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Post subject: new google chrome browser
 Posted: Sep 02, 2008 - 06:16 PM
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Joined: Nov 28, 2006
Posts: 4279
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announcement: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/ ... owser.html
ebook: http://books.google.com/books?id=8UsqHo ... r#PPA11,M1
This is incredibly good news in my opinion. If you read the subtext, well, ok, it's not at all sub, they list bug by bug, weakness by weakness, every single problem with firefox and the mozilla method, anyway, this is very clearly google giving up on mozilla ever fixing their browser and making it work as it should have 5 years ago, but which it still does not.
Since google made a point of hiring the main firefox dev, and providing virtually all of the mozilla corp's funding via the browser search revenue feature, this is a huge deal, google is clearly giving up on firefox, and I don't blame them at all, their future business model depends, as they say, on reliable, high quality engineering, ie, no crashes.
Mozilla made a huge mistake by appointing a public relations/HR person as their ceo, this mistake clearly is one that google is now realizing is probably unfixable.
I for one as very glad tor read this, and it's going to be interesting to see how fast google can get this browser out to market.
When you consider that some mozilla bugs have now existed for 10 years, such as the failure to handle > 2 login form fields, erratic login memory (totally hit and miss, still, in 3.x), not to mention the 'feature' of recent mozillas to automatically reload entire sessions when firefox crashes, a feature made necessary as you will learn if you read that whole ebook, because it's single threaded, and one failed app or function takes down all other webpages, something I've seen for a while now.
I'm not particularly interested in trying to defend the mozilla corporation's ongoing bad engineering, but it's gotten more and more obvious to me, especially when viewed from the free desktop, where firefox support is so bad at one point last year, sidux was about to dump it as the browser devs used. Suffice it to say that weaknesses and bugs have not gotten fixed, memory leaks were denied for months and then magically 'fixed' despite the fact they allegedly never existed.... the list is so long I won't bore anyone further.
And this, of course, ignores things like the constantly evolving and breaking apis for the long suffering firefox extension authors, who are forced to basically rewrite all their work each major new firefox release.
Interestingly, like Apple before, Google has picked khtml/webkit as the rendering engine, which really suggests that the firefox stuff is basically unusable now. And it also means that konqueror is going to turn into a very very good browser very soon. |
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Post subject: RE: new google chrome browser
Posted: Sep 02, 2008 - 07:22 PM
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Team Member
Joined: Nov 24, 2006
Posts: 1990
Location: w3
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Google is one of the biggest commercial sponsors of open source code world-wide. It is also a fine model for how businesses and open source projects can profit from each other in a balanced way. That's great.
Firefox is a huge flea market of well done and less well done code, and also does include little, but still some important real crap code. Personally I do not see the responsibility for that with Ms. CEO - she does the CEO job quite well, and is by the way not a PR/HR but law person. Responsible for the disaster state of code is the old Netscape legacy, together with the people "managing" development and deciding on changes. That's bad.
So, Google doing a browser (an operating system, a CMS, a CRM, an office suite, a data storage solution, a [fill your favorite stuff]) seems to be a good thing. They are strong enough to fight Microsoft, and they use/produce/promote open source code. But actually there is no good at all!
Google has developed a "good hope, good people, good faith, good will" world-wide monopoly on data mining, information providing and many other related tasks. While we battle the old iron made monopoly (for desktop operating systems, office suites, web browsers, ...) because we already see and know why it does no good, we tend to support the upcoming next one. Monopolies are evil, dangerous and illegal. Do not look at them and judge them as you do with smaller non-monopolists.
Beware.
Greetings,
Chris |
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development is life - code.zikula.org
an operating system must operate - sidux.com
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Post subject: RE: new google chrome browser
Posted: Sep 02, 2008 - 07:39 PM
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Joined: Nov 28, 2006
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I'm not worried at all, the code will be open, and any undesired reporting features can simply be turned off if desired. Besides, Google already employes chunks of the core linux kernel dev pool, key apache guy, head python guy.. svn core, and so on... and of course Apple actually owns the copyright to Cups now...
Unfortunately, the leader of an enterprise is in fact responsible for the failures, that's the meaning of the term, a leader is the person who accepts the responsibility in the end, though this concept has grown slightly hard to see in today's age of golden parachute 'firings' of ceos who destroyed their companies, or Presidents who destroyed their country's economies and global political standing. So she is most definitely at fault. That's the problem with being a leader, it's part of the deal. You can say it's not her fault if that makes you happy, but it is, I've read interviews with her, she's simply not qualified to occupy her position.
However, since the changes here are going to go in some excellent directions, the perpetually disastrous javascript engines of pretty much ALL non MSIE browsers is being totally dumped, in favor of the v8 virtual machine. This is an excellent development, and it's not hard to see why they rewrote that component from the ground up when you look at the decade of dismal js support.. no, no, really, we'll get it right in the next release!!
