About the just-leaked Google Chrome browser:
Google also say they’re using a “multi-process design” which they say means “a bit more memory up front” but over time also “less memory bloat.” When web pages or plug-ins do use a lot of memory, you can spot them in Chrome’s task manager, “placing blame where blame belongs.”
If this is true and there’s a process manager which allows you to see how many resources are being consumed by a particular browser tab (including plugins!) this will be a 100% killer browser feature.
It simply isn’t possible to implement with current browser architectures which brings up two points: 1) Browsers haven’t tackled it due to the extreme amount of code rewrite that it would cause and 2) that there’s a general consensus that this architecture will actually consume more resources than the current architectures.
This is important. Since there’s no sharing going on between the tabs of the browser it’s not possible to easily reduce the amount of duplicate resources. For example, within the Mozilla Gecko engine there’s a lot of code reuse occurring, which allows for significantly reduced memory consumption (and optimized memory collection and defragmentation).
But here’s the rub.
The blame of bad performance or memory consumption no longer lies with the browser but with the site.
By implementing this feature a browser is completely deflecting all memory or performance criticism off to individual site owners (“Yikes, my browser is using 300MB of memory! Actually it’s just youtube.com consuming 290MB of it, they should fix their web site!”). This is going to be a monumental shift in the responsibilities of web developers – and one that will serve the web better, as a whole.
Of course there will still be overhead associated with the core browser – but, presumably, this will be marginalized.
This is an incredibly devious (in the best sense of the word) tactic and it’s one that browser vendors will be forced to respond to. How the response will occur is another matter entirely.
Once the response occurs, though, two things will happen: Browsers will begin to compete on reducing specific memory/performance numbers for specific sites (it happens now – but with the numbers made obvious users will beg for it) and browsers will be enticed to lie.
Since the browser is the new harbinger of the de-facto “accurate performance metrics” (it’s no longer the Window Process Manager, for example) they’ll have to take every opportunity to exaggerate those number to their benefit.
On so many levels this new feature will change the way browsers are constructed and how they communicate to the user. Even if Google Chrome launch does nothing but fall off the end of the runway in a fiery explosion, users will be intrigued, and the seed will be planted: Browsers must find a way to respond.
Update: A screenshot has been posted showing the task manager:
It’s quite small (and, seemingly, quite spartan) but it appears to detail three properties of every tab: CPU usage, memory usage, and network usage.
It’s going to be fascinating to see what type of user-centric UIs come around this. Tabs that use a lot of CPU turn red? if they consume a lot of memory they grow larger? It seems like there’s a bunch of ways in which the quality of the tabs could be appropriately communicated.
MV (September 1, 2008 at 5:39 pm)
So Chrome will have storage (Gears), process management, memory management (GC), Input (w/ something Flash-like for camera, mic
access), Output (rendering).
Its not a browser, its an operating system.
Ubiquity will be the command line and Javascript the assembler/C of the Web.
And the DNS will likely be replaced by Google’s search box (are you feeling lucky?…)
Lets see Microsoft squirm then…
— MV
Nosredna (September 1, 2008 at 6:02 pm)
Chris Wilson of IE just said on Twitter that IE8 has a process per tab.
“Chris Wilson cwilso Nice to see Google Chrome realizes that process-per-tab is a good idea. As does IE8”
Jake Strawn (September 1, 2008 at 6:04 pm)
So, what I didn’t get from the article at http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/fresh-take-on-browser.html is what the rendering engine is going to be??
Is this going to be based on the Mozilla engine? So it will work well like Firefox & Safari? Or is this going to be a nightmare for Developers giving us a 4th major player to test all of our sites in??
I’m a huge fan of Firefox, but always looking for more. I will be staying up late tonight to see when the beta is released, and test it out, and blog it’s features.
I’m just scared though of the day that google decides to hit the “take over the world” switch and we are all turned into google-zombies.
John Resig (September 1, 2008 at 6:05 pm)
@Nosredna: But does it have a process manager? With details on memory consumption and processor usage for each tab? *That* is the critical feature. Simply splitting off into multiple tabs is of debatable benefit (time will tell, honestly).
@Jake Strawn: It’s based on WebKit, so it should be compatible with Safari (depending on how far behind they lag on keeping current with WebKit trunk).
Nosredna (September 1, 2008 at 6:14 pm)
Yeah, you make a good point about the browser’s ability to point out memory hog sites. Of course, it sounds like their garbage collector is incredibly aggressive, so sites that are hogs in, say, IE6, may not at all be hogs in Chrome.
Nosredna (September 1, 2008 at 6:16 pm)
WebKit’s really starting to get around, Safari, AIR, Chrome.
