Chrome - Anyone tried it?

Harveytile

I have just downloaded the Chrome browser from Google. First impressions are good. So the big questions is is it better?

Let battle commence...


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iainf72

It's a bit flakey. I've had it refusing to load pages which IE will load fine.

I wonder if it's disagreeing with the proxy but time will tell. Looks ok though.

McBain_v1

Anything that breaks the strangle hold of the dreaded MS - purveyor of over-hyped bloatware is fine by me

redddraggon

McBain_v1 wrote:

Anything that breaks the strangle hold of the dreaded MS - purveyor of over-hyped bloatware is fine by me

No one has used internet explorer for yonks.......surely?

iainf72

redddraggon wrote:

No one has used internet explorer for yonks.......surely?

Only 80% of the world.

Firefox is unmanageble in a corportate environment.

Microsoft run the best support structure for enterprise customers - I've had to deal with quite a few of the big vendors and MS run it like it should be run. I once had a problem with IE and within a couple of weeks had one of the guys who works on IE code sitting at my desk with me working through the problem.

MIsterGoof

redddraggon wrote:

McBain_v1 wrote:

Anything that breaks the strangle hold of the dreaded MS - purveyor of over-hyped bloatware is fine by me

No one has used internet explorer for yonks.......surely?

sadly there are parts of our wonderful governments (UK) site that only work in IE :x

ratherbeintobago

Thoughts about Chrome:

1) It uses WebKit - so stuff which doesn't work in Safari/Konqueror won't work in Chrome either. As this includes a number of banking sites...
2) It's not clear how much it's phoning home; in addition, the presence of Gears (which I suspect is how the history is stored) and the inability to automatically clear the history on closing makes it a bit iffy for use on a public computer (like this one)
3) No OS X/Linux version as yet, though it is coming.

I think I'll probably continue to use FF for the foreseeable; I used to use Opera, which was good but had a few compatibility issues.

RBIT

avoidingmyphd

you can open an incognito window on a public computer.

cee

I work for an IT consultancy.

We have just done some benchmarking analysis.

First impressions are:

Its still a beta, so expect bugs. It doesn't render font quite properly yet, and the css engine is different from both firefox and ie, so causes more of the usual css issues for developers.

The privacy thing is always a concern, especially with google....as someone said how much is it phoning home.....

performance wise, it SEEMS to load pages faster than both ff and ie, but in fact both are actually quicker than chrome. The way it renders the page behind the scenes (we reckon from googles cache), means that it can start to build the page before it has finished getting all of the content from the site itself....

this means that when the page loads....BANG it loads, so the perception to the user is that the pages load faster. I think that is a good thing...presumably this type of off page rendering also cuts down on an individual websites bandwidth usage, as google already has the majority of the structural elements of most web pages.

Be good to play around once it is totally finished, but first impressions are pretty good.

Although, as someone else said, in a corporate environment, this will not kill IE.

jibi

FIREFOX

Nothing else comes close

george

cee

redddraggon wrote:

McBain_v1 wrote:

Anything that breaks the strangle hold of the dreaded MS - purveyor of over-hyped bloatware is fine by me

No one has used internet explorer for yonks.......surely?

ahem.... rd you are wrong. Q2 2008 78.3% web visits were done by IE.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers

remember the corporate world accounts for the majority of computers, many of which are tied down so that folks cannot install whatever they want. Installs are done by administrative policies.

redddraggon

cee wrote:

redddraggon wrote:

McBain_v1 wrote:

Anything that breaks the strangle hold of the dreaded MS - purveyor of over-hyped bloatware is fine by me

No one has used internet explorer for yonks.......surely?

ahem.... rd you are wrong. Q2 2008 78.3% web visits were done by IE.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers

remember the corporate world accounts for the majority of computers, many of which are tied down so that folks cannot install whatever they want. Installs are done by administrative policies.

It was a sarcastic statement, I know that there are noobs out there that still waste their time with IE.

pyro_maniac

IE does the job for the majority of users
i have been using computers for years and i still use IE, it works well enough
tried opera and firefox, yet still use IE, dont see that there is a lot of difference between FF and IE

iainf72

cee wrote:

remember the corporate world accounts for the majority of computers, many of which are tied down so that folks cannot install whatever they want. Installs are done by administrative policies.

Yep, and Microsoft have patching mechanisms which work, ways of managing their application centrally which work and you know where the buck stops.

And when you're deploying to 25000+ machines in over 100 countries these things are very very important.

synchronicity

I still use explorer and I kind of loathe microsoft. Honestly, I just can't be stuffed with the continual downloads all the time with other browsers...

I still think microscum will win in the end because that's what most of the computers come installed with... until that changes, no one else will win the browser war.

What happened to cuil? Wasn't that supposed to be another one of google's highly-praised search engines to rival their own giant? Well my site didn't come up on it...

And by the way, Google is now pissing me off with all of their stupid logos. The last one to come up was the tomato thing (at least here in spain)! Why :?: Answer: some dolt with too much time on their hands. :roll:

Bugly

Tried Chrome my main gripe (so far) is that I use google toolbar and bookmarks so I have access to links at home and at work. Was mortified to find that Chrome does not seem to have the google bar etc built in.

Bugly

redddraggon wrote:

cee wrote:

redddraggon wrote:

McBain_v1 wrote:

Anything that breaks the strangle hold of the dreaded MS - purveyor of over-hyped bloatware is fine by me

No one has used internet explorer for yonks.......surely?

ahem.... rd you are wrong. Q2 2008 78.3% web visits were done by IE.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers

remember the corporate world accounts for the majority of computers, many of which are tied down so that folks cannot install whatever they want. Installs are done by administrative policies.

It was a sarcastic statement, I know that there are noobs out there that still waste their time with IE.

