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Development, Privacy, and Standards for Chrome

Posted by Soulskill on Sat Sep 06, 2008 09:15 AM
from the chrome-chrome-chrome-chrome-chrome dept.
Google The Internet
Continuing our coverage of Google Chrome, snydeq points out an Infoworld story about looking at the new browser from a developer's perspective, and another about how WebKit should be the focus of development efforts, rather than the browsers that use it. TGdaily notes that Chrome's search box will fetch all types of data, and can be made to display banking information with little effort. ABC and coderrr have slightly more paranoid articles questioning Google's commitment to privacy. NetworkWorld suggests that Chrome's unique process model (explained here) will require the development of new measurement standards.
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[+] Technology: Firefox Gets Massive JavaScript Performance Boost 462 comments
monkeymonkey writes "Mozilla has integrated tracing optimization into SpiderMonkey, the JavaScript interpreter in Firefox. This improvement has boosted JavaScript performance by a factor of 20 to 40 in certain contexts. Ars Technica interviewed Mozilla CTO Brendan Eich (the original creator of JavaScript) and Mozilla's vice president of engineering, Mike Shaver. They say that tracing optimization will 'take JavaScript performance into the next tier' and 'get people thinking about JavaScript as a more general-purpose language.' The eventual goal is to make JavaScript run as fast as C code. Ars reports: 'Mozilla is leveraging an impressive new optimization technique to bring a big performance boost to the Firefox JavaScript engine. ...They aim to improve execution speed so that it is comparable to that of native code. This will redefine the boundaries of client-side performance and enable the development of a whole new generation of more computationally-intensive web applications.' Mozilla has also published a video that demonstrates the performance difference." An anonymous reader contributes links the blogs of Eich and Shaver, where they have some further benchmarks.
Firehose:Developer's Perspective on Chrome by snydeq (1272828)
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  • Webkit is completely safe; Apple is completely good and noble. Google will maintain complete confidentiality within the marketing department [today.com] of whatever the browser accessed concerning your confidential business data, bank account details, medical information and personal preferences in pornography. Apple won't even tell you about you.

      • Even KDE's switching to WebKit, at least as an option. It appears to be sinking into Apple's head that they can 0wn this project, but playing nice with others is more likely to get them something that works well. You know ... open source.

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by David Gerard (12369)

            Eh? Non-starter? Apple used it in Safari because it was technically way easier to work with than Gecko.

            • Non starter (to me) because many websites would never allow you to even get close while using it! For Gecko, the story was very different.

              This situation is similar to Apple's and Microsoft's OS.

              Though many believed Apple's OS was better in many ways, it never really caught on. Other reasons might be behind this too, I agree.

              Simply put, KHTML is better in many ways but "better" is not and has never been a panacea for success.

              • Yeah, I forgot website developers are often idiots ;-p

                I haven't had anything keep me out with Konqueror for a while. Except my bank, which accepts Firefox but not SeaMonkey. o_0

                • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

                  by truthsearch (249536)

                  I'm a web developer and no one in my small company has ever used user-agent detection in the years I've been there. The closest we've ever come is checking for what's available to the JavaScript runtime, but even that is done by checking for the existence of objects and methods rather than seeing what browser is running.

                  With few exceptions (and those mostly only in design considerations), coding to standards has generally worked pretty well in recent years.

            • And a rather close one, too. It is amazing people let Apple get away with rebranding KHTML "Webkit", but hey. As long as it makes the world better, and the less code from Apple the better :P

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by foniksonik (573572)

        Uh... Webkit doesn't have vulnerabiities it has bugs... the browser is what has vulnerabilities. Webkit has no network stack... it can't communicate. All it can do is accept input and render output.

        The javascript engine can have vulnerabilities because of XMLHttp, cookies and filesystem access... but even then it passes all comms through the browser or directly through the filesystem.

  • Say "no" to Google spyware (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If you want to try Chrome, use this version [askvg.com] without the silently installed, never removed and hard to disable 'Google Update'.

