A New Browser Is Coming: Google Chrome [Update]
Today some informations about Google’s new open source browser called Google Chrome came up. First published as a comic on Blogoscoped.com and confirmed by Kara Swisher, Google Chrome will be a WebKit-based browser with a new JavaScript Virtual Machine called V8 and with Google Gears included.
Google Chrome has a different UI-Design compared to other browsers especially regarding tabs. Google Chrome tabs will be on top of the address bar so every tab has its own address bar. Beside that every tab will run its own process to improve stability.
Using WebKit as its rendering engine, Google Chrome will have all the cool WebKit stuff included like CSS Gradients, CSS Masks and the CSS3 property text-shadow, which I’ve covered earlier in detail.
Google Chrome will be optimized for use with web applications and, instead of using WebKit’s new core JavaScript engine Squirrelfish, Google decided to use a new, multi-core processor optimized JavaScript virtual machine developed by the V8-team in Denmark.
More informations on the features leaked can be found in the Google Blogoscoped article or in the corresponding scanned comic.
Update: Google’s official blog was updated with informations about the new browser project. They say the first beta of Google Chrome will be released tomorrow just for Windows while versions for Mac OS X and Linux will follow soon.
Update 2: Google Chrome can now be downloaded for Windows from google.com/chrome. Google also posted a feature page for Chrome.
Update 3: Google Chrome seems to have problems with some of my transparent PNGs:
Update 4: There are some nice articles about various aspects of Chrome available in the web:
- Matt Cutts tries to prevent paranoia and explains when Google Chrome talk home.
- Gina from lifehacker.com dissects Google Chrome’s Full List of Special about: Pages.
- Google explains their priorities regarding different Platforms.
- The Chromium Developer Documentation is available too.
- And it seems Google cut out some features of WebKit like text-shadow.
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poor Firefox… they’re gonna take more and more of a hit as Chrome gains in popularity
finally, we will see interesting thing in the future,
a browser war.
Something important to know about Chrome. Read the contract carefully!! This was taken from the user agreement earlier today.
11. Content license from you
11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.
11.2 You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.
11.3 You understand that Google, in performing the required technical steps to provide the Services to our users, may (a) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media. You agree that this license shall permit Google to take these actions.
11.4 You confirm and warrant to Google that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the above license.
The really interesting part is this…
By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.
This may have just been for the beta or trial versions, but still. As a photographer you need to watch for this stuff or you can get screwed.
Hi rofiq setiawan, I would see it more as an web-application-platform battle
It isn’t a war in my opinion, but I guess Chrome will set a lot of impulses to the other browser dev teams to optimize their browsers for web applications.
Hi Triumph, also stumpled across this weird part. But if I remember right this part is in every Google user agreement. I asked a lawyer about this and he said it’s just nonsense and Google would never find a court for this. But who knows what funky laws will come in the future… Would say these parts of the Google user agreements show us exactly what Google wants the laws to be.
Google Chrome is really fast!
Now I can sort 200,000 records inside of Browser (Chrome) just in 1 sec. (Faster than Microsoft Excel):
http://www.ardentedge.com/ex_if.htm
Triumph, the user agreement was obviously a copy and paste from other Google services like Google Docs. Google actually admitted to this and retracted the above user agreement. If you download and install now, you will still see this agreement, but they are in the works of changing it.
Anyways, I like Google Chrome so far… I will admit though it keep freezing on me, which I do not like. I’m not even putting it under stress at all (hardly any flash, only a couple of tabs, etc.). I just don’t get it. They will have to resolve this pretty soon if they are going to give any other browser a run for their money. I’m still using Firefox! They will have to win me over!
Google is updating these changes very rapidly
Now div issue fixed in new browser.
Google is great but I am always reluctant to try something new until it has been out for a while. I love firefox, and I hate to try something new when firefox has been so good to me. One of these days I will get enough courage to test it out. Thanks for the info.
Thanks for all your comments. I’m still waiting for Google to fix the more-than-one-transparent-png-stuff-aligned-with-z-index-stuff which is affecting the correct display of my header. As long this isn’t fixed Google Chrome feels like IE6 to me in terms of images with transparency
love this browser it’s fast loading opens immediately in a flash with the speed of light.