Chrome - Google's new browser

[bradavon]

The interface on Windows Live Maps is better plus you can press "Bird's Eye" which links into Live Earth (nothing to install though) which makes finder what you're after so much better, having proper photos to navigate around. Here's the link:

http://maps.live.com/

Windows Live Maps hasn't got anything like Street View though but seeing as that only works in certain areas it's less useful to me plus being so zoomed in, actually makes it harder to find somewhere IMO.

I tend to use Google Maps for quick checks but Windows Live Maps when I want to search properly.

[gasteropod]

I've just tested them both for a venue I went to in Manchester called the Night & Day Cafe (went to see 4 Japanese acts, immense), and Google wins due to Street View, it's amazing how I've just virtually gone down the street that I went down last week haha and now I'm looking straight at the cafe, mental.

[bradavon]

Street View is only in selected cities, Microsoft Virtual Earth has significantly greater coverage plus being further out it's easier to navigate. Street View isn't much use if unless you only visit big cities, such as Manchester.

That's not taking anything away from Street View but being much closer you get no perspective. Did you try the "Bird's Eye" option (Virtual Earth)? Google should add that too, they have their own Virtual Earth after all. Personally I found Street View dificult to navigate.

Plus Street View is only recent, prior to that Google had nothing over Live Maps, although agreed it is cool.

p.s - What Japanese acts?

[gasteropod]

De De Mouse, which was a little guy in a trilby hat playing what he described as 'fucking sexy Japanese dance music!', it was really pleasant stuff and you could see he was really enjoying it, but he wanted every to dance and no one was quite ready yet haha.
http://www.myspace.com/dedemouse

Then Riddim Saunter which were a very energetic band playing ska type music, dead fun to watch, they were jumping around all over the place and into the crowd, the drummer constantly had a mad grin on his face and there was a guy playing a trumpet or something, I regret not buying one of their CDs now.
http://www.myspace.com/riddimsaunter

Then a multi-instrumentalist called Tucker who plays all sorts of stuff on stage by using loops and stuff, rubbing his head against a petrol can to make a backing and stuff, and he ended up setting his keyboard on fire, jumping down into the crowd to dance like a maniac to his drum 'n' bass, then did a handstand off his keyboard and accidentally kicked a light down
http://www.myspace.com/tuckerelectone

(This pic isn't from the gig I went to)



The final act was the one I was looking forward to most, a kind of dance/electro band called 80kidz, their album is sooo good and I had a jolly good dance to them haha. The girl on the keyboard was hot, and my mate thought the bassist was the 'most handsome guy I've ever seen' hahaha
http://www.myspace.com/80kidz


Then, because it was a Sunday night (and we'd been out all night the previous night after another gig), we just headed into Chinatown to a nice Cantonese restaurant and I ate like a monster because I was drunk, first time I've had squid!

[bradavon]

Sorry Gas I did read your post.

There's an interesting point of view here, saying that ACID3 isn't the ratified standard but what it "could" be, ACID2 is the current standard and IE8 passes it:

http://talkback.zdnet.com/5208-12554-0. ... ID=1234921

[gasteropod]

Acid3's the one I use because it actually does itself and grades your browser, rather than your having to compare two images yourself.

[bradavon]

I'm not really bothered. IE6 still renders most pages correctly, even if it wrote it's own rule book.

[gasteropod]

Why would you use IE6 rather than IE 7 or 8?

[bradavon]

I wouldn't . I meant, any even old browsers still handle the web pretty much fine. In other words, I'm don't really care if they pass or fail.

[bradavon]

It looks like Google are adding Extensions to Chrome 4.0 (it's currently version 3.0). The Beta builds here, support it: http://www.filehippo.com/download_google_chrome/

There's a really decent website here: http://www.chromeextensions.org/
There's even a decent Adblocker: http://www.chromeextensions.org/appeara ... g/adblock/


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I won't be switching any time soon but there's no denying Chrome has a really clean interface, has a lightweight memory footprint and is super fast. The most important extension by far in Firefox is Adblock Plus. It's great to see Chrome is getting it too. Extensions are the number one reason I'm sticking with Firefox but will be keeping an eye on Chrome. It's so ridiculously fast at loading pages!

Given how utter shite IE is I'm going to install Chrome on to my families PCs. Obviously version 3.0, they can get an Adblocker when version 4.0 is released.