  • Two was bad enough (Score:5, Funny)

    by FloydTheDroid (1296743) on Saturday September 06, @09:24AM (#24900407)
    I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror as their managers noticed that this Webkit browser has a couple of percentage points.
  • Yes, it's fast. With a couple of tabs up it also takes up half of my CPU. Browsing three norwegian news sites (ap.no db.no vg.no - all use flash for ads etc.) on my AMD Athlon X2 6000+ uses at least 50% of the CPU and nearly 200 MB of RAM. Try it yourself...
    • Obviously you've never been married then. >=50% resource use is perfectly normal.

    • How's it run on a lesser box? Using available resources to do their job is what apps are supposed to do, after all ...

      • I would mod this up if I could. So Chrome uses 50% of the CPU and some even smaller amount of memory. How much of the CPU is still idle? It wouldn't surprise me if it is ~40%. So most of your CPU power is still being wasted.

        • 200MB memory sounds reasonable too. In my experience of rejuvenating old PCs, a 2000-era Pentium II does just fine doing modern things ... if you put 768 to 1024MB memory in it. Modern browsing is fat. (Even Opera, which achieves its speed mostly by cutting corners, and makes Firefox 2 look solid in memory leaks.)

    • Yes, it's fast.

      FAST?? Are we talking about the same browser?? The only thing Chrome seems to be faster at is javascript; everything else crawls.
  • I would love to see Firefox move to WebKit, it would certainly make life easier for web developers.

    • Wouldn't be able to simply port any extensions though.

    • Nah. They're both good and up-to-date renderers; competition improves quality. The way KDE and Gnome staying separate improves the desktop for both, even though they could happily interchange code.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Your.Master (1088569)

          You know the whole problem with IE started when it became the only rendering engine in town?

          We all benefit if Webkit, KHTML, Gecko, Presto, and yes, even Trident are upgraded.

  • Gears and the storage API (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Simon (S2) (600188) on Saturday September 06, @09:49AM (#24900593) Homepage

    So google stripped [ejohn.org] the HTML 5 standard local storage api from Webkit to use their own implementation Google Gears. Why? The api was already there, and it worked, so they had to strip it out to go with google gears, their own, not w3c compliant. I think they are starting to become evil.

    • Uh, Google is participating wholeheartedly in the HTML5 effort. Which isn't a W3C standard as yet to become compliant with. Also, Ian Hickson, the editor of HTML5, works for Google (and has previously worked for Opera and Mozilla). It's entirely too much in flux to assert that they're trying to break a standard here.

      • Do you have an explanation then why they included google gears instead of Webkits HTML 5 api? Really, just asking. The only reason I can think of is that they want to push their own implementation, but I would gladly be corrected.
        Now, as it stands, web developers who want to use local, client side storage have to test for google gears AND for the webkit api, yet another fragmentation. Looks just like ie6 all over again to me, but as I sad, pleas correct me if I am wrong.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by David Gerard (12369)

          I see no reason not to assume stupidity instead of malice. Remember, they started writing this as a pure Windows application they now have to try to port to Mac and Linux (registry twiddling, DLL hell, etc), rather than writing it cross-platform from the outset - there's copious evidence of stupidity along the way. Developers set free to go "not invented here, I could sooo roll my own better" is hardly unique to Google ...

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by Simon (S2) (600188)

            I see no reason not to assume stupidity instead of malice.

            I do actually. The HTML 5 compatible client side storage API [webkit.org] was lready there. To remove it, they HAD to know it is there. So they stripped it out and replaced it whit google gears. No stupidity there. Any other excuses?

            • Dunno. Have you asked them?

              • No, I don't care that much (at least until Chrome remains at 1%), and it looks very much self-explanatory to me.

                • Re:Gears and the storage API (Score:5, Interesting)

                  by Awptimus Prime (695459) on Saturday September 06, @10:35AM (#24900955)

                  After several real-life friends began working for Google, their views on the company have been extreme. It much reminds me of my time at some early mid-90's startups that, no matter what, said company could do no wrong.

                  With that in mind, I would not be surprised at all to a lot of the Google hype on /., especially when it comes to blindly justifying possible "evils" of this corporate entity, are simply a bunch of Google employees operating independently in their off-time.