Since neither webkit nor v8 will do much besides their jobs, there's no a lot to fear there, unless you want to, then that's your privilege.
I'm looking at the actual technical details, it's a point by point repair of everything bad I've seen now in 10 years of browser development, and it's all stuff that has not been fixed by anyone, and much of it is so clearly a good idea, it sort of makes you wonder if google really has sucked up all the good developers as some accuse them of. If it took google to finally fix this stuff, then so be it, it wasn't getting done by anyone else anyway.
Just think of this though, with a quality javascript virtual machine, we can actually run javascript apps, like any other scripting language. Previously javascript was horribly slow, and mozilla was the worst among the slow ones.
Also keep in mind that, try as anyone might have tried, prior to Apple taking up the webkit code, konqueror was largely an unusable browser on the modern web, I tried, it failed far too often on complex code to actually be usable.
And I'll assume apple and google both realize that it's to their advantage to not create forks of webkit, which can only lead to a continuing improvement in webkit, which means konqueror, or any webkit using browser (isn't epiphany now offering webkit engine as an option?) are going to get that much better.
Personally, I'm ready to give up on firefox, I just don't see anything particularly good coming out of mozilla corp, every decision they make just seems to confirm that point more and more. |
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Post subject: RE: new google chrome browser
Posted: Sep 02, 2008 - 09:03 PM
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Team Member
Joined: Nov 24, 2006
Posts: 1990
Location: w3
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I can't more than agree on your technical points of view - that's why I wrote "So, Google doing a browser ... seems to be a good thing." I strongly believe that Google Chrome is/will be a decent browser, making a lot of webmasters' and users' dreams come true. My point was simply to beware the monopoly, and I believe that this is much more important for all of us than a technically advanced tool to interact with online services. A gun is made to kill, even if it looks great and works much better than any other gun.
"Anything goes" in this forum has a tradition of allowing much more of political than technical views on new developments, and I took the freedom to make advantage of that.
Greetings,
Chris |
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development is life - code.zikula.org
an operating system must operate - sidux.com
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Post subject: RE: new google chrome browser
Posted: Sep 02, 2008 - 09:53 PM
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Joined: Nov 28, 2006
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you're absolutely right to point out the bad google habits though, especially their fondness for long term data collection of everything...
But the good thing here is the code will I think quickly move out and be used, and people will quickly learn how to spot and crunch the things they don't want running.
The v8 library is one I am especially interested in seeing spread, javascript has been a torture far too long, I used to be very into it, but gave up because of year after year erratic, unreliable, buggy, slow, implementations. And webkit improving is another real plus.
what's odd is that google a: seems to have competent people working on this project, and b:, even stranger, seems to have let them do the right things in most cases. The list of fixes there is almost exactly what I would have hoped for, and then some, especially in the security areas, which, if you noticed, have more than a passing similarity to unix type security models, with root/user being totally split. Failure to implement such ground up, designed in, security features, of course are the direct cause of the security problem that have plagued both MSIE and Firefox. |
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Post subject: RE: new google chrome browser
Posted: Sep 02, 2008 - 10:01 PM
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Joined: Nov 30, 2006
Posts: 338
Location: Berlin
Status: Offline
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I as well expect that Google browser to be a nice one, but with all Google's apparent tendency to store (or backup) data online, I feel intimidated enough to most likely not install it at all.
While I expect MS to demise more and more, likely Google may be its follow-up, its browser just closing a gap now.
Why industry would use Google, and consequently have data stored online would be beyond my comprehension - but a good share of firms are using IE as well.. -.-
And as a last point, I dont have a good impression at all, to have Google once supporting Mozilla, and now lured away devs for their very own project - seems quite a bit hipocritical to me. After all Googles history with open source, then deriving.. never was confidential to me.
Just my opinion, if its much better than in my (pessimistic) point of view, I would only be pleased to be corrected=P
EDIT:
h2 wrote:
people will quickly learn how to spot and crunch the things they don't want running.
There will certainly be ways to stop inconvenient processes, but on the other hand I expect the majority to use "Goodle-Desktop" default style. Like so many people still use IE, and many of them (that I know at least) dont even really give much of a heck on patches. Just like "Monopoly? Exploits? So? It does work!" =/ |
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Post subject: RE: new google chrome browser
Posted: Sep 02, 2008 - 10:11 PM
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Joined: Nov 28, 2006
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phen, the key stuff here is in the internals, not in external stuff like data gathering. All mainstream commercial browsers do this already, all current search engine 'tool bars', which are really nothing more than spyware that you install yourself, also do this.
The problem with mozilla and gecko is that the code isn't fixable, this is easy to see by the string of never fixed bugs, memory leaks, and so on.
By the way, if you read the first part of that comic book carefully and pay attention to what they are really saying, they are actually telling you exactly why and where firefox is screwed up internally, that's what makes the read so interesting.