Ian McKellar (September 1, 2008 at 6:51 pm)
Hopefully they’ll do some clever stuff to share between processes. I know they’ve done some clever stuff in Dalvik to safely share stuff between different Java VM instances. Based on a conversation I overheard between a Google employee and a former Google employee on Sunday the Android and Chrome shared a building.
Nosredna (September 1, 2008 at 6:53 pm)
>>Hopefully they’ll do some clever stuff to share between processes. I know they’ve done some clever stuff in Dalvik to safely share stuff between different Java VM instances. Based on a conversation I overheard between a Google employee and a former Google employee on Sunday the Android and Chrome shared a building.
If they can share a building, they can certainly share stuff between processes!
Jeff L (September 1, 2008 at 6:56 pm)
John,
I’m not sure if IE8 has a process manager, but they are advertising that a single tab (site) can crash, without taking down the entire browser.
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/07/28/ie8-and-reliability.aspx
Iraê (September 1, 2008 at 7:10 pm)
I will really like to see something like: “Jezz, I just noticed that the ‘xyz’ addon is doing a lot of requests per hour and consuming a lot of memory! If they don’t fix this I’ll surely uninstall the thing”.
I would really much like to see some kind of process manager in firefox. Sometimes I just erase my profile and create a new one just for the performance without addons.
Nice move from Google.
Nosredna (September 1, 2008 at 7:28 pm)
How much of the Google Gears stuff is working its way into the other browsers natively?
I seem to recall that FF3 was going to give us access to SQLite for storage. Did that pan out, or does FF3 only use SQLite internally? If it’s there, can we get to it via JavaScript?
Byron (September 1, 2008 at 7:55 pm)
Sorry if I missed something, but was there any explaination for why they chose webkit? not that ones required, but it would be interesting to know.
William J. Edney (September 1, 2008 at 8:07 pm)
@Nosredna –
Subscribe to this bug:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=416327
to see if we’ll get SQLite natively (i.e. accessible from web pages) soon in FF. Right now to access SQLite via ‘mozStorage’ requires XPConnect permissions :-(.
Sure would be nice…
Cheers,
– Bill
BTW, initial indications are that V8, the JS engine in Chrome, is going to be at least as fast as the current Tracemonkey builds, and in some cases up to 10X faster, and, no, I can’t tell you where I got that information ;-)
Nosredna (September 1, 2008 at 8:17 pm)
>>Sorry if I missed something, but was there any explaination for why they chose webkit? not that ones required, but it would be interesting to know.
Yeah, somewhere I read that they asked the Android guys their opinion and WebKit was the suggestion from them.
@Bill
Thanks. Good info.
Stu (September 1, 2008 at 10:04 pm)
Some sort of process manager in firefox would be extra useful for debugging all the addons, greasemonkey scripts etc and seeing whos using the resources.
(Possibly even more useful in ff than it will be in chrome)
John Resig (September 1, 2008 at 10:22 pm)
@Stu: There was a lot of discussion related to this at the Mozilla Summit. A lot of work is going in to it but it’s significantly hard. Right now it’s virtually impossible to differentiate JavaScript on one site from another or even JavaScript powering the browser itself. On the same token, Addons hook directly in to the browser and are, also, indistinguishable from normal execution. It would be great to have the differentiation but it would require a lot of hooks and rewriting to make it happen (and not without overhead).
Jeremy Awon (September 1, 2008 at 10:23 pm)
Could a browser (tabs, address bar, bookmarks, property panels – everything that frames webpages) be made which is itself a self-served website? Then all extensions/themes/ui changes could be written in js/css, making them as portable as webpages themselves across browser implementations? I’m asking because my first reaction to google chrome was “oh no, now i have to wait for all my extensions to be ported”.
an0n1 m0us (September 1, 2008 at 10:44 pm)
IE8 is doing a similar thing in that it’s at least isolating tabs from taking down the whole browser. Therefore if two companies can do that, why can’t Mozilla?
Mozilla must improve it’s act in terms of allowing users to experience a more reliable Firefox by
A) isolating site/tab crashes from crashing the entire browser
B) presenting a simply preference for turning on a status bar indicator that displays plugin resource consumption.
