How Chrome puts the skids under Nokia

Google's first web browser is here, and I've been trying it out. The diminutive feature set, in line with our expectations of Google, is welcome. However, as with IE7, I find it hard to orient myself in a browser without a menu bar. At the end of the day, as Google put it itself, it's just another WebKit-based browser. The …

[I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects]

●●●●●●●● Doh!

I too am getting problems with Firefox. I thought it might be the dictionary then AVG. So It was the bloody thing all along?

I can't get on with a browser without a menu bar either. What is the saving there? Safari isn't that good on XP.

I've Opera reserved for my science tabs, the rest are just IE reworks so that leaves K-Melion. Which takes some readjusting to. What version of Firefox do I need to get the dictionary working and no oh... hang on... the dictionary is working..

Feck off that Chrome then.

[Robin Kinge]

Anti-Virus

My anti-virus does not see anything that goes through Chrome. Could that explain why it is so fast :)

Robin

[Zimon]

Die menu bar!

What do people use the menu for? Does it really always need to be there? Why not just learn the shortcuts for the stuff you need.

[James]

What do people use the menu for?

To see what the shortcuts are!

[Michael Biddulph]

Fast as a Chrome thing...

I'm finding Chrome blindingly fast compared to Firefox V3 and IE7. I've had to turn Flash off in Firefox to get it to move at any sort of usable speed! Plus Chrome seems to handle pages that Firefox has a problem with just fine. Only found one page it failed on when it for some reason wouldn't handle the id/password field entries - very odd. Love the minimalistic GUI...

Michael

[James Bassett]

firefox

I've had no problems with Firefox so far but then, I'm a boring old fart. I don't do YouTube, Web apps or "Social Networking". Just plain old browsing - news, forums, shopping, bit of banking etc.

Still finding the tags in the "Awesome Bar" are fantastic and even begining to use the Bookmarks Bar to put buttons to my OWA Webmail etc.

[amanfromMars]

Scandanavian Skullduggery ...... and SMART Move Memes.

"As I see it, Nokia's rebranding as a services company puts some of its services in direct competition with Google. It's not in Nokia's best interests to allow a Google Gears plug-in for its WebKit-based browser."

It most certainly is in Nokia's best interests, if Nokia can Generate Premium Content which it would wish to Provide Globally across a Broader Band of Communications Channels in Order to Capture Revenue Streams from Pharmed Operating Systems.

It would be just as if Nokia had their Own Ubiquitous OS, although in Reality, IT is Hosting it Virtually for them in "competitor" Systems. However, it does require that they can Provide Premium Priming Content with Sustainability to ensure Continuity of Revenue Streaming. ...... ie they have Access to Hot Source in a Novel MetaDataMining Operation..... IntelAIgently Designed Facility

[Tony]

Slower

Cannot understand others' Firefox problems, I find Chrome slower to load (this under XP) and slow to produce a web page so am sticking with the Fox.

[sam]

@amanfromMars

but google is in a better position to do that.

Users would probably prefer the google services platform, which a lot of them already use in PC land, especially because it gives them some compatibility advantages with their friends.

My question though - how is googles ad based business model going to continue holding up given the amount of space on a tiny screen?

Maybe a 'pay for what you get' nokia way of doing things is the only way?

[tony72]

Great!

Hopefully Chrome will hoover up the muppets that Opera missed, that install badly written extensions, antivirus etc, and then complain that Firefox crashes. Those of us who have the wit to identify what extension is causing th problem and uninstall it will probably stick with the ultimately configurable Firefox, those that are a bit simple can use a dumbed down browser that doesn't let them f*#k it up, and make do without the amazing configurability of Firefox. Everyone wins.

[/\/\j17]

Long live the menu bar!

"What do people use the menu for?"

The pedant in me would say "To access menu options."

"Does it really always need to be there?"

No, but does make it a lot easier to find. I've used IE7 a couple of times and haven't worked out what triggers the menu - nor have I bothered, I've just closed it and opened Firefox.