I assume the mozilla code base is in even worse shape than when apple looked at it and rejected it as horribly bloated and unusable back when safari launched with khtml as its rendering engine.
There's no hypocracy here at all, google has that browser revenue deal with opera too, and I would assume, with safari too. If mozilla can't fix their internal issues and actually use the money they earned to take the engineering of their product a bit more seriously, that's hardly anyone's fault but mozilla's. It's clear that the most of the stuff in mozilla isn't really usable for anything but running mozilla, so not much of it is going to get recycled.
It's like any other project, you might try to influence it for a while from the inside, optimistically expecting things to actually get fixed, then one day you realize, no, it's not getting fixed, in fact, it's getting worse and worse, then you decide to fix it yourself. Google won't be the first free software project to make that decision... |
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Post subject:
Posted: Sep 02, 2008 - 10:29 PM
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Joined: Nov 30, 2006
Posts: 338
Location: Berlin
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Thanks for your explanations, h2, without doubt you have much more insight than I have.
h2 wrote:
if you read the first part of that comic book carefully and pay attention[..]
Shamefully I didnt read anything of the comic yet but er.. the map of europe by the state of ww2 lol=x
But you made me think over my attitude towards the entire thing. Google having supported Mozilla to a point to realize a "better" way wont be achieved, then sort of having discarded their efforts, certainly is an interesting point of view (hope I didnt misunderstand, despite my lax way to sum it up). Sounds certainly valid to me.
I think I should give Google another chance, and get into it some more before judging it - maybe by time and more experience it will completely convince me.
Keep the discussion going, quite intriguing! o/ |
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Post subject:
Posted: Sep 02, 2008 - 10:37 PM
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Joined: Dec 02, 2006
Posts: 296
Location: Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia
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h2 and slam (and phen),
My thanks to you and my appreciation of the privilege of reading your exchanges about chrome.
I'm just one of the many long-time, but non-expert linux users who love what the sidux team are doing, but it's one of the most interesting and informative reads I've had for a long time.
I hope your postings are widely read. |
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Post subject:
Posted: Sep 02, 2008 - 11:35 PM
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Joined: Dec 01, 2006
Posts: 442
Location: San Antonio, TX
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Well, until it releases for linux, I am not so interested.
I tried it in wine, no luck. |
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Post subject:
Posted: Sep 02, 2008 - 11:51 PM
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Joined: Jan 11, 2007
Posts: 517
Location: Darmstadt, Germany, Europe, Earth
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i did run it in a windows (installed on a virtual machine)... the first impressions is: that one is damn fast!
though google delivers good stuff to the public i am concerned about the further development on the privacy issue. slam has already pointed it out... there's nothing to add.
still, i'd like to see this browser available for the linux world too. i am really looking forward to test it and also hope for derivates and plugins like adblock / noscript
as always, the future depends on how the competitors will be developing... we'll see it soon |
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if you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find it - maybe you can read ... the sidux manual
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Post subject:
Posted: Sep 02, 2008 - 11:52 PM
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Joined: Nov 27, 2006
Posts: 520
Location: Griffith NSW Australia
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Post subject:
Posted: Sep 03, 2008 - 12:03 AM
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Joined: Nov 28, 2006
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For those of you not in the SEO google know, Matt Cutts is one of the public faces of Google, although he does that blog in his free time to keep up on user feedback.
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-ch ... unication/
This deals directly with the privacy questions. I've found over the years that Matt doesn't tend to lie, for what it's worth, although of course everyone who works in a big organization tends to have some major blinders on re that organization, so keep that in mind.
yesterday's:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-ch ... b-browser/
read especially some of the comments there, more insightful than you'd expect.
re why gecko sucks, no surprises, these issues have plagued us for years, note especially the obvious focus on windows they mention, which linux firefox makes painfully clear.
http://tech.kateva.org/2007/02/gecko-vs ... ctive.html |
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Post subject:
Posted: Sep 03, 2008 - 07:48 AM
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Joined: Feb 01, 2007
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Location: Hertfordshire, England
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I have just tried Chrome on windows and I am very impressed by its speed and memory usage.
It does have the odd problem though (you-tube vids don't work), possibly any video web site doesn't work at the moment.
however, it is really quick and it passes the Acid test 2 !
Id love to be able to use it in Linux land. patience patience I know...... |
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Post subject:
Posted: Sep 03, 2008 - 07:54 AM
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Joined: Nov 27, 2006
Posts: 520
Location: Griffith NSW Australia
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diddy1234 wrote:
I have just tried Chrome on windows and I am very impressed by its speed and memory usage.
It does have the odd problem though (you-tube vids don't work), possibly any video web site doesn't work at the moment.
however, it is really quick and it passes the Acid test 2 !
Id love to be able to use it in Linux land. patience patience I know......
Youtube worked here - you need to install flash and restart. |
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