I've never bothered before as IE comes with Windows but it's so rubbish, it's about time they switched (IE8 is even clunkier than IE7). They don't need the power of Firefox but do need a lightweight, efficient, fast browser. There's no need for Safari to exist on Windows (even if there's actually not much wrong with it) and Opera has a too high learning curve.

IMO:

1. Advanced users/Techies: Mozilla Firefox
2. Newbies/End-users: Google Chrome

IMO in order of best to worst:

1. Mozilla Firefox 3.5
2. Opera 10
3. Google Chrome 3 - But this could easily jump to number 1 or 2 when Extensions take off!
4. Safari 4
5. Internet Explorer 8 - It's crazy how clunky, slow (browsing and operation) and inefficient this is. Especially given how many people use it.

[bradavon]

Chrome 4.0 will also support Linux and MAC OS X!

Given how good Google are at innovation, I can definitely see myself switching to Chrome in the future.

[gasteropod]

I've been on version 4.0.223.16 for a while because I have the beta version which always stays ahead of the standard release, this one doesn't have extensions.

[bradavon]

That build's old:

http://www.filehippo.com/download_google_chrome/

4.0.249.11 looks to be the latest. I know you didn't try Extensions in Firefox but if you do in Chrome, you'll see how damn handy they are. Some form of Adblocking is essential.

I used Chrome whilst in India (not all machines had Firefox installed and IE is shit, especially when they only had IE6) and was damn impressed. It's not up there with Firefox (because of Extensions and the amount of general customising you can do) but loved:

1. How insanely fast it is, faster than Firefox.
2. It's low memory footprint.
3. Quick loading time.
4. Clean interface.
5. How quickly you work your way around it. The main reason Opera has never taken off properly, it's older than both Chrome and Firefox by some margin.
6. Searching of Google directly in the address bar. Why isn't this standard on all browsers? You can configure Firefox to do something similar, using "Smart Keywords" but it's not as efficient. It is more powerful, you can configure Firefox to search IMDB, Wikipedia, whatever from the address bar.

because I have the beta version which always stays ahead of the standard release

That's why it's called "beta" .

[gasteropod]

I mean it automatically updates itself

One thing that annoys me about Chrome is that for every file you just want to open off the net, it saves it, is it possible to just have it use temporary internet files like IE? For instance whenever I want to check the bus times, you click a link which opens a .pdf document, but Chrome makes me save it before I open it every time.

[bradavon]

I mean it automatically updates itself

Don't all versions?

One thing that annoys me about Chrome is that for every file you just want to open off the net, it saves it, is it possible to just have it use temporary internet files like IE?

Can you not go to the Bus Timetable website using IE? That seems like a simple workaround. It's only one site. I use IE still occasionally, some sites for instance simply work better using ActiveX.

I found that annoying too but I believe it's a security thing. A dumb one, as Saving and "then" Running a file with Malware is frankly just as dangerous but I believe that's the logic.

In Firefox certain file types (such as EXE) can only be Saved, whilst others you can Open or Save (including PDF). I'm not a fan of Chrome's Tab window for showing what's downloading. It's so over the top. The small Firefox window, just showing what's downloading is better. Hopefully an extension will come to alter Chrome. There's a Firefox extension to open all file types to have both Open/Save but I don't bother using it. EXEs I almost always want to save first.

BTW why did you dislike Firefox? You don't have to bother with Extensions.

p.s - Safari works in the same way as IE btw, Run or Save. I think for all file types.

[gasteropod]

I had various niggles with Firefox that I can't really recall.

[bradavon]

Fair enough.

"Out of the box" I'd say Chrome beats Firefox. Except where a website requires a plugin and Firefox is more likely to be supported.

Any idea if Bookmark Sync (new with v4.0 I believe) syncs bookmarks across Chrome installations (e.g - laptop and desktop) or does it sync from Chrome to just Gmail? The Xmarks extension in Firefox is incredibly useful, so it's good to see this part of the standard Chrome installation (like Opera).

[bradavon]

I've been using Chrome 4 and Opera 10 recently. Both are damn impressive.

Chrome now has Bookmark Sync and Extensions. Bookmark Sync allows you to easily sync bookmarks across PCs but unlike Xmarks there is only one profile, which for me means Xmarks is better (I have slightly different work related bookmarks at work). Extensions aren't as comprehensive as Firefox's but it's progressing, there's an Adblocker (if you change nothing else, install the Chrome Adblocker extension). Which should be standard in all web browsers! Firefox really need Bookmark Sync built-in.