"Why not just learn the shortcuts for the stuff you need."

Yea, and get shot of that word processor while your at it - you can do everything in vi, you just need to learn 10,000 shortcuts...

[Luther Blissett]

@amfM - blonde on blonde?

> it does require that they can Provide Premium Priming Content with Sustainability to ensure Continuity of Revenue Streaming.

I have just the thing you mean - well, not personally - but your drift is clear. It being too cold for horses in scandanavelia, it would have to be reindeer, at least until the climate changes. So, reindeer + reindeer, reindeer + santa, santa + reindeer (not the same thing), and a special act for L.Reg readers, santa + sledge... everyone could come. Except Whacky Jacqui.

[Anonymous Coward]

AdBlock

So, anyone want to see an AdBlock plug-in for Chrome?

[Havin_it]

re: Long live the menu bar!

Pressing ALT reveals the menu bar. It's a pretty logical progression, as that's the shortcut of choice for focusing the menu bar.

Still prefer the Firefox approach though: add/remove pretty much any bit of chrome, and position it wherever you fancy, via drag-n-drop.

[Jim]

@AdBlock

that would be an interesting Idea. A company that's whole business model is based on showing people adds in a browser, allowing an ad blocking plug-in.

Where's the Serge Brin Devil horned Icon? Closest thing would be Steve, due to webkit.

[Alan Ferris]

The one big drawback so far ....

The really big drawback so far is that it isn't compatible with Roboform, which is probably the most useful piece of software that I've bout in the last 5 years

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, gief meh

I'd love an adblock for chrome, and a noscript too (however fast v8 is). I use FF on windows, linux and macos- it's great.. stable and tolerably nippy (even on my little eeepc 901). However, I'm not against trying new things (barring, of course, incest and morris dancing).. it's just that the Vasty Interpipes are rather unreadable with all the wiggling, flickering crap screaming at you, which distracts the eye from the content.

That said, I'm in no rush, I'd prefer to know if it talks to the mothership, given google's involvement in ads and user tracking.

[Brian Whittle]

No problem with firefox here

I have used Firefox on Vista XP and OSX and I have had no problems, my thoughts are that it must be plug that cause problems. (though it does run better with the hacked version of fasterfox installed)

I have not tried Chrome yet and can't see the need for yet another browser maybe YAB would be a good name

I take it when Chrome comes out on OSX it will have at an advantage on Windows as it will still have menus

[Bonnie]

Can Google bin Android?

I agree with El Reg that Nokia will have to play the proprietary card for a long time to come in order to survive Google's services onslaught. Besides, Google wouldn't go through a costly exercise like Android if it didn't doubt Nokia's intentions. Who knows, maybe Android has already served its purpose. If Symbian truly becomes open source, why should Google bother with a complete OS instead of just releasing a Chrome for Symbian?

[Mike]

menu bar

Click on tools then put a check beside menu bar. I just had to open IE7 to find that out as I'm a Firefox user. FF3 works OK except for Hotmail sign on. Nothing appears in in the email address bar even though I have told it to remember my email address, and then when I hit the first letter of my email address it pops up with an extra letter in it. Kind of annoying but not a deal breaker.

[Michael Adams]

Great insight about the desktop/web app bridge

Brilliant insight about the importance of Chrome being the bridge between the desktop and web applications.

Most people are so focused on "is it better than my current browser" that they don't see the big picture.

I'm going to post a link on my blog.

Michael Adams

www.chromevoice.com

[Chris]

@AdBlock

I've used FF with ad block for as long as I can remember, and only use IE for windowsupdate.

Since starting using Chrome I can't believe how many ad's are on the internet, how many domains need to be accesed just to display a page

This all adds to the page load time, maybe it renders pages quicker but all this fetching bits and bobs from all over the web slows it down, especially when Flash has to start to display an ad

I prefer Chrome to FF, but the internet is better with adblockplus, so until the open source Chromium is developed and adblockplus is made available for it, I shall continue a superior web experience of FF with adblock enabled

Which is a shame cause I really like Chrome

[Anonymous Coward]

Is anyone else amazed?