The latter was close with one of the Seneca kiddies doing PluginWatcher (which took a long time to become Fx3 compatible) but this is only an Add-On and only available for Windows.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7055
John Resig (September 1, 2008 at 10:46 pm)
@Jeremy Awon: Are you familiar with XUL? That’s the markup that Mozilla uses to power the user interface for all of its applications. Thus, combined with CSS and JavaScript are what the vast majority of Firefox extensions are made out of. The problem is that the technology alone isn’t useful for portability – the browser APIs have to be identical. And considering that Google is even using a different rendering engine from Gecko (they’re using WebKit) it’s doubtful that portability will ever occur.
ivanji (September 2, 2008 at 12:33 am)
Interesting features indeed…hopefully having to test our designs/websites in a new new browser won’t be cause of new troubles…I look forward to seeing this new browser. I can’t wait for it…but hey I waited several months for prison break’s new season! I guess I can wait several hours for this browser…
Jake Strawn (September 2, 2008 at 1:20 am)
I commented earlier prior to digging into the full extent of the comic posted describing the project. That would have answered my question relating to the Webkit engine.
However, after reading it through, I think Google may have nailed it. Basically going back to the drawing board for browsers. I think the features they have described can change the internet for everyone, users and developers alike.
I am so excited to download the beta, and start seeing how it really stacks up. I love FF, but this may be the further taking over of our lives by Google, and thankfully so.
Now if they would just release an OS to compete with Windows, my life would be perfect!!
anjan bacchu (September 2, 2008 at 2:55 am)
hi John,
HURRAY! to the chrome team
I have been wondering the last year or so if there was something equivalent to “Task Manager” for firefox since I have anywhere between 50 -100 tabs open at any point of time. These days, I’ve noticed that Firefox consumes anywhere between 5-50% of my CPU at any point of time.
I’m sure the Google Chrome team felt likewise and the snapshot of the Task Manager looks OK. A Graph would also be helpful and since this is an open source project, i hope that there can/will be alternate implementations of the “Task Manager”.
If Google/open source community wishes to take it to the next level, then they should come out with an IDE/debugger for javascript/webapps — something similar to Visual interdev/Visual Studio from MS. That should let people create/maintain web projects to include html, js (and ASP/JSP/PHP/RHTML) debugging capabilities. Only that will make the developer’s job easier. Without a good external javascript debugger(not firebug like extension), the open source developer’s task is much more difficult. I hope someone on the chrome team is listening and they will work on extension to the eclipse and netbeans IDEs to make debugging javascript on Chrome as easy as on Visual Studio.
Thank you,
BR,
~A
Farhan (September 2, 2008 at 3:07 am)
Its very interesting that Google has decided to take on a project like this. They obviously have such an interest in how people access the web, it was only a matter of time before they took things into their own hands. It is going to be very interesting to see how this pans out.
Google Chrome browser Screenshots
http://www.tonesall.com/computers-internet/google-chrome-screenshots.html
ilya (September 2, 2008 at 4:15 am)
Resource usage very useful for debugging, but I sure it is overhead for usual users.
Richard (September 2, 2008 at 4:47 am)
You are all critisizing firefox for not having certain features.
I have used firefox for years, and it has crashed maybe once or twice in that whole time.
I shall hardly consider using chrome unless if can match that.
Firefox also has the option of restoring the session if it wasnt closed properly. It also remembers recently closed tabs.
These are the things that I use most, and unless chrome can do that and better, and also provides such good add-ons, I shall be sticking to firefox. Especially if any other google software is anything to go by.
I got a new laptop with google desktop, google earth, google toolbar and picasa preloaded on it, and the first thing I did was remove them all.
ThomasH (September 2, 2008 at 5:04 am)
I’m very happy about this development. I’m not concerned about additional resources incured, or attention shifts to blaming web sites. All that concerns me is that browsers are advanced on the technical level, making them an optimal tool for the job at hand. Browser development was dominated by marginal things like themes. The usefulness of the browser as a tool fell short, and most teams still seem to look at their browser as if it were a document or image viewer. I’m glad Google is blowing up this misconception.
There is also too much technical ignorance in the field. JavaScript engine implementation is seemingly not left to top-notch compiler guys (Webkit’s SquirrelFish was hopefully a healthy shock for all the others). Using operating system concepts and technologies for a browser implementation is not only feasible – it is the only right thing to do, IMHO. And people thinking an operating system is fat (while a browser is lean), should re-check the current state of affairs in operating systems. At least, I can make the I-said-it-before claim:
http://news.qooxdoo.org/good-old-firefox
Ray (September 2, 2008 at 5:31 am)
“it appears to detail three properties of every tab: CPU usage, memory usage, and network usage.”
Comodo products have had this feature for quite a while. I’m using both their firewall and anti-virus, so that feature in Google would be just needless duplication for me.
