Google Chrome: Google builds an OPERATING SYSTEM! (p34)

Frem

Update: Google is now using Chrome as the centerpiece of a new web-os targeted at netbooks.
Announcement!

Discussion starts on page 34. We now return you to your regularly scheduled OP.

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So, Google is apparently building a web browser. Sweet!

Comic book action!
Blog post
Blurry photographic evidence

Random details!

• Based on WebKit, the same engine Konqueror and Safari use.
• Very heavily based around Tabs. Each tab is it's own process, and each tab is sandboxed. Buggy Web 2.0 sites can no longer take down the entire web browser.
• Interesting permission system.
• Really fast JavaScript execution. The page talks about compiling it to machine code.
• Takes Firefox 3's awesomebar and makes it more handy/private.
• Grabs a bunch of nifty UI stuff from Opera.
• Plugins!
• Open source!

...and beta coming soon. Windows first, Linux and OS X in the works.

This is made of win SO HARD.

The download was supposed to go up on midnight Monday, but they appear to be redirecting people back to search right now. It'll probably reactive within the next day or so.

Download

Aetheri

...and beta coming soon. Windows first, Linux and OS X in the works.

And by soon, you mean tomorrow.

Darmak

Man, I love Google so much. I'm sure this will be awesome. If only the false rumors about them developing an OS were true (they aren't, don't start looking for one).

taliosfalcon

I'm rather interested to see what they managed to do with Webkit because well, lets face it, neither Safari nor Konqueror are what I would call good or even half decent browsers.
also, Operas Intelligent bar blows the awesome bar away, i wish they'd copied that instead =(

Variable

nice! I love firefox but I'll definitely check this out asap.

Desert_Eagle25

Not enough love for Avant Browser.

Janin

Desert_Eagle25 wrote: »

Not enough love for Avant Browser.

Why should there be? Avant is just a skin for IE.

typhoon

.

Cyvros

taliosfalcon wrote: »

also, Operas Intelligent bar blows the awesome bar away, i wish they'd copied that instead =(

Actually, they kind of based it more on Opera's than Firefox's. The Chrome "omnibar" searches pages in history (as Opera's does), but also does a bit of auto-googling and saves search engines for use later. There's a bit about this on pages 19 and 20 of the comic.

EDIT: Not sure if it's worth mentioning, but the Labs edition of Gtalk uses WebKit to render bits of its UI.

Recoil42

The comic book is fantastic. Everyone read it. Really. Especially if you have a programming background. It's an absolutely fascinating look into why and how they've built what they've built, more specifically the architecture of the browser.

edit: Just noticed the OP doesn't have the link to the Google Books version, [strike]which allows you to get it in PDF:[/strike]
http://books.google.com/books?id=8UsqHohwwVYC&printsec=frontcover#PPP1,M1

Desert_Eagle25 wrote: »

Not enough love for Avant Browser.

Try and polish shit all you want, it's still going to smell a little and attract flies.

Agentflit

Recoil42 wrote: »

edit: Just noticed the OP doesn't have the link to the Google Books version, which allows you to get it in PDF:
http://books.google.com/books?id=8UsqHohwwVYC&printsec=frontcover#PPP1,M1

The google books version is hard to read and the pdf link is broken. This is probably why they stopped linking to it via the blog. But yeah, the comic is really good!

exis

Looking forward to this very much. Hopefully it won't take long for a) any bad bugs to get smoothed out, b) the linux release.

Dark Shroud

•Very heavily based around Tabs. Each tab is it's own process, and each tab is sandboxed. Buggy Web 2.0 sites can no longer take down the entire web browser.

These are already in Internet Explorer, so nothing new.

Desert_Eagle25

Meh, Avant is just a skin for IE, yea, but it does what I need, and often times has alot more options then Firefox, especially for tab management, which is king considering I run 15-20 tabs at a time with the work that I do. Firefox has some horrid tab-management when you're running windows en masse, unless there's an addon i'm missing that changes how they operate.

Recoil42

Dark Shroud wrote: »

•Very heavily based around Tabs. Each tab is it's own process, and each tab is sandboxed. Buggy Web 2.0 sites can no longer take down the entire web browser.

