Latest Chrome beta fastest ever - again

Google claims the latest beta of its Chrome browser is a third faster than the previous release. The claimed improvement is based on V8 and SunSpider benchmarks. Other benefits include the ability to synchronise bookmarks and browser preferences on different machines via your Google account. Developers said they'd bowed to …

[Blubster]

It would be nice

If they also included a pop-up blocker as standard too but it's like my chances of being declared the next Pope - it ain't going to happen.

[Craigness]

Now I'm confused

I thought you were infallible, your Holiness. Try "Content Settings".

I'd like to see better cookie handling. In particular, the ability to select sites from which cookies are not automatically deleted when the browser is closed. It's been in FF for ages.

[Pieter Vos]

@It would be nice

I'm surprised they even host the adblock plugin on their site considering they make their money off ads

[Anonymous Coward]

eh?

Chromes always had a pop up blocker built in...

http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=95472

[Gary F]

I disagree

I think the idea is to choose your own pop up blocker extension. That way you decide how agressive it is and what rules it follows by which blocker you choose install.

[Gerhard Mack]

agreed

Chrome's throwback to the 90s cookie controls are the single thing keeping me off of Chrome right now.

Only thing I hate worse are the cookie controls in Flash.

[AndrueC]

The other thing..

..is the history view. It should group URLs by site to reduce space needed. Quite often each page (three or four screens long) only holds a single day's surfing.

[Macka]

Agreed

I don't use adblocker but I do use FlackBlock, as I want to reward and encourage companies who choose alternatives to flash for their adds.

[Josco]

1/2 mb broadband?

Doubt it'll make much difference to my browsing experience whilst on a miserable 1/2 mg broadband connection.

[Matthew Anderson]

va va vooom

It makes a huge difference to my browser experience and I am on 512 also. It takes a split second for Chrome to load, compared with 3+ seconds for Firefox and that's a fresh install on a new laptop. The previous install of FF with plugins took around 6 seconds to load. It may not sound like much but I do not like waiting around for a bloated browser to load, which Firefox has become. Especially when I am trying to work efficiently.

Everything loads smooth and fast, i can have over 100 tabs open and it does not interfere with my browsing experience. The same cannot be said for IE or FF.

Eventually we will have a broader range of tools to plugin and we shall see how this affects performance, for now though you could not drag me away from it.

[AndrueC]

You what?

Half a milligram?

[Pink Duck]

It would be nice if...

javascript:alert(new Date().toLocaleString()) showed the date in my locale format, rather than the browser's country of origin.

[Karnka]

errrr

I've been using Chrome for quite some time now and I'm sure it's always had a decent popup blocker. It certainly has now...

[Anonymous Coward]

Live bookmarks

Until they introduce live bookmarks (Firefox's RSS implementation), I won't make the switch. If you'd also like to see this feature in Chrome, make your voice heard here:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Chrome/thread?fid=608d5d3a7a182e8400047e16e039486d&hl=en

[Anonymous Coward]

In response to Pope Blubster

http://img245.imageshack.us/img245/8532/chromef.jpg

[JAK 1]

webkit

any chance they've sorted the webkit issue when you are copying and pasting code?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not fastest for me...

Opera 10.53 is faster.

Dual-Core 6600, 2GB RAM, Win7

@Josco

Sounds like you also need to give Opera a shot, the Turbo feature is ideal for slow connections, it compresses images server-side, so pages load much quicker (I get 6x speed increases).

[Blubster]

@In response to Pope Blubster #

Ahem.....

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Chrome/thread?tid=1b94365a745d0c6b&hl=en

Just to prove I'm not the only one

[Anonymous Coward]

Geolocation 1984

If you tolerate Geolocation, they will one day come for you in the middle of the night.

[Richard Lloyd]

Still no Linux final release

We all know Google's fetish for keeping products in beta, but it's getting beyond a joke with the Linux version of Chrome. The Windows release went from beta in Sep 2008 to first stable release in Dec 2008 - a very short (for Google) beta period of only 3 months.

It then took until June 2009 for Google Chrome "developer previews' (alphas?) to appear for Mac OS X and Linux, to be followed a full 6 months later by betas for those 2 platforms. Yes, a full year on from the Windows release, Mac OS X and Linux were finally in, er, beta status.

Roll on another 5-6 months and where are we? Well, very comically, the Mac OS X and Linux final releases are nowhere to be seen - a full 18 months after the Windows final version came out. In fact, they've moved from being a 4.X beta to being a 5.X beta with no final release inbetween, which is starting to make their schedule a laughing stock on non-Windows platforms.

Officially, Google Chrome has only ever had Windows stable releases in its existence and therefore I still consider it a Windows-only browser until Google finally get their dog-slow act together and release a final version on other platforms. Opera are moving this way too (where's my post 10.10 release on Linux - delayed for many months compared to Windows!) - it does look like the only browser that's getting simultaneous releases across the 3 main platforms is Firefox and that's why I still prefer it to the rest.

[James Hughes 1]

I've been using the beta

For months on Ubuntu without any problems. Don't think it has ever crashed/misbehaved tbh. Even with all those Flash driven porn sites.

Only pain is not having adblock in porn mode - but sounds like that is now fixed. Just need to wait for the Linux beta.Oh, hang on...

[Jolyon Smith]

Nice Flash, shame about the ERR_UNSAFE_PORT

This latest beta is unusable as it appears to have regressed the ERR_UNSAFE_PORT bug from 2008 that renders it unusable with sites running on many non-standard ports, as is often the case with internal sites running over internal, company LAN's, for example (such as the bug tracking system we use here).

Fortunately ChromePlus contains all the Chromium goodness that Chrome has, without the Google imposed limitations, and adds a number of goodies into the bargain (integrated IE Tab, gestures, far more options/configurability)...

[delaneya]

Speed

It’s all good and well to say we have increased the speed by 50%. If the increase is from 2ms to 1.5ms. Do you think you will notice the difference?