I agree with Richard’s remarks up to a point. I have Google’s Picasa and Google Earth, both of which I like a lot. But I don’t like feeling forced into accepting preloaded packages of anything. I like to do my own choosing, after I’ve checked something out. I love Firefox and use it as my default browser. I keep IE only as a backup for additional searches whenever Firefox is already busy on one – which is almost the same idea as Google will employ in Chrome. Am I ahead of my time? Not really – I just like Firefox more than IE, and it will be very hard to beat with us old Firefox fans.
Saulo (September 2, 2008 at 7:52 am)
This sounds like an OS for the web…!
Ken Knopfli (September 2, 2008 at 8:07 am)
Great. Yet another set of security holes on my PC.
Remember the downloadable Google Searchbar scandal?
Install this and Google’s got your machine!
Nosredna (September 2, 2008 at 9:00 am)
>>I have used firefox for years, and it has crashed maybe once or twice in that whole time
That’s hard to believe. I crash it at least twice a week.
Nosredna (September 2, 2008 at 9:01 am)
>>I keep IE only as a backup for additional searches whenever Firefox is already busy on one – which is almost the same idea as Google will employ in Chrome.
Why not just open another Firefox for that?
boonyboy (September 2, 2008 at 9:36 am)
Looking forward to trying this out, especially the feature on resource usage. Most frustrating when CPU usage spikes and must restart FF3 just to drop the mem. Seems like Google is really going for full utilization of all Google all the time.
My guess this is also a way to get everyone comfy with their browser and work out the kinks before the G-phone appears. Being open sourced should also help with creating some pretty nice apps without G spending alot of $$$.
Dave (September 2, 2008 at 9:46 am)
I’m looking forward to seeing how V8 runs. JavaScript is going to get very fast this year. Someone should make a TraceSquirrelMonkeyV8Fish. It sounds like Google are replacing JavaScriptCore with V8. Is this right? Does this mean they’re keeping WebCore?
Everyone knows WebKit is on the iPhone, but it’s also on 50+ million Nokia phones too.
I hope there’re lots of forks of Chrome – especially one with no data going to Google.
I’d imagin Google won’t so much be “lagging behind” as being a large contributer to WebKit. Time will tell though.
Dilson Decano (September 2, 2008 at 9:48 am)
I read this one on digg, and i found interesting. right now i am using mozilla. but let wait and see what others comment if they are using it tomorrow.
Ian Macfarlane (September 2, 2008 at 9:49 am)
>>I keep IE only as a backup for additional searches whenever Firefox is already busy on one – which is almost the same idea as Google will employ in Chrome.
>Why not just open another Firefox for that?
The way it’s set up, you can’t have more than one process called firefox.exe (this is quite frustrating as even Portable Firefox is affected, so you can’t open a Portable Firefox window alongside normal Firefox).
See also My take on Google Chrome.
cgb (September 2, 2008 at 9:57 am)
The first two sites I check for resource usage will be MSNBC and Marketwatch.
Andrew Finkle (September 2, 2008 at 11:15 am)
Chrome will mean different things depending on who/what you are. The one thing it does mean to everyone though is that the Internet is the operating system, and the clouds are moving closer to earh.
You are Apple;
This means that if it were not enough of a conflict of interest (Iphone VS Google’s Android) to have Google CEO Eric Schmidt sit on your board – It is now. Look for Schmidt to resign sometime in the next six months.
If you are Microsoft;
This means that if you ever considered making Internet Explorer open source in the past, now is the time… You can not afford to wait, not even another minute. Expect Microsoft to make Vaporware like noise over the next few months about cloud widgets to give IE closer ties to cloud based initiatives.
If you are Yahoo;
you need to buy Mozilla.
If you are Firefox;
Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer…yes continue with your Google revenue deal, but learn how to monetize your Browser outside of a paid search deal. Leverage your large user base to form “spin-off” type “power of the crowd” businesses. Note to Firefox, hey you guys ARE a social network…you just haven’t figured that out yet.
If you are Sun;
Realize that Java is even less relevant every day. First we kicked you out of client side computing because you were a resource hog. Realize that Java will now continue to be less and less relevant on the Server. What a waste of a good company… McNealy must have got hit in the head with one to many hockey pucks.
If you are a social network;
“social networks” would follow along with users in the browser. Truth be told, we thought it would be Facebook, or even more likely Firefox that would lead in this initiative. So if you are a social network, you need to know now Chrome is the first step in a series of moves that will make it unnecessary for your peeeps to ever visit your site (directly) again.
If you are an application developer;
Life used to be simple, eh? You knew that you should be developing applications for Windows, because that is where the 100’s of millions of users were. Fast forward, and now you need to choose what platforms to support, and when. Of course it makes sense to develop for Windows still, but Apple now has a mass of millions of Mac OSx users, and if it a browser based app, write once for Safari, and it should work without much adaptation on the Iphone. There are over a billion cell phones in use world wide, however every phone requires writing to separately (yes even all those different flavors of Java are different phone to phone. Suddenly with Android coming, and a matching desktop browser you need to be here.