These are already in Internet Explorer, so nothing new.

Buh?

IE8, yes. But not in IE7. And IE8 is still in beta and far from out, so.....?

Dark Shroud

Desert_Eagle25, since you use Avant give the IE8 beta a try. They've done a lot with tab grouping & threaded processes.

Recoil42 wrote: »

Dark Shroud wrote: »

•Very heavily based around Tabs. Each tab is it's own process, and each tab is sandboxed. Buggy Web 2.0 sites can no longer take down the entire web browser.

These are already in Internet Explorer, so nothing new.

Buh?

IE8, yes. But not in IE7. And IE8 is still in beta and far from out, so.....?

IE7 does have the sandbox mode. You're actually going to bring up the issue of a program being a beta in defense of a Google app? IE8 has it in a released form so they were first. I'm willing to be the full version of IE8 will be out before the non-beta of Chrome. FYI, IE8 is do out before the end of this year.

Desert_Eagle25

Dark Shroud wrote: »

Desert_Eagle25, since you use Avant give the IE8 beta a try. They've done a lot with tab grouping & threaded processes.

Recoil42 wrote: »

Dark Shroud wrote: »

•Very heavily based around Tabs. Each tab is it's own process, and each tab is sandboxed. Buggy Web 2.0 sites can no longer take down the entire web browser.

These are already in Internet Explorer, so nothing new.

Buh?

IE8, yes. But not in IE7. And IE8 is still in beta and far from out, so.....?

IE7 does have the sandbox mode. You're actually going to bring up the issue of a program being a beta in defense of a Google app? IE8 has it in a released form so they were first. I'm willing to be the full version of IE8 will be out before the non-beta of Chrome. FYI, IE8 is do out before the end of this year.

nah, ie8 is just the same. They handle tab's "literally" as tabs with the little graphic of a file tab, and if i have 15-20 tabs open i'll need to scroll through all of them. In Avant, the tabs arent "tabs" but little task boxes that can be hidden or viewed all at once. Meaning I can see all 20 tabs together (yea they take up alot of space, but thats what I want) and I can go through any of them instantly without having to jump through hoops to get to two tabs that are 10 tabs apart.

Do you have any idea of how irritating it is to have to jump through 20 different tabs to get bits and pieces of information, and be forced to deal with a little scrolling thing limiting how many tabs I can view? Atleast with avant everything is layed out in front of me so I can do all of my work at once.

DigDug2000

I think you're confused, or Avant does something I never heard about. IE8 launches each tab in a separate process so that if one tab goes bad, it doesn't crash the entire browser. Not a huge problem, but I can see it being nice. This goes a bit further and supposedly shows you exactly how much memory/processor time each tab is taking up so you can yell at the web pages/plugin vendors instead of Google when you run out of RAM.

To be honest, most of the rest of this shit just looks like ideas that have already been done, or have already been proposed, or combinations of the two. I really don't get what Google is trying to do here, besides throw their brand name on yet another product, and probably split the browser market once again (now you have to test your code on 5 products instead of 4!)

Everyone keeps wanting to make the web into the new desktop, but it seems like the web just ain't ready for it yet. Until I turn to a web app to write/create presentations/edit images/spreadsheet stuff, I really don't think the market is there yet. And the problem isn't in Javascript speed. It has more to do with HTML just being a shitty language for some of that shit, and HTML editors being even worse.

Desert_Eagle25

DigDug2000 wrote: »

I think you're confused, or Avant does something I never heard about. IE8 launches each tab in a separate process so that if one tab goes bad, it doesn't crash the entire browser. Not a huge problem, but I can see it being nice. This goes a bit further and supposedly shows you exactly how much memory/processor time each tab is taking up so you can yell at the web pages/plugin vendors instead of Google when you run out of RAM.

To be honest, most of the rest of this shit just looks like ideas that have already been done, or have already been proposed, or combinations of the two. I really don't get what Google is trying to do here, besides throw their brand name on yet another product, and probably split the browser market once again (now you have to test your code on 5 products instead of 4!)

