Thread: Google Chrome

  1. #31
    Woof, woof! zacs7's Avatar
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    > I'm not very happy with this Google incursion in browser-land.
    Why not? They're a company, they can do what they want. If they wanted to start making cars, so be it.

    But if they start offering extra GoogleSearch options for Chrome users then perhaps I'll change my mind

  2. #32
    The superhaterodyne twomers's Avatar
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    I agree with zacs. If there's a market they'd be stupid to not go for it.

    On my laptop my touchpad has one of these scroll-things so if I run my finger down the right of the touchpad it'll scroll down a window. Anyway, this action is normally like pressing the down key on the keyboard but with chrome it's like pressing the pagedown button and it's really annoying me!

  3. #33
    Woof, woof! zacs7's Avatar
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    That's because it's so fast.

  4. #34
    C++まいる!Cをこわせ!
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    I don't see a problem with Google entering the browser market. What does it matter? The more competition, the better.
    Maybe it will jam internet explorer's wheel for good. Hopefully the extra competition will do so.
    Quote Originally Posted by Adak View Post
    io.h certainly IS included in some modern compilers. It is no longer part of the standard for C, but it is nevertheless, included in the very latest Pelles C versions.
    Quote Originally Posted by Salem View Post
    You mean it's included as a crutch to help ancient programmers limp along without them having to relearn too much.

    Outside of your DOS world, your header file is meaningless.

  5. #35
    Cat without Hat CornedBee's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mario F. View Post
    V8 yes. WebKit uses the V8 engine. And Chrome uses the WebKit engine.
    No, Apple's WebKit uses JSCore, and will soon use whatever they call their new engine.
    Google's modified WebKit that is used in Chrome uses the V8 engine.

    Anyway, the test doesn't compare against Firefox 3.1's new JS engine, TraceMonkey. On the SunSpider test, TraceMonkey beats V8 by a bit.
    All the buzzt!
    CornedBee

    "There is not now, nor has there ever been, nor will there ever be, any programming language in which it is the least bit difficult to write bad code."
    - Flon's Law

  6. #36
    (?<!re)tired Mario F.'s Avatar
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    My take is this:

    Chrome has very little to do with Yet Another Browser, and everything to do with Web Services. It doesn't make a lot of sense for a company like Google to introduce a new browser and compete in that market exclusively. In fact, Google has repeatedly said in the past they didn't need a broswer of their own. The fact Eric Schmidt insists on the pathological anti-microsoft ramble as a reason to introduce Chrome is a sure sign Chrome is just not another browser. Just-Another-Browser would compete with Microsoft, but also Mozilla, Opera and Apple.

    The reason behind Chrome is mentioned on a few interviews - which you folks will probably ask me to dig for - where it is stated by both Schmidt and Brendan Eich that despite Google investments on Mozilla, Google feels it needs more support for their web applications. So, as far as I can tell Chrome intent is to become a de facto Google WebServices browser. It's a clear offensive maneuver towards companies like Microsoft, Yahoo and Adobe. Where just recently Google had been catching up to Microsoft attempts to buy Yahoo by undermining the process, it now takes the lead and sets the stage for what can soon become a WebServices War (don't laugh just yet. Give me some time and I may not need to put my foot where my mouth is).

    Google is a multimillion dollar company. And despite some folks (read, a lot of folks) insist in thinking that it's some kind of Madre Teresa of the web, google is far from being an innocent company bent on helping the community. From an history of highly debatable EULAs that require users of their services to sell their souls to Google, to privacy concerns we've seen it all. Google went public and like any other company which does, there's money to be made and investments to be returned. As such, more often than we would like, their best interest doesn't necessarily mean it's in our best interest.

    In any case [put something here] Wars always trouble me. From office suit wars, to browser wars the end result is a quick increase in innovation during the short period of the hostilities, followed by a long period of stagnation in which the victor is sitting on the spoils doing nothing. I'm still yet to see any word from companies like Microsoft or Yahoo. But I'm thinking to my buttons if Yahoo isn't just pondering at this moment that after all Microsoft may be a sexier possibility than they thought before. Lets not forget that an important margin of Yahoo executives was actually in favor of Microsoft buying operation. Or if Adobe is thinking on what are they going to do with all the money they poured into AIR and Flex and if they have the conditions to enter what is soon going to become an highly competitive market being fought by only a handful of players.

    Last, but definitely not least at all, is my concern that if Chrome adopts (which it seems it will in all fronts) a much higher support for Google's own web applications and services, what is going to stop Microsoft from doing the same to their own server applications and even the desktop OSes? Something I must remind you all, they have been repeatedly stopped from doing.
    Last edited by Mario F.; 09-06-2008 at 09:06 AM.
    Originally Posted by brewbuck:
    Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.

  7. #37
    Lurking whiteflags's Avatar
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    Good points Mario but I honestly don't think that Microsoft wants to be sued yet again for anti-competitive practices. And Google has to practice glasnost as well. If for some reason they offer some unique service to the Chrome and nowhere else, then that's clearly an attempt to separate the rest of the browser market from a group people that only Google can serve, and they will probably face a similar lawsuit.

