Google polishes another Chrome beta

Google has added support for HTML 5 video in its latest beta for the Windows-only Chrome browser it first released last autumn. Mountain View has also loaded a slew of tweaks into Chrome 3.0.195.4, including a redesigned new tab page and an overhauled Omnibox for searching and inputting internet addresses. Many of the …

[D@v3]

chrome is lovely...

even works well on the win7 RC, but its main failing point is that it is made/distributed by the worlds largest advertising brokers, and as such i can't now, nor i am likely to be able to in the future, use any of the wonderful add-ons that i have rigged up to firefox, namely addblock, flashblock and RequestPolicy.

Which is a shame, coz i do like it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Cunning Plan

I think the OSX and Linux versions will remain missing for a while yet.

What I am thinking their plan is, is to get the Windows users comfortable with Chrome. To release Chrome for Linux or Mac would give away some of their intentions for ChromeOS. If ChromeOS is to have an impact, I think they are planning to encorage Windows users to switch. Releasing Chrome for Linux or OSX would give an early advantage to, certainly the Linux Distros, beat ChromeOS to some punches.

Google don't want to risk a fight with Apple yet, although they seem to be gearing up for it. Their main fight will be against Windows though, and they seem to be putting a lot of effort into that fight, and not bothering about smaller user bases, yet......

[Patrick O'Reilly]

Not just Windows

Google Chrome isn't just available on Windows anymore.

There is an almost complete version of Chromium available for Linux and I've been using it under Ubuntu without any issues for a few months now.

Despite warning on the start screen that enabling plugin support could cause crashes, I've had no issues at all. Flash loads and plays fine, so do media files.

For Ubuntu 9.04 it can be installed from APT using the following repository:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

[jemm]

Chrome Beta for Linux

Well, my Google Chrome Beta in Linux reports itself as 3.0.196.0.

And html5 video works fine.

[LCD]

Not Windows only

Actually Google Chrome is available for Ubuntu Linux too, and although it is only a "Developer Build", it works quite well

[A J Stiles]

If Chrome is really Open Source .....

..... then why does it only build on certain targets?

Surely the whole idea of Open Source is that you get all the Source Code, and so can make it build on any target?

[Pierre Cazenave]

@LCD

Not only Ubuntu Linux, but ANY Linux that meets the criteria. I have it running on Slackware-current, for example, and it works fine.

[Ty]

Hello?

Chrome is based on Apple's Webkit.

We already have Chrome - it's called Safari.

D'oh.

Safari in Snow Leopard will have all the sandboxing Chrome does.

[R.E.H.]

@A J Stiles

Oh, so you can take code for Windows and just run it through GCC on Mac OS and it will just work, eh?

The actual reason that Chrome is so slow to be released on Mac OS X is due to problems implementing their one-process-per-tab architecture on OS X. You see, Windows has no problem allowing a window from one process to be parented to a window from another process, thus how the content from a tab process can be rendered within the Chrome window. But Mac OS X, as of 10.5, doesn't support that.

So, they've had to rearchitect that part of the system for the Mac port. Therefore, delay.

But, I'm sure if you were on the team, they'd be done by now.

[Ian Johnston]

Feature creep

Look, we've made a really fast browser. It doesn't do much, but it's really fast.

<time passes>

For version 2 we've added a few of the things you missed. It's a wee bit slower, but still fat.

<time passes>

Version 3 is ready. OK, it's quite a lot slower, but it now does almost half of what you'd expect

<eventually>

OK, here's version 10. Does everything you want and is hardly any slower than the competition.

[Anonymous Coward]

@A J Stiles

The problem is with system calls. Any program - open source or otherwise - that makes use of OS-specific system calls will not compile and run on any other OS.

For example, a program written for the iPhone will not compile for a WinMo phone since it will make heavy use of the iPhone API.

The difficulty in porting code written for one OS to another OS is directly related to the difference in the available system calls.

[Wrenchy]

Re: Hello?

> Chrome is based on Apple's Webkit.

Apple's Webkit which is based on Konqueror's KHTML (GPLv2).

The toe bone connected to the heel bone,

The heel bone connected to the foot bone,

The foot bone connected to the leg bone,

The leg bone connected to the knee bone........

[Anonymous Coward]

google toolbar and chrome...

if google toolbar worked in chrome I would use chrome... but their own toolbar does not work in their own browser.

[A J Stiles]

@ Ty

And Apple's Webkit is based on KHTML, which is the rendering engine of my favourite browser. So if I'm running Konqueror from within a chroot, have I pretty much got Chrome and sandboxing already too?

[James Hughes 1]

@ A J Stiles

Quite right. You go off, and recompile it for Mac (or any other OS) then. Wish I had thought of that.....

Try looking up the definition of Open Source. Then Operating system, then Compiler, then GUI, then....some other stuff. Eventually, you might have enough information to understand why your post was a little off the mark, as you obviously don't at the moment.