Home Chrome: Test it With Us Live

Chrome: Test it With Us Live

Google released Chrome, its new open source app browser today, with “Another One Bites the Dust” playing while we waited on the press call. Can Chrome kill IE? Will it kill Firefox? Or will it go the way of Google Base, Google Sites and other Google Flops? The browser will be available for Windows users in 100 countries and 43 languages today.

Join us for a first look at Chrome together. We’ll be walking through it live and sharing our screen just as soon as it goes live. It’s Live at google.com/chrome. We’ll update this post with a link for the screenshare as soon as Chrome is live and we’ll post a recording of the session when we’re done. The video of our session is now posted below.Thanks to DimDim for help with this. For now, join us for the press call at this link. We’ve got some live notes below and a slide show of the slides being used in the presentation (via CenterNetworks). What are you looking for in Chrome? Let us know in comments and chat.

Notes (thanks to J.P. Voilleque for help taking live notes):

Google will not have separate address and search bars. That’s something we discussed here on RWW last month and it’s a great idea. The new feature will be called “the Omni box.”

Rich content is now overlaying all of the data on the web – web pages are dramatically different. Underlying browser architecture is still very much the same. There have been a great number of advances – e.g. XML allowing AJAX embedded apps. But, generally speaking browser need to be built from ground up.

Browser-based office environment is now a reality – Google Chrome addresses that reality.

Chrome – the borders of the web browser window, this browser cuts way down on the chrome seen. Transparency of web interface “gets out of the way” of complex apps and browser uses.

Multiprocess architecture allows tab-independent browsing – one tab crashes, others still function.

V8 – an entirely new Javascript option is built in.

New tabs will have all kinds of information like bookmarks, recently closed tabs and other info – highly personalized instead of blank.

Modern platform for web pages – how does it impact the interface? We don’t want a bulky toolbar, etc. – the UI:

One key navigation to common sites in the “omnibox”

Tabs on top – scalable for massive usage. Grab & drag – can drag out to separate window or drag back tabs don’t resize until you move mouse away after closing –

Search & Nav – address bar is search box. Taking a page from IE – “omnibox”

omnibox anticipates based on browsing history but gets out of the way if you want to simply search within a specific database or search engine. Chrome will remember your favorite search engines and create a tab shortcut to search within that engine in the future.

Tab page configured automatically based on browsing stats/history, generated on the fly within the browser itself. Can toggle more traditional bookmark toolbar – but “my tabs” captures all of the browsing history – default homepage in Chrome. Can also set start tabs or revert to the previous session’s tabs.

Privacy (pr0n guard!):

Nuking your history is detrimental to the way Chrome works. Alternative:

Incognito window – “keeping information off your computer when you’re browsing something that you don’t want to appear in your history.” “It’s like it never happened on your computer.” foot fungus! Yeah, that’s what we’re hiding.

Downloading ease of use:

You shouldn’t have to do a lot to download – drag to bar at the bottom of page and then you can interact directly with the downloads – click to open or drag into your file architecture. This is kinda nice – I actually hate Leopard’s downloads function, ditto “my downloads” in Windows.

Nuts and Bolts on web apps/plug-ins/Web worker conundrums:

Web applications – breaking free of the browser window – “Pinocchio feature” – “Create App Shortcuts” – can create gmail shortcut on the desktop – then can launch gmail without any of the browser trappings.

Constantly on: browser’s up all the time. Browser crash = noooo! my tabs!!! So browser subdivides into multiple processes – Chrome is built to render each tab independently – if a tab crashes, the others remain. Zero hiccups. Also nice from a security standpoint – rendering engine has no privileges but communication to the browser – so it’s a sandbox environment that can’t infiltrate your computer.

Chrome Task manager –

Articulates everything that’s going on in Chrome and reports on CPU usage, per tab AND per plug-in. (That’s very cool).

Misbehaving tab – simulated hang. Tab’s stuck, so you open the task manager to see what’s up (note that you can still move from tab to tab even if one tab is frozen). You can “end process” a la Windows task manager and nuke the tab that’s screwed up. Ditto plug-ins – can just kill the messed up plug-in content and still interact with the rest of the page with the embedded content.

Rendering engine clocks – Static content race.

IE load time – 220.64 ms per page load

Chrome – 77.28 ms per page load

11:54 AM


Danish Dude pwns web – V8 engine

From rollovers to entire web applications – Java proliferation is rampant. Web apps of all types are coded in javascript “several hundred kilobytes” of it- so the browser needs to have a platform that rocks javascript.

Aaaaand the webcast is hanging. Suffice to say V8 is going to be fast.

“I shoulda had a V8.”

And that’s a wrap!

EDITOR’S UPDATE: We’ve been all over this story this week, so here is a summary of our other Chrome coverage:

Google to Offer its Own Browser: Chrome

Does Google Have Rights to Everything You Send Through Chrome? (great discussion happening in the comments of this one)

Serious Security Flaw in Google Chrome

Video of Google Chrome Announcement

Chrome Is Coming To Android

Chrome To Get Extensions – Just Not Yet

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