  8. #38
    verbose cat
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    So far, Chrome has been very nice on my slow computer (I do not have the money to upgrade from my PIII-500 machine) with one exception. Websites that have flash banner ads choke my computer to death and make the website close to unusable for me, and I haven't figured out a way to fix that in Chrome.

    Firefox fixed that nicely with a plugin that blocks flash banner ads based on a common list and/or my own input (I can't think of the name, ABP or something, but thanks to Elysia for pointing it out, or whoever did, but Elysia is the one I remember). Now I can surf via FireFox and in the rare instance I come across a flash banner ad that isn't blocked, I can block it and have no further issues.

    I can not run IE7 on this machine because it is too slow. I have a simple homepage I wrote with notepad that consists of a table populated by icons for websites that are links to those websites. IE7 takes forEVER to load and arrive at that simple page, and everything else is horribly slow as well.

    I could put IE6 back on this machine, but the process of blocking the flash banner ads is inconvenient compared to the FireFox plugin, so there's no reason to bother.

    So far, the only reason I won't use Chrome more is because it has no facility (that I can find) to block specific websites/banner ads. If that functionality is added (internally or via a Gear or whatever), I like Chrome enough to use it over and above FireFox because of the speed.

    All that said, I haven't had the opportunity to try FireFox 3, so all that might be moot if I ever get some spare time to try it.

    As far as Google Chrome being Google's way of positioning themselves for a monopoly or whatever, they're going to do whatever they want (until someone sues them over it). I don't really see a problem with them trying to make a platform for themselves either, so long as they don't suddenly cripple the program so it can only be used for Google's benefit. And even if they do that, the fact that it is open source means that, someone, somewhere will have a copy of the version prior to the cripple and will compile it and offer it up for people like me who want to roll back away from the Google maneuver.
    abachler: "A great programmer never stops optimizing a piece of code until it consists of nothing but preprocessor directives and comments "

  9. #39
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    Flashblock?

  10. #40
    (?<!re)tired Mario F.'s Avatar
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    Adblock Plus, I believe.

    Quote Originally Posted by jEssYcAt
    my PIII-500 machine[...]All that said, I haven't had the opportunity to try FireFox 3, so all that might be moot if I ever get some spare time to try it.
    You should probably. I didn't notice any significant speed increase in page loading times as advertised. But maybe I just don't go to those heavyweight websites. However, there seems to be a significant increase in the browser load time and the memory footprint is also smaller... although still ridiculous in my opinion.

    But you probably should want K-Meleon (http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/). It's very lightweight with only 32Mb RAM requirements and even runs on a 486 if it has that RAM. It's built on top of the Gecko Engine and many plugins available for FF can be installed on K-Meleon as well. Probably even AdBlock Plus.
    Originally Posted by brewbuck:
    Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.

  11. #41
    verbose cat
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    Posting this from K-Meleon. It installed AdBlock Plus which is working just fine. Thanks for the link, Mario!

    It doesn't seem like a significant improvement over Firefox 2, but I've only been using it for an hour or so now. I have visited most of the sites I frequent and imported my bookmarks without hassle, but I'll play around with it a bit more before I make a decision on it, and I intend to look at FF3 based on a few recommendations. However, if I find I detest FF3, how easy would it be to roll back to FF2 (or would it even be possible)?

    I still like Chrome a lot, but the lack of adblocking alone is a deal breaker unfortunately. Plus it's only a beta and I have already encountered a few bizarre errors. I don't want to bounce around several browsers to do different things, especially since Firefox has been working all-along just fine for me.
    abachler: "A great programmer never stops optimizing a piece of code until it consists of nothing but preprocessor directives and comments "

  12. #42
    Cat without Hat CornedBee's Avatar
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    However, if I find I detest FF3, how easy would it be to roll back to FF2 (or would it even be possible)?
    FF3 uses a different store for bookmarks etc. and imports upon upgrade. It keeps the old files around, so if you downgrade, you just lose the changes you made since upgrading.
    All the buzzt!
    CornedBee

    "There is not now, nor has there ever been, nor will there ever be, any programming language in which it is the least bit difficult to write bad code."
    - Flon's Law

  13. #43
    C++まいる!Cをこわせ!
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    Platform for web applications/services is the new "web" and is being worked on by Mozilla, as well. I don't really care one way or another if Google puts their own browser into the market, even if just to develop a platform for these apps/services.
    Hopefully it just won't turn into a big IE mess again, as when IE had all kinds of extensions supported by no standard, which everyone started to use.
    Hopefully it will just speed up the development of such platforms and force even harder competition or be thrown out (ie Microsoft). It's healthy for the market, I'd say. Especially if Microsoft wants to hold their market share, maybe they'll start making a quality browser.
    Quote Originally Posted by Adak View Post
    io.h certainly IS included in some modern compilers. It is no longer part of the standard for C, but it is nevertheless, included in the very latest Pelles C versions.
    Quote Originally Posted by Salem View Post
    You mean it's included as a crutch to help ancient programmers limp along without them having to relearn too much.

    Outside of your DOS world, your header file is meaningless.

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