Everyone keeps wanting to make the web into the new desktop, but it seems like the web just ain't ready for it yet. Until I turn to a web app to write/create presentations/edit images/spreadsheet stuff, I really don't think the market is there yet. And the problem isn't in Javascript speed. It has more to do with HTML just being a shitty language for some of that shit, and HTML editors being even worse.

Yes, i'm definitely confused about how avant runs considering I use it. I dont care about separate processes, what I care about is being able to see all 20 of my tabs and going through them seamlessly rather than having to be forced to view only 5-6 at a time, and then being forced to "scroll" through them.

Let me put it in words you guys can understand. I have 20 pieces of paper, and I want to access all of the information on that paper simultaneously, so I organize it into a folder, each paper having it's own tab. But, instead of each tab showing, where I can go ahead and access each one quickly, I can only see 5 tabs at a time, and the remainder of the tabs stack on top of each other. So instead of seeing straight 20 tabs, I get 5 stacks of 4 tabs each. Which is stupid.

EDIT: Not saying I hate Firefox or Opera, I love em, very efficient pieces of software. It's just this single feature is a make or break for me, and it seems I've only seen it available in Avant where I can access all of my tabs at once instead of in intervals. Unless I'm wrong and someone can show me an addon, then I'll be happily proved wrong and move on to some other browser.

Q_Prime

as someone who devs websites i hope that google fixes webkit if they are going to use it, i noticed safari has a rendering issue that isn't present in fx, ie or opera... i'm cautiously optimistic about this but knowing i'm going to need to test on another web browser is a pain in the butt.

theSquid

Desert_Eagle25 wrote: »

DigDug2000 wrote: »

I think you're confused, or Avant does something I never heard about. IE8 launches each tab in a separate process so that if one tab goes bad, it doesn't crash the entire browser. Not a huge problem, but I can see it being nice. This goes a bit further and supposedly shows you exactly how much memory/processor time each tab is taking up so you can yell at the web pages/plugin vendors instead of Google when you run out of RAM.

To be honest, most of the rest of this shit just looks like ideas that have already been done, or have already been proposed, or combinations of the two. I really don't get what Google is trying to do here, besides throw their brand name on yet another product, and probably split the browser market once again (now you have to test your code on 5 products instead of 4!)

Everyone keeps wanting to make the web into the new desktop, but it seems like the web just ain't ready for it yet. Until I turn to a web app to write/create presentations/edit images/spreadsheet stuff, I really don't think the market is there yet. And the problem isn't in Javascript speed. It has more to do with HTML just being a shitty language for some of that shit, and HTML editors being even worse.

Yes, i'm definitely confused about how avant runs considering I use it. I dont care about separate processes, what I care about is being able to see all 20 of my tabs and going through them seamlessly rather than having to be forced to view only 5-6 at a time, and then being forced to "scroll" through them.

Let me put it in words you guys can understand. I have 20 pieces of paper, and I want to access all of the information on that paper simultaneously, so I organize it into a folder, each paper having it's own tab. But, instead of each tab showing, where I can go ahead and access each one quickly, I can only see 5 tabs at a time, and the remainder of the tabs stack on top of each other. So instead of seeing straight 20 tabs, I get 5 stacks of 4 tabs each. Which is stupid.

EDIT: Not saying I hate Firefox or Opera, I love em, very efficient pieces of software. It's just this single feature is a make or break for me, and it seems I've only seen it available in Avant where I can access all of my tabs at once instead of in intervals. Unless I'm wrong and someone can show me an addon, then I'll be happily proved wrong and move on to some other browser.

Tab Kit! For FF3!

Seriously, that was holding you back?

Desert_Eagle25

theSquid wrote: »

Desert_Eagle25 wrote: »

DigDug2000 wrote: »

I think you're confused, or Avant does something I never heard about. IE8 launches each tab in a separate process so that if one tab goes bad, it doesn't crash the entire browser. Not a huge problem, but I can see it being nice. This goes a bit further and supposedly shows you exactly how much memory/processor time each tab is taking up so you can yell at the web pages/plugin vendors instead of Google when you run out of RAM.