                  The drive behind my thoughts on this was one company I worked for ended up having a lot of controversy when multiple employees were doing this, but made the mistake of doing it from the corp lan, and got exposed internally, but when news hit other sites, it was considered some kind of evil campaign funded by said company while actually just frenzied staff operating on their own.

                  • I'm not a Google employee, and per the first post on this story I'm less than enthralled with their habits regarding personal data about people. (I don't see them releasing it, but I do feel uneasy at gathering it all in one place at all.)

                    That said, I have Google employee friends who regard the place in a sensible manner, certainly as much as my Microsoft employee friends do. It's a company, y'know? Nice place to work, highly imperfect, etc.

    • The webkit implementation in Chrome right now is over a year out of date, due to Google using it internally while writing Chrome and not changing the subsystem. So, for example, webkit can do Acid 3 to 100/100, but Google Chrome can't.

      No conspiracy theory here. Wait for Google to update the current webkit version.

    • localStorage was added at 9 February 2008 09:13:12 GMT into HTML 5. Safari 3.1, whose WebKit is used by Chrome, was branched from WebKit ToT in January. Surprisingly, something only added to the spec in February isn't in a January version of an implementation.

  • Bug (Score:4, Insightful)

    by The MAZZTer (911996) <megazzt@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Saturday September 06, @10:01AM (#24900671) Homepage

    Indexing of HTTPS pages is most certainly a bug. Did the poster of the article report it to make Google Chrome a better product or is he just going to complain? It's only in beta.

    And the work around is simple: Use Incognito mode for all sensitive work. Which is what it's for.

    • Re:Bug (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DancesWithBlowTorch (809750) on Saturday September 06, @11:26AM (#24901339)

      It's only in beta.

      I don't accept this excuse from Google, because they have effectively destroyed the concept of a beta version. Even gmail is still in beta, and it's probably among the world's top three email providers now.

      Google, please do official releases of your products. Or, if you really need to childishly continue to call them development versions, invent a new category. Maybe, call them "gamma" versions. You are spoiling a useful metaphor for everyone else.

      • Re:Bug (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Koiu Lpoi (632570) <koiulpoi@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Saturday September 06, @12:21PM (#24901739)
        Maybe I'm a little cynical, but it's an easy excuse for them. It basically strips them of all liability. Did it delete your %PROGRAM_FILES% and post your bank account numbers on a website (theoretical)? No problem for Google! You were using a beta product, you should have known better using a beta for anything important. Does GMail lose all your mail [google.com] (real)? We feel for you man, but it's a beta, nothing we are required to, er, can do.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Tim C (15259)

          We feel for you man, but it's a beta, nothing we are required to, er, can do.

          I wouldn't be too sure about that. I know where you're coming from, and ordinarily I'd agree, but I think if someone wanted to push the point a court would probably be sympathetic to the argument that it really isn't a beta any more - it's been in extensive, public use for far too long, and as another poster points out is probably one of the top 3 email providers. Just slapping on a label that says "this shit might break" doesn't n

      • I don't think anyone really cares, except us who know what "beta" is. Personally I think it should just be understood that if you're online, it's constantly in development. The idea of "product releases" is in itself we might say an out-dated model, if we look at windows and windows update, software is now organic/live, it "lives" and static software will (eventually, probably not in my lifetime) have to go the way of the dodo (i.e. self-configuring, self-healing).

        We want tools that can do better then we

    • Gmail has been in beta for how long now though? Roughly 4.5 years, right? So, will chrome still be in beta half a decade from now? Beta to me starts sounding more like an excuse for why it has bugs. After all, firefox, opera safari all have bugs, but they're not hiding behind the beta excuse. IE on the other hand, should have probably never left beta or alpha for that matter.

  • A thread for each tab is something that people have been requesting in Firefox for a long time now. I suppose architectural issues are what prevent it being implemented, but hopefully now people can see the real benefits that come with it the Moz devs will be encouraged to make the effort too.

    Firefox freezes up a lot when opening multiple tabs, due to having to render and scale images, run Javascript and do the layout. FF3 is faster because it uses hardware acceleration for graphics, but the pauses are stil

  • tagged: chromethischromethat

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