Lastly if you are a consumer;
There is always a bottleneck somewhere … Think back 5-10 years ago, before what we now refer to broadband… Dial up was painffulllllyy slow, and when you tried to browse, the bottleneck was in your “last mile” connectivity. Once you got broadband, the lag time in reaching a site was likely in your PC (not enough ram, slow processor, etc). Before either of those issues though it was the software that was not “smart” enough to keep up with the ever faster CPU’s being created.
Look for Chrome to optimize all these new “cloud” based application initiatives like Google Gears, etc. This is just another nail in the coffin for desktop based computing. In 10 years, likely 90%+ of your applications will reside somewhere outside of your home or workplace – but certainly not on your desktop.
http://www.twitter.com/A_F
Rodrigo Asensio (September 2, 2008 at 11:20 am)
I was thinking… why google didn’t buy Firefox ? but after a while I realized that they didn’t reinvented the wheel, they did it more rounded. The process manager will be an awesome feature to beat. Good post.
oxygen (September 2, 2008 at 1:16 pm)
for the comment above: firefox is a VERY slow browser, start-up time and rendering, alway had bad documentation, it also isn’t buyable since firefox itself, not talking about mozilla, has too many opensource
for the multiprocess thing: internet explorer already does have complete separation between tabs but no recovery system implemented, which means the entire browser si affected on every coasion. Yet internet explorer 8 is very robust and employs the same strategy as google chrome does
matt (September 2, 2008 at 1:19 pm)
Bottom left of the screenshot is what looks like a link labelled “Stats for nerds”, which I would bet gives even more information for those who want to read it – people like us. :)
Brad (September 2, 2008 at 1:28 pm)
John, you finished up with an important question. Tab UI will be the “deciderer,” here. If the average user doesn’t notice it and can’t act on it, then what’s the point? Anybody remember PPP and Privacy settings? How about the lovely IE font size button? So far, it only looks like Google’s come out with an Opera-killer.
Tim Ryan (September 2, 2008 at 2:20 pm)
I’m curious what implications this has for Mozilla 2. Specifically, what’s being done to clean up the codebase, and whether it’s anyone’s intent to make Gecko a competitor with Webkit for embedding. I’ve looked for details on the platform, but still the only information I can find is Brendan Eich’s blog post from 2006.
I know Mozilla’s current focus is Firefox and XULRunner (which I adore), but that’s an entire application stack. Is the portability of Gecko also a priority? It seems as though a lot of opportunities are being missed by vendors adopting WebKit instead of Gecko.
I’m just wondering, in response to yet another vendor choosing to embed WebCore. I assume Mozilla 2 will also go a long way towards realizing the possibility of separate tab processes, whether or not it’s decided to implement them in Firefox.
new-chrome-user (September 2, 2008 at 2:31 pm)
Well, it looks nice but still has a host of SVG compliance issues that Mozilla doesn’t share. Until they fix WebKit’s SVG problems I cannot recommend it for users of a product I create. Which sucks.
Chrome (September 2, 2008 at 2:46 pm)
Chrome`s gonna rock the world!
a (September 2, 2008 at 2:51 pm)
Great for developers. Users won’t care. Most users don’t even know the difference between memory and CPU.
Steve Townsend (September 2, 2008 at 2:52 pm)
Hi
Just one initial question.
Why should I have to allow Google Update to run when my PC fires up in order to install Chrome ??
Hope to receive a reply
Yours
SteveT
Cyrus (September 2, 2008 at 2:53 pm)
What would be the technical limitations of introducing V8 as the Javascript engine in Mozilla? I know there would have to be some changes introduced to support Spidermonkey extensions / JS 1.8, for example, but if those were relatively easy to introduce, would V8 be relatively simple to drop into the codebase or are there hairy dependencies everywhere on internal data structures that Spidermonkey uses?
This is all assuming that V8’s speed is really all its cracked up to be and Tamarin/TraceMonkey/SquirrelFish don’t have a hope of catching up.
I wonder how easily V8 could be modified to be language agnostic…
Hawken Rives (September 2, 2008 at 2:57 pm)
Has anyone noticed that there is no sort of rss reader at all in Chrome? Anybody?
Brad (September 2, 2008 at 2:59 pm)
Okay, I retract my former statement about tab UI being central for adoption. I just downloaded Chrome, and this thing is fast. Users will adopt just for the sake of speed.
Tab UI will still be important before the average user start pinning the performance blame on the site, though.