To be honest, most of the rest of this shit just looks like ideas that have already been done, or have already been proposed, or combinations of the two. I really don't get what Google is trying to do here, besides throw their brand name on yet another product, and probably split the browser market once again (now you have to test your code on 5 products instead of 4!)

Everyone keeps wanting to make the web into the new desktop, but it seems like the web just ain't ready for it yet. Until I turn to a web app to write/create presentations/edit images/spreadsheet stuff, I really don't think the market is there yet. And the problem isn't in Javascript speed. It has more to do with HTML just being a shitty language for some of that shit, and HTML editors being even worse.

Yes, i'm definitely confused about how avant runs considering I use it. I dont care about separate processes, what I care about is being able to see all 20 of my tabs and going through them seamlessly rather than having to be forced to view only 5-6 at a time, and then being forced to "scroll" through them.

Let me put it in words you guys can understand. I have 20 pieces of paper, and I want to access all of the information on that paper simultaneously, so I organize it into a folder, each paper having it's own tab. But, instead of each tab showing, where I can go ahead and access each one quickly, I can only see 5 tabs at a time, and the remainder of the tabs stack on top of each other. So instead of seeing straight 20 tabs, I get 5 stacks of 4 tabs each. Which is stupid.

EDIT: Not saying I hate Firefox or Opera, I love em, very efficient pieces of software. It's just this single feature is a make or break for me, and it seems I've only seen it available in Avant where I can access all of my tabs at once instead of in intervals. Unless I'm wrong and someone can show me an addon, then I'll be happily proved wrong and move on to some other browser.

Tab Kit! For FF3!

Seriously, that was holding you back?

I use Firefox + Avant, avant for working and browsing, Firefox for general browsing. But since I'd always do my work on the side, I would just go my browsing+work in Avant and ignore Firefox. I'll definitely try this addon out, thanks mate.

Szechuanosaurus

Recoil42 wrote: »

Dark Shroud wrote: »

•Very heavily based around Tabs. Each tab is it's own process, and each tab is sandboxed. Buggy Web 2.0 sites can no longer take down the entire web browser.

These are already in Internet Explorer, so nothing new.

Buh?

IE8, yes. But not in IE7. And IE8 is still in beta and far from out, so.....?

And also won't ever be coming to the Mac.

I'm actually pretty interested in this. I already run Bloglines and HiTask in Firefox along with forum browsing etc. and access our company database through Safari. Bloglines and HiTask are essentially web apps that are constantly running and can get a bit chuggy sometimes. The database is more of a passive project management application - it only does stuff when I tell it too - but I do a lot of uploading and downloading of very large print-ready artwork files through it and usually have multiple job tabs open at all times. It sounds like Google Chrome could be an ideal browser for the database, bloglines and HiTask and then I can keep Firefox for casual browsing. Or possibly just have a separate collection of tabs in Chrome if it really is that good.

Dark Shroud

Desert_Eagle25 wrote: »

nah, ie8 is just the same. They handle tab's "literally" as tabs with the little graphic of a file tab, and if i have 15-20 tabs open i'll need to scroll through all of them.

I see your point, just let me ask you this. Have you tried IE's quick tabs function (ctrl+q)?

Szechuanosaurus wrote: »

And also won't ever be coming to the Mac.

Ah yes I did not think about OSX, Linux's market share is so low they can be ignored. Like many people I don't understand why Google would bother doing this instead of just releasing a few more official Google plug-ins for Firefox. I'm just enjoying some of the irony here about how supposedly MS is always copying OSX or playing catch up to IE and now Google is copying IE8. The only thing that would surprise me more than Chrome is if the final version of IE8 was released for Windows & Mac.

Satan.

I'll give it a look, but somehow I doubt it's going to pry me away from Safari.

Idoliside

Interesting, depending how it flows i'll give it a look. Gonna have to take something mighty to shift me away from Firefox.

Frem

Dark Shroud wrote: »

Szechuanosaurus wrote: »

And also won't ever be coming to the Mac.

Ah yes I did not think about OSX, Linux's market share is so low they can be ignored. Like many people I don't understand why Google would bother doing this instead of just releasing a few more official Google plug-ins for Firefox.