Been involved in the computer industry for 25 years and counting - used to install the latest and greatest - but in the end I use IE - its just less of a hassle then the rest. Have the same enviroment at home and at work, kids are familiar with it from schools.

So I reckon my time industry is about the same as the lenght of time you have been on the planet. Whos the noob?

redddraggon

Bugly wrote:

redddraggon wrote:

So I reckon my time industry is about the same as the lenght of time you have been on the planet. Whos the noob?

OK, it seems IT monkeys use IE, but all my software engineering/computer science friends don't use IE. What does that say?

I don't see why most people, if they have the choice, choose IE.

Apollo748

ratherbeintobago wrote:

2) It's not clear how much it's phoning home; in addition, the presence of Gears (which I suspect is how the history is stored) and the inability to automatically clear the history on closing makes it a bit iffy for use on a public computer (like this one)

CTRL + SHIFT + N loads an "Incognito" tab. Use that for stuff you want to keep hidden, it doesn't hold cookies and browsing history on exit.

iainf72

redddraggon wrote:

I don't see why most people, if they have the choice, choose IE.

Because it works fine and there's no compelling reason to change? A browser is really just a commodity item. As I've said above, the differentiator is the management of it and this is where MS destroy all comers.

So while Firefox might be ok for home users it's quite unsuitable for big corporate environments, especially ones where web services are very important.

Slow Downcp

Our systems department have issued this warning to all users at our offices (although I don't 100% understand the implications :

This is a message to all you google fanatics out there.

DO NOT INSTALL GOOGLE CHROME ON DELCAM EQUIPMENT.

The licence agreement that you are forced to accept contains some pretty devastating clauses that grant Google the right to use and copy anything that they manage to capture, that has been displayed in their product.




".........By submitting, posting or displaying the content, you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content that you submit, post or display on or through the Services."

richa

Bugly wrote:

Tried Chrome my main gripe (so far) is that I use google toolbar and bookmarks so I have access to links at home and at work. Was mortified to find that Chrome does not seem to have the google bar etc built in.

+1. Fundamental flaw for me. I am now back on I.E. already.

cee

Slow Downcp wrote:

Our systems department have issued this warning to all users at our offices (although I don't 100% understand the implications :

This is a message to all you google fanatics out there.

DO NOT INSTALL GOOGLE CHROME ON DELCAM EQUIPMENT.

The licence agreement that you are forced to accept contains some pretty devastating clauses that grant Google the right to use and copy anything that they manage to capture, that has been displayed in their product.




".........By submitting, posting or displaying the content, you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content that you submit, post or display on or through the Services."

Google have now changed the offending EULA to say that the user unconditionally retains their IP....It took them one day to do it and have said they don't know how it sneaked in there!

APOLLO748 wrote:

CTRL + SHIFT + N loads an "Incognito" tab. Use that for stuff you want to keep hidden, it doesn't hold cookies and browsing history on exit.

Apollo....that function does not stop google from recording what you have browsed. It merely deletes cookies and form information from the browser session on closedown.

Basically you can think of it as the "I am looking at porn and i don't want my missus to find out" button!

Tiny Explosions

synchronicity wrote:

And by the way, Google is now pissing me off with all of their stupid logos. The last one to come up was the tomato thing (at least here in spain)! Why :?: Answer: some dolt with too much time on their hands. :roll:

It was because of the tomato throwing festival over there. I quite like how they do seasonal, or relevant takes on the logo.

As for Chrome, I'm using it at the moment, and it seems ok... don't think it'll ever become my main browser though

synchronicity

Yes I know what the tomato festival is, but what's the relevancy? Why change the logo every week or every day? Surely there are better things to raise awareness about than the tomato festival?

Actually, that's probably what miffs me the most. It isn't used for awareness, just for everything else... google should stick to what they know best: being the best search engine.

:idea: Sack the guy in charge of making these superfluous logos and hire someone else to work out a proximity-based add-on to the search function. Just imagine that... when this new function is enabled and you type in "restaurants", the search results bring up the closest restaurants. 10x more useful, even if it doesn't work with 90% of pages. The google maps search feature doesn't seem to work well when I try it...

il_principe

Bugly wrote:

Tried Chrome my main gripe (so far) is that I use google toolbar and bookmarks so I have access to links at home and at work. Was mortified to find that Chrome does not seem to have the google bar etc built in.

It's in beta though! I'm quite impressed but Firefox wins by virtue of 3rd party addons!

Doom

synchronicity wrote:

:idea: Sack the guy in charge of making these superfluous logos and hire someone else to work out a proximity-based add-on to the search function. Just imagine that... when this new function is enabled and you type in "restaurants", the search results bring up the closest restaurants. 10x more useful, even if it doesn't work with 90% of pages. The google maps search feature doesn't seem to work well when I try it...

I guess it depends on your location as it works a treat for me in London!

Akuma

The first, is the popular "carpet bomb" vulnerability that still exists within Chrome, as pointed out on our forums by our member matessim. This vulnerability allows malicious websites to drive by download and execute programs on your machine.

http://www.neowin.net/news/main/08/09/03/google-chrome-out-for-one-day-already-reasons-to-avoid

rdaviesb

Chrome for me. Significantly faster than Firefox and IE. Tried the IE 8 Beta. Bluuurghhhh.

k-dog

CTRL + SHIFT + N loads an "Incognito" tab. Use that for stuff you want to keep hidden, it doesn't hold cookies and browsing history on exit.

A lot of people have been singing the praise of this feature as if it's something new - where Firefox has had an add-on called Stealther for a long time - which does the same thing.

Doom

Trying it now and it seems quick. Like others have said its a BETA albeit closer to the finished article and it checked my spelling typing this in which is a good thing surely

Think the hackers will decide which browser will be king though!!