Hawken Rives (September 2, 2008 at 3:05 pm)
Nor is there a Java plugin. It will not work with Java. It does work with Flash, however.
KuhlAid Mann (September 2, 2008 at 3:06 pm)
I read only half this article… but the article is written in speculation, I’m using Chrome right now… and I’m seeing 100% better speed over even Firefox, its simple (not quite as customizable) but its using less resources than Firefox… and the key advantages to individual process is simple, you can close tabs that use a lot of resources and you save A LOT of resources over time… this system really helps for ppl who like to leave their browser up 24/7 to check the web constantly, in fire fox leaving it up overnight meant I would most certainly wake up to 500M resources being used and running speed that was less than IE. I love this new system, I can close problem tabs, or even problem plugins. If one thing crashes the browser stays running, another advantage to completely isolating tabs and plugins is security. All this is the trade off for a little extra initial memory consumption, but google already told us this, so its not a surprise. (I’ll read the rest of the article and possible respond to that as well)
Pies (September 2, 2008 at 3:29 pm)
Wow. I mean, wow. Try right click -> ‘Inspect element’. Then ‘Resources’, and reload the site.
Kevin Weibell (September 2, 2008 at 3:58 pm)
Chrome is very impressive, most of all because of its speed!
new-chrome-user (September 2, 2008 at 4:02 pm)
List of “about” pages, from chrome.dll:
about:cache
about:dns
about:histograms
about:objects
about:memory
about:plugins
about:stats “Shhh! This page is secret!”
about:version
new-chrome-user (September 2, 2008 at 4:15 pm)
Two more:
about:shorthang
about:crash
Fun stuff!
Brian (September 2, 2008 at 4:26 pm)
Pies: Indeed, very cool. That feature (in fact that whole console) is part of WebKit. Though Chrome seems to be using a somewhat older version — check out the WebKit nightlies at http://nightly.webkit.org/ for the latest.
new-chrome-user (September 2, 2008 at 4:27 pm)
A couple more:
chrome-resource://about/
chrome-resource://favicon/
chrome-resource://inspector/inspector.html
haha: chrome-resource://inspector/
chrome-resource://chromewebdata/ (empty)
chrome-resource://new-tab/
chrome-resource://thumb/
view-cache:
new-chrome-user (September 2, 2008 at 4:31 pm)
As an easy inside:
view-source:chrome-resource://about/stats
view-source:[any url]
chrome-resource://about/[any about target]
new-chrome-user (September 2, 2008 at 5:11 pm)
I also recommend looking out for “rlz.dll”:
// RLZ is a library which is used to measure partner distribution deals.
// Its job is to record certain lifetime events in the registry and to send
// them encoded as a compact string at most once per day. The sent data does
// not contain information that can be used to identify a user or to infer
// browsing habits. The API in this file is a wrapper to rlz.dll which can be
// removed of the system with no adverse effects on chrome.
new-chrome-user (September 2, 2008 at 5:28 pm)
(source for rlz.dll)
http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/chrome/browser/rlz/
new-chrome-user (September 2, 2008 at 5:31 pm)
Hahaha:
about:internets
new-chrome-user (September 2, 2008 at 5:35 pm)
about:network
media buff (September 2, 2008 at 6:11 pm)
i’m willing to try it out just to see if it works more efficiently than FireFox… if it’s faster than Firefox, has tabs and isn’t IE, then i’ll use it
Ivan (September 2, 2008 at 6:51 pm)
So much for JavaFX script or any other rich client app Sun wanted for the browser. Canvas + modern JS engines are going to steal the show. At this right I expect even Flash+Silverlight are doomed.
I’ve been running tests against slow JS behemoths all day and they return behave like a local app. The only app which still sucks is the new Yahoo mail. Gj YMail :(
Angelo (September 2, 2008 at 8:17 pm)
While it’s been cool using chrome so far,
it’s quite the resource hog…
I’ve been comparing with FX3 and IE7 and the the difference in memory usage goes from ~50 MB (same tabs for everyone) to ~5MB, and chrome loses everytime.
Haven’t compared actual rendering performance of each but
Chrome’s tools for inspection are fantastic though!
Get better and push other browsers in the same direction!
Breton (September 2, 2008 at 9:37 pm)
testing with dromaeo on my machine at work:
latest tracemonkey/firefox nightly: 1853.00ms
http://dromaeo.com/?id=20268
latest squirrelfish/webkit nightly : 1478.00ms
google chrome: 798.40ms
http://dromaeo.com/?id=25604
Unbelievable.