Because they like Google Gears, and would like it to become a widely used standard, among other things. It sounds like they'd like most of the features included to become standards, defacto or not.

Colt

Without a doubt I'll be trying it out to see what the deal it, but this early I don't think it will pull me from Firefox. I'd still be interesting to see where Google goes with this...

Lindsay Lohan

I'll give it a try - at the very least I'll install it on my work PC (we do web support, so it's always handy to have multiple browsers installed). As someone else pointed out - even if you have no plans on installing the browser, read the comic it's incredibly interesting.

wunderbar

I'm absolutely going to try this out. I have pretty much every browser(IE8, FF3, Opera, even safari) at least installed on my machine. I use firefox mainly, and I'll give this a try.

Cameron_Talley

For anyone asking "Why is google doing this?" read the comic. It's a great explanation of just that.

I can't wait to give this a try...we'll see how it goes..

Szechuanosaurus

Q_Prime wrote: »

as someone who devs websites i hope that google fixes webkit if they are going to use it, i noticed safari has a rendering issue that isn't present in fx, ie or opera... i'm cautiously optimistic about this but knowing i'm going to need to test on another web browser is a pain in the butt.

Also, Safari crashes whenever I visit maps.google.com

So they should probably make sure that Google Chrome doesn't do that.

Satan.

Szechuanosaurus wrote: »

Q_Prime wrote: »

as someone who devs websites i hope that google fixes webkit if they are going to use it, i noticed safari has a rendering issue that isn't present in fx, ie or opera... i'm cautiously optimistic about this but knowing i'm going to need to test on another web browser is a pain in the butt.

Also, Safari crashes whenever I visit maps.google.com

So they should probably make sure that Google Chrome doesn't do that.

Buh? I've got no problems in Safari for that.

mastman

Safari is fast as shit on OS X, I use firefox though because adblocking and mouse gestures. Chrome would also have to support adblocking and mouse gestures for me to even consider it.

Mugenmidget

Does anyone know of a good filtering application to use with this when it launches? Something like Proxomitron to act like Adblock Plus in case Google doesn't have something as cool as it.

Zell

I was really impressed when Internet Explorer 8 made tabs unable to crash the browser. Then Google goes and makes a browser with a task manager and also copies all of Opera's best features.

Some concerns I have though:
Where will the bookmark bar go?
Will this be skinned application that I can't get to look native?
Will it be a MDI browser? popups windows belonging to another tabs gets me to hope it will

Satan.

Zell wrote: »

I was really impressed when Internet Explorer 8 made tabs unable to crash the browser. Then Google goes and makes a browser with a task manager and also copies all of Opera's best features.

Some concerns I have though:
Where will the bookmark bar go?
Will this be skinned application that I can't get to look native?
Will it be a MDI browser? popups windows belonging to another tabs gets me to hope it will

I think the point of it is that you don't need a bookmark bar. The new tab page (nine most visited sites, frequent search sites etc.) in combination with the awesome++ bar should mean that you never have to bookmark.

After sleeping on it, I'm willing to give this thing a try. My only issue is that I have an iPhone, and the bookmark syncing is awesome.

El Guaco

This looks to be very promising. I'm hopeful, but not skeptical, because I think they really can deliver what they're promising here. It's in their best interest to create a multi-platform browser that works really well because their business depends on people being able to surf the web!

The comic was a tad long and incredibly deep in technical detail, but I was glad to have read it. As a developer, I can see that they were thinking hard about rebooting the browser landscape by redesigning it from the ground up. Most browsers today have evolved from many interations to do things that just don't sit well with the scope of the original purpose of web browsers. I think this is a huge step in the right direction.

Can't wait to download it.

Centipeed

The download will be up in 38 minutes.

Satan.

Centipeed wrote: »

The download will be up in 38 minutes.

It was supposed to go active hours ago, where do you see a time estimate that accurate?

Centipeed

Satan. wrote: »

Centipeed wrote: »

The download will be up in 38 minutes.

It was supposed to go active hours ago, where do you see a time estimate that accurate?

I'm watching a webcast right now of their introduction of Chrome. It's being released at noon.

Webcast is here if anyone wants to check it out:

http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20080902005540&newsLang=en