Amanfrommars has written something intelligible enough for someone to write a reply?

[I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects]

Dumass they come

But I had the wit to try Firefox sans all add ons before kicking off AVG and ultimately Ffx itself.

So I hope this wasn't aimed at me:

"Those of us who have the wit to identify what extension is causing the problem and uninstall it will probably stick with the ultimately configurable Firefox."

But I wouldn't mind knowing how to find the extension causing the problem without uninstalling it, for next time.

[Groz Bat]

Alas,

Chrome has no keyboard shortcuts access my bookmarks.

So its IE for me still.

(FF is too slow to start up)

Still, I can't wait to see Chrome on my phone.

[Steven Raith]

RE:Is anyone else amazed?

"Amanfrommars has written something intelligible enough for someone to write a reply?"

Newbies sometimes get confused - like the ones who complain that Ted Dzubia has a potty mouth and BOFH contains potentially unrealistic circumstances such as cattle prodding the boss, etc etc.

amfM has a blog somewhere, I believe, where the same script puts the same random gibberish out. An infinite number of monkeys, etc...he has posted cohesive stuff before, so I expect there is a human [or martian] operator there, somewhere. Possibly a raving sociopathic human [or martian] but a human [or martian] nonetheless.

Anyway, I have played with Chrome since release, but I can't see it being a killer app unless you use GApps offline, or have a need to. I'm comfortable with FF3 at the moment, and see no need to dump it, and the wonderful AdBlock Plus yet. And seeing as it's open source, how long before someone rips FF apart and works out a process-per-tab instance of it as well? That's Chromes killer app [if it could be described as such] down in one, surely?

Steven R

[piemonte pete]

Accessibility features, What Accessibility features?

Go to Google Chrome Help Center and type "accessibility" into search box and see what you come up with. Zilch,Nada,Niente. Help with accessibility.That's one good use for a menu bar and keyboard shortcuts to all features. Try "save a page" in Chrome without using a mouse. Put me right if I'm wrong but can't be done. Just been reading that Target the US retailer have been fined $6M in a class action for not providing accessibility to blind users. Anyone for a class action vs. "do no evil" Google?

Otherwise, Chrome - seems fast. I'm interested.

Penguin - because it doesn't have a use for a mouse.

[Anonymous Coward]

As with anything from Google...

As with anything from Google there are privacy concerns, From CNet:

***

The auto-suggest feature of Google's new Chrome browser does more than just help users get where they are going. It will also give Google a wealth of information on what people are doing on the Internet besides searching.

Provided that users leave Chrome's auto-suggest feature on and have Google as their default search provider, Google will have access to any keystrokes that are typed into the browser's Omnibox, even before a user hits enter.

What's more, Google has every intention of retaining some of that data even after it provides the promised suggestions. A Google representative told CNET News that the company plans to store about 2 percent of that data--and plans to store it along with the Internet Protocol address of the computer that typed it.

In theory, that means that if one were to type the address of a site--even if they decide not to hit enter--they could leave incriminating evidence on Google's servers.

***

If I was Paris I wouldn't touch this with a ten foot bargepole.

[amanfromMars]

Re RE:Is anyone else amazed?

Steve Raith Posted Friday 5th September 2008 23:02 GMT....

"amfM has a blog somewhere, I believe, where the same script puts the same random gibberish out. An infinite number of monkeys, etc...he has posted cohesive stuff before, so I expect there is a human [or martian] operator there, somewhere. Possibly a raving sociopathic human [or martian] but a human [or martian] nonetheless."

If it helps you any, I could take personal exception to your expressed doubts and share that they are totally unfounded and unwarranted. And it is not random gibberish, it is Read GBIrish. However, should that be of no immediate assistance then please just presently ignore and file to unused rave memory.

