chrome on OSX to be noticeably faster than the other two mainstream mac browsers.

Just to mention, as this is a gaming crowd, if you have something like a quad-core processor you'd be insane *not* to use Chrome. Chrome places each tab as its own thread (you can ctrl+alt+del to see this in action in Windows). This means the application immediately gains the benefit of a multi-core processor as each tab could be allocated to its own core. Most applications and such don't leverage the quad-core nature of the latest and greatest cpu's, but Chrome certainly can. You'll definitely notice some very nice improvements in speed. Something to think about!

/yes, it really evident on AJAX heavy pages — google.com/reader for instance, where Chrom(e|ium) easily handles my 1600+ feeds. Firefox has improved in recent releases, but still plagued by memory leaks. Safari does OK but not as snappy as Chrom(e|ium).

Is there any difference between Chrome and Chromium for performance?  Or is the only difference one doesn't have the auto-updater?

Hopeful now that extensions have been released,  Adblock is close to follow then I can use Chrome.

There are a couple of extensions that use EasyList for filtering ads out already.

AFAIK, the only difference is the auto-updater and the Google branding.

Well, I still can't really use Chrome comfortably for two related reasons:

A) it doesn't remember zoom settings. Its important to me because at home I use a 26 inch monitor at high resolution and I like to sit a bit back from the behemoth. Since changing font size doesn't fix everything on any given website, I like to have the browser zoomed at 125% or so. Chrome doesn't keep this as a sticky setting, while IE and Firefox do.

B) If you do zoom in, some flash player functionality is lost. The dailyshow flashplayer, for example, can't be 'controlled' if you have the page at anything other than normal zoom. This isn't an issue with IE or Firefox either.

Ah, ok then.  I like my auto-updates, so sticking with Chrome.

Every time I end up switching back to firefox from chrome/chromium because of some key addons like others have highlighted (noscript, modify headers, foxyproxy, syncplaces, igoogle tab remover).

Seriously the tab is annoying and no way to remove it via options, only extensions or greasemonkey scripts (http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/62171). Here's an example of it:
[/s]

Wow there is a tab remover already here (https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/dlibebadhejgpjggjfijjgnomljihpeb).

With the move of extensions now in the stable builds hopefully most of the firefox extensions will be developed because its really nice.

What's weird and kinda depressing is that one of the authors for an adblocker is claiming that anybody claiming to release a "real ad blocker" is full of shit since the way extensions work, you can't just block ads. I guess all they can do is not display them, but they still load I guess?

Yeah its all post render modifications, same for the igoogle tab blocker. It renders for a second then kills the div tag.

That's basically the end of Chrome possibly becoming my default browser then. No real AdBlock plugin means Firefox forever I guess.

I remember hearing that threaded tabs will be in Firefox 4, but I can't find confirmation.

You could install a proxy to strip out the ads.

Use a hosts file.

http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm

Well that kinda seals the fate for now

For any Greasemonkey users out there: Chrome now natively supports Greasemonkey scripts. (http://blog.chromium.org/2010/02/40000-more-extensions.html)

About 15-25% of them don't work on Chrome right now, but the couple I remember from my primary-FF days work well.