Google Chrome

I just downloaded Google Chrome (their new web browser). It is very fast, seems to render nFS the same as Firefox. It loads much faster than IE on every page I have visited. It worked with flash right from the start without loading the flash player, maybe it used the player I already had loaded for Firefox. I am sure a lot of people will start using this browser because it is from Google. Seems to work on all Church sites I have tried it on.

http://www.google.com/chrome/

Only for windows users, at present time.

I tried it this morning also. I have already noticed several style problems on various sites.

From a developer's point of view, this seems like a huge negative. "Great... another non-standard browser that must be tested and supported."

Brad O.

When I first read about it yesterday, my first reaction was similar: Oh No! Not another Browser to support!" But I downloaded and tried it this morning, and I like it. It also rendered all but one of the pages I tested it on just fine.

The good news is that it is open source, so bad style rendering problems will likely get fixed in a much shorter time than they do in IE. :p

And the church websites I tried seemed to work fine as well.

Brad O.

What websites did you have trouble with? Are they using XHTML or HTML? Strict/Transitional/Loose Doctype?

Chrome rendered nFS almost exactly the way Firefox does. Firefox does not render it properly, but not unusable. There is another thread where Firefox's rendering of nFS was discussed. Google Chrome renders it the same way.

http://tech.lds.org/forum/showthread.ph ... ht=firefox

jmaxwilson wrote:
Brad O.

What websites did you have trouble with? Are they using XHTML or HTML? Strict/Transitional/Loose Doctype?

All the problems I have seen so far have been with HTML Transitional 1.0.

I've not read much about chrome. What was Googles reason for creating yet another browser? I mean we have many already that are getting to be mainstream.

IE
Firefox
Safari
Opera
Konqueror

Tom

tomw wrote:I've not read much about chrome. What was Googles reason for creating yet another browser? I mean we have many already that are getting to be mainstream.

IE
Firefox
Safari
Opera
Konqueror

Tom

Because Google wants to have complete control over the entire "Internet Experience."

After using Chrome for a day, I really like the history/favorites that includes a screenshot of the website. It makes it a lot easier to find the site you need.

However, I have also found 4 new compatibility glitches. In one case, a button appears on top of a textbox so you can't read the text.

Brad O.

tomw wrote:I've not read much about chrome. What was Googles reason for creating yet another browser? I mean we have many already that are getting to be mainstream.

IE
Firefox
Safari
Opera
Konqueror

Tom

They wanted a browser that is based on Web 2.0 type applications. Their new browser is Open Source and they are hoping other browser companies will take their code and improve their own browsers. Since all Google applications are web based they wanted to help shape the direction of the browser market to further enhance their application offerings.

I think Chrome will be used quite heavily on portable devices at first. It is very simple and fast. I don't see many people using it as a primary browser for some time, because many of the plug-ins we all need are not yet supported. It is very similar to Safari and seems to work when ever Safari does, but not many sites support Safari. It is also similar to Firefox but it lacks a lot of the features most people have come to rely on. I am sure that over time it will become a major player in the market.

Googles Official Blog http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/ ... owser.html
and a comic book covering features found in Google Chrome http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/index.html

Chrome is optimized for Java. It runs Java faster than any other browser. That is the area they have spent the most time on. They still need to do some more work on Flash, which still has problems.

GarysTurn wrote:Chrome is optimized for Java. It runs Java faster than any other browser. That is the area they have spent the most time on. They still need to do some more work on Flash, which still has problems.

Maybe slightly faster, but it seems that IE8 has it beat already. I just read this article on CNN which has me excited about IE8 now. Compared to IE8, Chrome sounds like a CPU-hog.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/ptech/09/0 ... index.html

tomw wrote:What was Googles reason for creating yet another browser?

A valid question, but one that is likely to get a lot of opinions. From the editorials I've seen, it's either concern over some of IE8's privacy features or it may be IE's dominance of the market means that Google is too dependent on Microsoft for it's customers.

Personally, I see Chrome as more likely to take customers from Firefox then from IE, but we'll see.

I support open source even if it doesn't work!
In Italy the news says that Chrome will don't need all plugin sfor video, media, ecc.
This mean that a lot of work must be done yet.
I'm looking for Linux version to test it. Maybe Firefox will improove too.

marianomarini_vi wrote:I support open source even if it doesn't work!
In Italy the news says that Chrome will don't need all plugin sfor video, media, ecc.
This mean that a lot of work must be done yet.
I'm looking for Linux version to test it. Maybe Firefox will improove too.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Isn't using the open source model for something as widely distributed and used as a web browser a serious security concern? It seems to me that it would be far easier for a virus/spyware developer to infiltrate a web browser when they have the source code in front of them.

Any project that I do where security is of extreme concern, I ensure that it is closed-source. Otherwise, someone could look at my source code and see exactly where the weaknesses were.

Brad O.