I hope that allows for AI NEUKlearer Perspective on such Virtual Matters as they are QuITe Significant ..... and with a Liberal Dose of Freudian Kant, AIMasterClass Tributary in XSSXXXXual Dealings/Feelings/Semantic Web dDevelopments.

And Definitely not for either the Frigid of Thought or the Impotent in Action.

"Amanfrommars has written something intelligible enough for someone to write a reply?" ....By Anonymous Coward Posted Friday 5th September 2008 20:47 GMT

Which would be a Sure Sign that ITs Beta ProgramMIng is Learning ..... with SMARTer DynamIQ Information Processing? Is that a Software Upgrade within ProgramMIng or a Hardware Upgrade within Chip Architecture or a Novel Combination of Both for AI Quantum Leaping into Virtualisation Domain and IT Dominion.

amfM HyperRadioProActivity would of course, Run with the Latter .

[tony72]

@By I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects

"But I wouldn't mind knowing how to find the extension causing the problem without uninstalling it, for next time."

I'm here to insult you, not to help you, dammit! What kind of a man do you thin I am!

However you might take a look at the PortableApps version of Firefox. It will run off a usb stick etc, or from a folder on your hard drive. It keeps it's own profile, settings, plugins etc in it's own directory. This will allow you to run a copy of Firefox that is completely independent from the installed version on your hard disk, and thus immune from installed iffy plugins and any crud left behind by them. Once you've proved that Firefox itself isn't the problem, then you know it's worth manually deleting your old Firefox profile before reinstalling FF again.

[Shoseki]

Am wondering then...

What I am doing right with Firefox... hundreds of tabs open including flash, web apps and youtube and it never slows down... some apps eat a lot of memory but thats hardly an issue.

Purely a software problem? I think not.

Incidently, Chrome is lightening fast, but without extensions, including the all important AdBlock Plus, its never going to happen for me...

[Anonymous Coward]

What are people doing to their Firefox installs??

Mine never crashes and I've got tons of Add-Ons installed (some of which aren't even compatible with FF3). While this certainly slows down loading the browser to begin with, once it's in memory it's still very fast. All Chrome seems to offer is the speed of a default Firefox install without all of the flexibility and versatility that Add-Ons bring. What's the point? And running each tab as a separate process just makes me wonder how stable Google's HTML renderer really is if they need something to make sure crashes don't take the whole browser out.

As for seeing the "script is taking too long to execute" message, surely that's the fault of the person who wrote the slow script and not Firefox for having the temerity to offer a feature to stop badly written scripts? I mean the JS performance on Firefox is blistering compared to IE6 and IE7 and it's still faster than Chrome too.

I just don't see the point of Chrome when you could just install Firefox and not include any Add-Ons, you certainly get faster Javascript with a default Firefox install as well as the Awesome Bar, the side bar and a great integrated RSS reader. Or is it just cool to bash Firefox now?

[Wes]

what a mess

anyone uninstalled chrome then had to clean up the mess it leaves behind?

[Anonymous Coward]

firefox 3.....

crashes daily........

I suppose you are on windows.

Never happens to me (linux)

rg

[I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects]

What this thin people is didding to its Firefox installs loves us.

Start > Search > Ff profile> Ff x off.

Add / remove > uninstall Fffxache

Add / remove > uninstall Flash & etc.

Add / remove > uninstall AVG (after finding a replacement to load offline after uninstall.)

Add / remove > uninstall > Anything else I can think of that Firefox -which sometimes crosses into some start-ups on XP via the Windows registry. (Thanks Bill.)

Reboot > Install Firefox of choice. Find English language add ons.

Wait and see > Add to pot as required.

Or I could just use Opera and K-Melion and not bother -till they start Microshorting out. There is a limit how badly you can mung your code to keep your market cornered and seriously expect it to work with itself. Vista is a prime example of that.

Shot themselves in the foot there. In effect poetic justice stuck back.

I had thought it was that AVG stuff being rejected. Obviously not. My apologies to them. All is not lost. I just got Linux Mag and am about to try the 4 live distros on the disk.