Breton (September 2, 2008 at 9:38 pm)
apologies, here’s the squirrelfish/webkit nightly link
http://dromaeo.com/?id=20269
Dimitrios (September 2, 2008 at 11:37 pm)
I am testing out google chrome and it is VERY VERY slow compared to Firefox….is there a setting I am unaware of?
Nosredna (September 2, 2008 at 11:52 pm)
>>I am testing out google chrome and it is VERY VERY slow compared to Firefox….is there a setting I am unaware of?
Um, you got me. Crazy fast here. Some people claim that so much priority is given to Flash that it gums up the UI. Possible that’s what you’re seeing?
Dimitrios (September 2, 2008 at 11:56 pm)
I found the problem!!….I stopped Google Accelerator and now it works MUCH MUCH faster!
So if you have Google Accelerator installed, just click on it in the system tray and stop it from working.
hhll (September 3, 2008 at 1:32 am)
Well, I have tested several web sites, and most of the time (not google sites, why is that? ;-)) FX2 (AND IE6!) are much faster than Chrome. The really bad thing is the proxy configuration which is taken from IE conf! And Chrome is using it very very badly. I have tested at home and at work (of course with a proxy there) and the rendering is just totally different (some sites just do no appear while they are ok at home). The flash engine is working really slowly too).
Bad very bad, but this is still a beta work. Let them work a bit more…
Markus Kohler (September 3, 2008 at 2:24 am)
Hi John,
about:memory will give you a more detailed memory statistics.
It even shows private versus shared memory.
To all others, looking at the numbers in Taskmanager will not be very helpfull, because of the amount of memory that is shared.
It seems to me that chrome has some mechanism for sharing, because for the few sites that I tested, often the shared memory is almost as large as the private memory.
Regards,
Markus
Regards,
Markus
Simon (September 3, 2008 at 7:37 am)
To be honest, I really really like visual look of Chrome compared to Firefox. That’s about it though. The Javascript console doesn’t hold a candle to Firebug at all.
srihari (September 3, 2008 at 7:57 am)
Google Chrome’s rocks the web browser world! It’s faster than Firefox. Chrome browser UI looks good. Let me know how to install google toolbar like… pagerank.
loreman (September 3, 2008 at 8:51 am)
I’m curious if this is going out
http://ch4ng3d.brb.cz/index.php?lang=enus&page=detail&id=95
Jeep (September 3, 2008 at 9:17 am)
Google Chrome is slow as hell with flash programs.
I visit lots of sites with flash games, and they completely freeze the whole browser, not just one tab, for several seconds, and not just once, but periodically.
So Chrome is useless to me.
I have no such problems in firefox or ie
DLong (September 3, 2008 at 10:19 am)
“The Javascript console doesn’t hold a candle to Firebug at all.”
I couldn’t agree more. Not only that but there is VERY minimal documentation on how to use it. For instance, once you define a break point….then what? Granted I just installed about an hour ago but I still haven’t found a way to inspect various objects/elements. Compared to Firebug it seems fairly archaic. Also, when evaluating the returned XML object in an AJAX callback the node elements are not in sync with Firefox. This is an issue considering the navigator.appName returns “Netscape” when evaluating which objects to access for a nodes values. Such as…
if(IsIE)
val = (elem.text != null) ? elem.text : "";
else if(IsNetscape)
val = (elem.firstChild != null) ? elem.firstChild.nodeValue : "";
If someone has the skinny on this please let me know.
Daniel (September 3, 2008 at 11:18 am)
Chrome is simply fantastic and I tested it with Dromaeo and it finished the tasks in 480ms.. more than 3 times quicker than Firefox 3, and infinitely quicker than IE7 (because IE crashes after the first or second test).
Go Google. Fast as hell.
Kevin Weibell (September 3, 2008 at 3:43 pm)
how fun!
view-source:chrome-resource://inspector/inspector.html
Nosredna (September 3, 2008 at 10:18 pm)
Firebug Lite works, too.
Nostoc (September 4, 2008 at 1:57 am)
to loreman : Your shit is obviously a hoax. The titlebar in the screenshot is photoshop’s filter “glowing edges”, nothing more. And you can clearly see the pic’s been photoshoped (badly).
Host Intruder (September 4, 2008 at 7:37 am)
Hello , I hope too , me too I am a fanboy of Google, Google Chrome has impressed us,nothing to say about that. By the way, I am a blogger too and I have write a more detail review on Google Chrome, just take a look on my blog
>>> http://hostintruder.wordpress.com/2008/09/03/google-chrome-superpower-browser/
Keep it up man !
kdawg (September 4, 2008 at 9:55 am)
@loreman: nice cut and paste job around the edges to make the bronze background. it is simple to see its been cut, check out around the tab and on the corners of the browser.