Brad O. wrote:Any project that I do where security is of extreme concern, I ensure that it is closed-source. Otherwise, someone could look at my source code and see exactly where the weaknesses were.

I agree, except where you are confident of your security. In that case, the fact that a security-related application is open-source could be an indication that the security is actually stronger, and not weakened by disclosure. The algorithms for public key cryptography, for example, are publicly known, but that doesn't weaken the security at all.

Firefox is open-source, and I see far more security issues raised with IE than with Firefox.

Alan_Brown wrote:I agree, except where you are confident of your security. In that case, the fact that a security-related application is open-source could be an indication that the security is actually stronger, and not weakened by disclosure. The algorithms for public key cryptography, for example, are publicly known, but that doesn't weaken the security at all.

Firefox is open-source, and I see far more security issues raised with IE than with Firefox.

You're right... I'm never 100% confident with my security no matter how many CPU cycles I use to encrypt things. I don't think anyone can be in this day and age.

The equation: no source=more secure is not true.
Someone has already found an insecurity into Chrome. This happen because it has access to source.
Instead to have 3 or 20 developper working on it there are 100 or 1000 on the net.
So hacker has to face more skilled developper into open source environement.
There is no end into battle between good and evil. The more goods are the faster solutions are.
(I hope this make a sense in English). It means that is better to be many than few to go against bads.

marianomarini_vi wrote:The equation: no source=more secure is not true.
Someone has already found an insecurity into Chrome. This happen because it has access to source.
Instead to have 3 or 20 developper working on it there are 100 or 1000 on the net.
So hacker has to face more skilled developper into open source environement.
There is no end into battle between good and evil. The more goods are the faster solutions are.
(I hope this make a sense in English). It means that is better to be many than few to go against bads.

Maybe this is true for vastly popular projects where the number of developers working on the project outnumber the hackers. Maybe it is fine for something like Chrome. However, most of the project I work on do not have this luxury. It has to be a project where there are a lot of enthusiastic and excited people that want to donate their time to the project.

I think releasing the source code to the public for a project that will likely not get any real development support from the outside would be a very bad idea for security reasons.

Brad O.

I understand your point of view. Reality is not as simple as our mind think is it!
Speacking on general we can assume that this equation is true:
Hacker are proportional to users and Developpers are proportional to users.
So hackers AND developperare interested to popular program.
I have not data to assume that, just an enpirical assumption.
Maybe some university student can do such a study.

Just as it is with other projects that get rushed out the door, Google Chrome is having some issues. (See http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1858). Sadly, these are problems that have affected other browsers in the past. Like most of Google's products, this one is in an early Beta and it needs time to get the bugs worked out. I wouldn't use it for a while.

On some of the other topics in this thread:
The main reason a hacker will attack an application is strongly dependent on how widely the software is used and how easy the hack is, not necessarily if the project is open source or not. Google Chrome currently does not have a very high market share (neither does Firefox), so any attacks made will not affect that many people. Finding a vulnerability in Internet Explorer would be a better use of time (if that is what you like doing). There is a risk to showing your code to the outside world. I support open source software (if it is free or not) because I like the idea that the group putting out the software wants to share their ideas on how they solved a problem. This can lead others to come up with better ideas. In the end, software will become better and more efficient (despite the people that are out there to take advantage of the vulnerabilities found in software). The benefit of community involvement outweighs the risk of having the bad guys read your code and find vulnerabilities. Just my 2 cents...

net_runner expressed exactly my thought. 2+2=4 cents.

net_runner wrote:Like most of Google's products, this one is in an early Beta and it needs time to get the bugs worked out. I wouldn't use it for a while.

As you said, most of Google's products are "Beta;" so that's why you can't trust the terminology "Beta" anymore when Google says it (GMail is still in "Beta"). You do make a good point about it just barely being released though.

The points Google makes for creating a new browser are interesting. The crash control seems to be a great idea where each tab runs in a different thread. It manages the memory much better than Firefox too. You should read their comic book which describes it all. http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/index.html

Since it is an early release I'm not expecting perfection. I've been using it every day and the only thing I really miss about Firefox is all of my extensions. I figure it will come with time.

bhofmann wrote:The crash control seems to be a great idea where each tab runs in a different thread.

Actually, I just finished reading about how each tab is in it's own process. Apparently, Microsoft and Google had the same idea as they released their most recent versions of their browsers at the same time. It's a pretty interesting read about the crash control in both browsers found here:

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/Microsoft ... reads.aspx

I didn't realize IE8 just did the same thing. I figured the others would get on the separate process bandwagon pretty soon. Thanks for the link, it was very interesting.

tomw wrote:I've not read much about chrome. What was Googles reason for creating yet another browser? I mean we have many already that are getting to be mainstream.

IE
Firefox
Safari
Opera
Konqueror

Tom

I do not know. But I do like the Sandbox interations. The incognito browsing is also neat. I concur that added competition in the Browser space does mean more work for web developers.