Google Chrome

[gibberish]

ive just been using this for about half an hour or so and i cant believe how much faster it is than firefox.
being as its open source, do you think it would be beneficial to be the default browser on pandora instead of firefox?

this question is obviously directed at devs and/or people who have used chrome.

 

[jellmoo]

I've been using Chrome for most of the afternoon and have found it a pleasant ride thus far. Have noticed a few issues with it, but it has potential.

Still, it's probably past the point of no return in regards to adding this to Pandora. Besides, a Linux version has not been released yet, and Chrome is still in Beta.

Definitely something I wouldn't mind seeing added down the line though.

 

[sindbad]

It's not hard for something to be faster than firefox. Webkit is very fast, try Arora.

However, google's chrome isn't available for linux yet.

 

[davecuk]

I'm using it right now and it's very nice, but does have it's issues. Once it's released on Linux and has been through a few more updates I'm sure it will be worth consideration.

 

[morrissey2k7]

Hmm... I downloaded and installed Chrome and it doesn't do... anything. Every tab just has a big white page with absolutely nothing on it. I'm tried going to websites, and I even tried changing my homepage, but it's not doing anything whatsoever... it's not frozen, mind you. I can access options and whatnot, but it just doesn't load webpages or indicate that it's even trying to load anything (although occasionally I get the "Aww, Snap" screen). I've installed it, uninstalled it, and reinstalled it, and still nothing's really going on.

*shrugs*

 

[monkeyo2]

I've been playing with it myself, and have been wondering the same thing.

I read through Google's comic introduction (for dummies), and whilst my programming skills are very limited, I did notice a couple things that may (or may not) be relevant:

• Running a "multi-process" design means more memory upfront, but less bloat over time.

• The V8 Javascript virtual machine generates machine code, so I presume that would mean it's X86 based at the moment.

Can't say I've really noticed any speed improvement over Firefox, but I am running it on a fairly fast P.C. I'd imagine if it becomes successful they'll integrate it into Android, and so develop an ARM version.

And the word "Google" isn't in Chrome's spell check dictionary...

 

[magicman5421]

lol
i was wondering how long it would take for chrome to hit these forums. it was just announced today right?
yea and i got that feeling about the machine code too...no arm for now...
i'm gonna go ahead and try it out on a vm. see if i like it.

UPDATE:
meh, it's nothing special, what I wanna know is whether I can block ads with it.

 

[mazza558]

It's probably possible to port, but the memory usage might be a big hurdle to overcome.

 

[kloplop321]

not really, it is really minimal on its memory usage unlike FireFox.

 

[mazza558]

not really, it is really minimal on its memory usage unlike FireFox.

I can see a problem if you try and open more than 5 or 6 tabs, especially with big-memory websites (youtube etc), due to each tab being its own process. Then again, it's not like the Pandora would have space on the screen for more than 5-6 tabs.

 

[sindbad]

Using a lot of processes isn't as expensive as it seems, especially on operating systems that have copy-on-write (most, except windows). I've used pyprocessing in a project and memory usage wasn't much larger than regular threads.

 

[DASD]

Since this version of the browser would run only on (nearly ? *) identical devices, one could set fixed limits. When you're reaching the limits of the hardware, "chrome for pandora" says "sorry, no more tabs possible" and just blocks it. You could still run you favourite java-apps, but not all of them at once.

I'm hoping and assuming that soon chrome-versions for android and linux will follow the windows-version and that those could be ported.

* I'm talking about moded devices...

 

[peelie]

tried it -

on my xp system it has a bigger footprint than firefox 3 by about 15 megs; not as small as opera footprint which is 13.8meg

wil wait till it gets out of beta

annoying thing is that installer does not give you option of where to install and defaults to documents and setting!!

 

[cb88]

do you mean ram footprint? or disk.... disk is pretty irrelavant


for me chrome is using 20% less ram than firefox with 3 pages open on each.... it is firefox 2 though NVM i just noticed the multiple processes

 

[ryosaeba]

wil wait till it gets out of beta

It's google you are talking about. It will probably never leave the beta stage .

 

[craigix]

Seems ok, but I like my firefox set up with its plugins.

Isn't this multi-process thing just back to how browsers used to work before tabs were invented? Remember running multiple copies of netscape etc.

 

[PoisonedV]

Nothing special. firefox will still win.

 

[atomicthumbs]

Opera, with five various tabs open from new session: 87,552 kb
Firefox 3, with five various tabs open from new session: 45808 kb
Chrome, with five various tabs open from new session: 5248/44436/12672/5588/17212/22360 KB; total 107516 K, average 17919.3 K

Tabs: iGoogle, Google Chrome page, blank tab, Flickr home page, Youtube home page.

Firefox still wins (since Opera is closed source), but this might be fun once they improve stuff.

 

[sindbad]

The point is that after using the browser a while and closing and opening tabs, not all garbage gets collected properly. With processes, it's certain that all used memory gets returned to the os.

That's why they say that it uses more memory up-front, but less in the long run.

 

[kloplop321]

yeah, that is a sad thing about FF

If we act as tight coders like NASA did for the computers to get men on the moon, then we can achieve anything, literally: the Gameboy(old b/w bulky version) had more power memory and speed-wise than the technology they put on the ship.