Brad (September 4, 2008 at 12:03 pm)
Just had Firefox 3.0.1 pushed onto my computer (no, I did not choose it), but I have to say, speed is indistinguishable from Chrome. This is good news for Mozilla as there won’t be a clear advantage for Chrome. Good for everybody, because GoogBank can keep Chrome going regardless of adoption. Mozilla needs its 15% share to stay afloat.
Charlie Bravo (September 5, 2008 at 5:43 am)
I dont know how you can say that the speed in indistinguashable from chrome, for me chrome is way faster. (dual core e6600). In firefox I have to wait almost for every page and every click. It is not a long wait, but it is recognizeable. But the chrome just flies for me :p
and even independent tests seem to support that: http://www.chromeinfo.net/Google-chrome-speed/chrome-speed-tests/
On the other hand, I miss all the nice plugins from firefox. But the stable version of chrome will rock!!
vish (September 7, 2008 at 6:36 am)
chrome’s real slow… :( how to improve the speed?? any tips???
JohnW (September 8, 2008 at 8:08 am)
On my PC (Vista, Pentium Core2 Duo) Chrome is unbelievably slow! I usually get fed up waiting and use FF instead.
Swimp3 (September 8, 2008 at 11:45 am)
Thank you for sharing!! That’s cool!
Brendan (September 8, 2008 at 3:01 pm)
It’s slow if you have Google Accelerator installed and running. Disable that, and it speeds up a LOT. Still doesn’t feel as smooth as Firefox to me, but it’s now usable at least.
Carl (September 11, 2008 at 5:42 pm)
For any support, questions or themes with Google Chrome, be sure to visit http://chromeguru.info
movie fan (September 20, 2008 at 5:25 pm)
it’s funny, the more i use Chrome (for windows), the more unstable it seems to get… crashes a lot more, can’t handle sites with flash, hangs every time i close a tab… all that to say, i’m switching back to Firefox
Tandy (September 21, 2008 at 6:18 am)
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Eric (September 27, 2008 at 4:53 am)
Very interesting blog.. I haven’t try this Chrome.. I am just listening and reading what the good benifits on it.
rajesh trivedi (September 30, 2008 at 1:37 am)
all personis use of google web but i think this web is make more beater first oll Langvag is translate google page and 2 sugest every person make web in google site ofcours this type sugest google urn loght of money my 3red sugestion orcut . orcut is very god proces of google but this much more beather
InterNet Age (October 13, 2008 at 5:35 am)
I have tried it and it’s like a browser with a turbo charged engine. It still doen’t beat firefox though when it comes to the functionality made possible by the wide variety of plugins and add-ons, but it will get there.
chromespot.com-er (November 12, 2008 at 8:14 am)
the bronze “theme” is fake but there ARE themes for google chrome and if you want to the people at chrome-spot.com can probably make one for you (It looks cool)
chromespot.com-er (November 12, 2008 at 8:17 am)
my previous comment was to that loreman guy
Traian Neacsu (November 17, 2008 at 5:27 pm)
Hi,
I am still curious if the launch of Chrome was something “unintentional”. I wrote a little piece of article about this, called Google’s Chrome, a coincidence?.
I also kept a log on how Chrome evolved from search engines point of view.
Thanks,
TraiaN
pop (November 29, 2008 at 6:45 am)
hi
http://tagged-graphics-comments.blogspot.com/ (December 27, 2008 at 8:49 pm)
http://tagged-graphics-comments.blogspot.com/
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Ben (January 27, 2009 at 5:40 am)
I still miss my plugins, I hope it will be very soon available.
Amita Lakkad (February 10, 2009 at 5:33 pm)
hello
i am a highline community college student in WA in US.
Amita Lakkad (February 10, 2009 at 5:42 pm)
i have one project in which student has to take an interview of any manager which is related to specifice carrer of the student?
can you answer the few questions?
1. what do you give back to the community?
2. How do you organize your planning to get maximum benifit to the community?
3. if you have $20 million than how do you use that money for the community?
Rob (April 24, 2009 at 4:53 pm)
I have been using “Chrome ” for over a week and the “Most visited” window is still blank. I went to Jaycar 30 times but still no “Most visited”. I hope it works for you guys. It don’t work on my machine. My specs are Intel 4core 2.8gig cpu 4gig ddr3 ram 1 terabyte drive. Winxp 64-bit. I know my stuff, I have owned computers since dos6. Is Google chrome 64-bit?
Regards
Rob
Randy (May 19, 2009 at 12:36 pm)
All this stuff is great. But I can’t even use the copy and paste function in MySpace using Google Chrome. What’s up with that?