Opera 10 has loads of cool features (including Bookmark Sync) but also some dumb features like Opera Unite (that allows you to stream your content to friends, how is this relevant in a web browser?). It also has Mail, Chat and Notes features (in a web browser?). It's "Opera Turbo" function is such a fantastic idea, on slow connections it compresses pictures (in real time), so they download quickly. You can leave it on all the time too, to speed up page (but pictures look a bit pants, being heavily compressed).

IMO, now in order:

Techies:

* Firefox - For it's sheer ability to tweak, configure and extension support.

Newbies and those who just want an efficient/lightweight/fast browser:

* Chrome 4 - Out of the box, I'd struggle to say which is better, Opera 10 or Chrome 4 (both seem as fast as each other) but Extensions means Chrome wins. In particular the Adblocker (Opera's has no ability to auto-update, you have to manually download an INI file or block as you find the ads).

For what it's worth, I'd say Opera 10 beats Chrome 3.

Overall - For me!:

1. Firefox 3.6
2. Chrome 4
3. Opera 10

And much lower down:

4. Safari 4 - It's not a patch on the above three but it still beats IE, only because it's faster though. Like IE it's lacking in many features (the graphical live thumbnail of bookmarks and history is neat though). It also looks and feels very much like Apple software, so takes some getting used to. No Adblocker!
5. Internet Explorer 8 - Frankly way down the list. Utter crapness! The Accelerators are useful though. All the above are significantly faster. No Adblocker!

Opera Mobile is easily the best Mobile Web Browser though (currently on Windows Mobile but Android soon), even beating the iPhone's Safari Mobile. It has a really neat feature, whereby it cleverly caches websites on their servers, so they load much quicker.

[bradavon]

Chrome 4.1 has been released (if you use Chrome you'll probably already have it, with it's auto-update feature) and now has Auto-translate. Go to a website, not in your default language and Chrome will offer to translate it. It works really well.

[bradavon]

Has anyone spotted an annoying bug in Chrome 3.0, 4.0 and probably 4.1. Try this:

1. Have Chrome running
2. Close Chrome
3. Open it again, as soon as it disappears

You will find all your Extensions are gone and all settings are back to defaults. Bookmarks and History are retained. If you do the above but open Task Manager and wait for all Chrome.exe processes to disappear before re-opening it, the problem doesn't appear.

It doesn't matter how many tabs you have open or what websites you're on. You can even have just opened Chrome from fresh, so it's purely just loaded the "New Tab Page". Thankfully there are very few Chrome settings I change from defaults but extensions being wiped is most annoying.

You may ask, why would you do this? If it crashes for example and you need to End Task Chrome or you close it accidentally, I want to be back in Chrome asap. I've seen this on 2 (maybe 3) PCs now. All are running Windows XP SP3 x86 btw (one of them is still on SP2). I've not installed it on my own PC. I use Firefox.

Otherwise I continue to be impressed with Chrome, it's coming along nicely.

[bradavon]

Can someone try please. If you're worried about losing your settings, look here:

http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bi ... wer=165189

I suggest copying the folder (i.e - copy/paste in the same folder so it makes a "copy of google") and then trying. If you lose settings, delete the "google" folder and rename the "copy of google" back to "google".

Basically it's in:

2000/XP: C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Google
Vista/W7: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Google

Thanks

[gasteropod]

What's the point? Just don't open the browser straight away again lol

[bradavon]

A: Regardless, it's still possibly a bug.
B: It shouldn't happen.
C: I posted reasons why on the previous page.
D: Chrome is installed on my Mum's PC, she's not one to reopen apps quickly, yet the problem has happened for her a few times still.
E: Now the main real-world reason: What if Chrome crashes and doesn't close properly (stuck in the background)? We all know this happens with all Apps from time to time. You won't know it's running, you open Chrome and the problem occurs.

Basically if you open Chrome, whilst it's still running in the background the problem occurs.

That's why!

[bradavon]

Anyone?

[bradavon]

I've been trying this at work and cannot get it to fail.

The process does close incredibly quickly on my work PC (it's a very clean PC), so it could be I physically cannot open it quicker than it can close but I've tried a few times (by using a shortcut key and Task Manager open) and reckon I'm opening it, whilst it's still running.

I'm now wondering if Kaspersky Internet Security is at fault (installed on all PCs I look after). I'll try disabling it and see if the problem still occurs. It automatically sets whether an App is Trusted, Limited or Fully Restricted. It rarely gets this wrong but it may need adjusting slightly.