It's time I grew up.

[Anonymous Coward]

Javascript off?

Given how much Javascript Google apps, etc. use, I'm wondering if there even is a way to turn Javascript off in Chrome. Can one of the users let me know? I don't use Google for anything other than searching, and I do nearly all of my browsing with Javascript turned off. It's the cause of the vast majority of browser-based security issues.

[Jove]

Adolescent Gibberish

Could you please avoid terms such as "insightful" - try buying a dictionary.

[Anonymous Coward]

And for web-developers

...it's yet another browser we have to test. Still, it's mostly like Safari in how it operates, but it's still something those of us who use Javascript will have to test with.

The funniest part for me is that I do all my testing on a faked up domain - where the live implementation goes to example.com, all my testing is done on simply example (http://example/). Now, for IE, FF, Opera and Safari I can simply type example and get where I'm going.

Chrome proceeds to ask me if I wanted example.com (after heading to throw the same term through Google as a search query), before putting a little box at the top of the window asking me if I did actually want example. Of course it's then remembered it, but shouldn't it have, you know checked to see if it could reach it, and if not throw it out to a search engine?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's gone Chrome Crackers round here

Right, chrome is part of Firefox.

For example:

chrome://browser/content/browser.xul

zap that into your firefox address bar

So, what is up with the naming - is it the person who wrote chrome who is now writing Chrome for Google. Or did they hire someone who was using Firefox who 'came up' with the name, and is now sniggering at just how far that has gone.

Mozilla are normally fairly hot on their brand, there must be some back story to this.

Chrome in FireFox is the browser really, it is the user interface engine to FireFox.

[moronatwork]

can't believe noone mentioned activeX

What the hell is wrong with Google that they included ActiveX?

about:plugins and the first thing you see is ActiveX.

And I can't believe nobody in the press caught on to that either.

Or is ActiveX so passe that noone wants to talk about it anymore?

[J.Wild]

Krauts Curb Chrome Crawlers

Yesterday the German government issued a warning not to use Chrome for any online use.

http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-09-07-n33.html

I'll stick with FF and adblockplus :)

[Ad Fundum]

I'm sticking with Firefox too

I don't understand how come so many people are having problems with Firefox. I had a couple of crashes on launch day but after wiping clean the add-ons and starting from scratch, it's been fine since.

The really big plus for me is the ability to wipe out all those annoying adverts - not something I see Google subscribing to.

[Steven Raith]

FAO amanfromMars

I love you.

You fill me with pride and hope...plus some other emotions that are weird and deeply confusing.

That is all.

Oh, and I'm bored of Chrome now because of ads. Back to FF+ABP and Opera-sans-JS for me.

Steven R

[sleepy]

Google thanks you.

No menus? Sensible on a mobile browser.

Compiled Javascript? Just what's needed for acceptable performance in a mobile platform that wants to avoid malware, however naive the user.

Google thanks Windows users for their help in beta testing Android's new browser.

[druck]

Chrome faster?

Apart from on javascript intensive pages, such as google's own maps, I've not found it to be faster than FF3 for any of the sites I frequent. Much of this has to be down to lacking adblock+ and noscript, meaning that all the slow to load flash ads, and 3rd party sites doing god knows what with javascript, which were a thing of the past for me using Firefox, make an unwelcome return on Chrome. You certainly notice the poorer experience because of it.

[Dan]

FF3 WorksForMe (TM)

And I've got a profile which has been dragged kicking and screaming through Netscape 4, Mozilla Suite, Seamonkey, and finally Firefox 3.

Perhaps getting rid of plug-ins, deleting any spare files that uninstalled plug-ins leave behind, and re-installing the latest versions will fix things for people having problems.

[bob]

getting extensions working with FF3

I like both FF2 and 3 I have to keep a copy of both, because there are a couple of extensions that I need to use that have not been updated, the author no longer seems to support or updates the extension, I wonder if it's possible to fool FF3 into using it?