Chrome 12 hits stable -- Performance, Security, Privacy improved

Google Chrome Blog: A new stable release of Chrome: safer and snazzier

And just in case anyone has the urge to say something about privacy:
Preventing paranoia: when does Google Chrome talk to Google.com?

 

So what? I still think the (mostly non-existent) printing capabilities of Chrome suck. Some day Chrome may be a useful browser, but right now it isn't.

 

Here comes the Google fan.

 

Your browser choice is based on printing capabilities? Interesting.

What about cloud print?

 

lolololololololol

Hungry man is right though

 

printing? still? in 2011?

 

When you work in the publishing industry, ability to print is a must.

 

well, but you don't publish your webpages to print, normally. for that, you have your publishing software, then. we have, at least.

 

Well 3d acceleration is definitely improved. I see big difference chrome 11 in FishIE tank

 

Did I say that? It isn't, but printing is a functionality that is sometimes needed. Believe it or not, a single sheet of paper is a lot easier to carry than any kind of digital/electronic equipment. Plus, I hear them newfangled tablets don't like being folded up too much, either...

Huh?

Yep, of course, see above. There's many, many reasons for wanting to print something out every now and then. Granted, that doesn't happen too often these days, but if you want it, and your browser only produces a completely useless printout that displays a beautiful scrollbar on a frame that happens to not fit on your sheet of paper, you're going to be disappointed. Let me tell you this: A scrollbar on a printed hardcopy has very limited functionality.

 

printing has zero need around here anymore. we even forbid it in company. just send the link over as a mail. printed stuff == outdated stuff. invalid the moment it's on paper.

but yeah, it's hard, very very hard, to get people to stop doing it.

i haven't printed anything in the last ten years except for stuff where it was needed (letters i had to sign, stuff like that.. in essense, when ever i had to operate with someone oldschool).

never had the need to have something "on paper". i never gained functionality on it. what ever got scribbled on there had to be replicated in the original document afterwards anyways. so i prefer to edit right there (that's why my laptop is a portable 12" one).

but most aren't yet at that point where paper, to them, is less useful everywhere than a digital form. i don't have real books anymore, too.

but i have to check out the printing functionality of chrome now, just for you i agree with the printed scrollbar. but it would be fun to have it in big size, actually. and then glue it onto reallife things


edit: well, this page printed perfectly fine. you have an actual example?

edit: so did some news pages i've tested.

are you sure your failed prints are not some ie6 compatible companyspecific intranetpages that are not really html at all? those fail dramatically on chrome, but that's only logical..

 

Pirx, Cloud print is Chrome's ability to send print jobs to other computers and have them automatically print for you.

 

i still print stuff off when i need it else where
when i don't need or want PC/laptop with me etc
so would be useful to me

 

Well when is Chrome 12 going to be available for download? I'm loving this browser....light on resources, fast and very very clean.

Mr. Mysterious

 

yeah, chrome prints fine for me. Guess it's a formatting thing. Of course, I'm a "digital (almost) only" kinda guy too. Chrome is fast. That's why I use it. That's "functional" enough for me

 

Well, it is true that this is in fact a company-specific intranet page, however, the issue is not with their HTML. IE produces the exact same cr@p printout by default. However, I can tell IE to just print a selected frame (which, nine times out of ten, is what you want anyway), which produces the desired output. Chrome does not have that option, so you're out of luck.

I see no difference in speed between browsers in my usage. If anything, IE starts up and loads pages faster than Chrome on my machine.

 

if you right click the frame with the content you want, and chose print from there, does it change? never tried, but could be.

other than that, i just noticed that chrome now has a beautiful print-preview page when printing. i'm on 13.0.782.13 now, Developer build.

and no, nine times out of ten, i don't want to print a selected frame, as frames are deprecated, and should not be in use at all anymore. so do the real favor for everyone: punch the ones creating crappy intranet solutions really really hard.


oh, and it prints some framed pages very nicely so far. so it stays, the fault is the crappy page that follows none of the rules that exist since decades now. typical intranet crap i have to work with, too, daily.

 

Nope, same result.

That may all be true, I really don't care. If I need that page printed, I need it printed, that's all.

 

If Chrome and IE9 have a noticeable speed difference you're likely using incredibly outdated hardware or you have some kind of malware installed. Every modern browser is fast.

As for the privacy thing, I doubt people actually think Chrome is recording their keystrokes and putting them up for auction (something Firefox is more likely to be doing) I think the concern comes from two things:

1. Google is the largest advertising company in the world and their primary method of income is ad based (ie: they make money by annoying people, licensing software is a means to an end, not their actual business).

2. Google tries hard, in sneaky ways, to get Chrome onto your system and become your default browser without you really noticing. Lots of popular free programs come bundled with a Chrome installer and I've heard many stories of people unaware they've installed a new default browser.

There's also the process Google's gone through to slowly make it more and more difficult to get Windows Chromium binaries.

EDIT: and let's not forget there are ads built right into Chrome now. Sure they can be disabled - but what the hell, Google?

 

yes i agree, i have never found IE9 or 8 for that matter slow
and when i used so called faster browers i havent found them faster at all.
guess it depends on what your using it for or how many tabs you have open.
i never have more that 5-6 tabs open at anyone time, but have heard of people with 45+ tabs open lol how that can be faster than just opening a bookmark when u need a site i dont know, must take them longer to look though the tabs than just ckicking on a bookmark

 

Ads built into Chrome? o_o what?

edit: As for speed differences between the two I'm not going into that.

 

Notice how the first thing you see when you install Chrome is a suggestion you buy Angry Birds? That's called an advertisement.

 

I haven't noticed that because I haven't installed Chrome in about a year probably.

That's not much of an ad. Is that the only case you can come up with? I mean, suggesting that you use your browser to play the most popular mobile game is not quite the same as having some 3rd party player buying ad-space to give you some irrelevant product info.

 

Chrome 13 confirmed to format your hard disk and forward personal information to Eastern European gangsters.

"I personally don't keep a lot of important data on my local PC, Google has a lot of great cloud services so hopefully this will push more people to use that. It's great Google is helping everyone have more free disk space. The organized crime connection is just so Google can help track how banking information is spread over their network so I don't have a problem with it. It's not like Google is sending guys to your house to rough you up."
-Hungry Man

 

Is that really your response?

And is your complain of "ads" really just a one-time only ad that shows how to use the product to play one of the most popular games?

Please try again.

 

I'm not complaining about anything. I like Chrome a lot and I use it everyday. I was explaining where users' privacy concerns about Chrome possibly come from.

and also pointing out how you're well established as the Chrome Defense Force

 

If Firefox ever gets to be as good as Chrome I'll happily be the Firefox defense force.

A single ad does not have anything to do with privacy. In fact, no ads really have anything to do with privacy.

Most people get Chrome confused with AdSense or DoubleClick, which do track you (you can opt out) and so they think the browser collects info on you when, of course, it does not.

 

Ads have plenty to do with privacy. Ads within webpages are increasingly using their own cookies nowadays. Those 3rd party cookies in some cases then keep log of where you've been several clicks/pages/days later.

The entire opt out idea is ridiculous because it requires keeping a cookie on your computer which relays your ip & browser string to the cookie's author. It also requires companies to opt in to the program, so you can opt out of their revenue generation methods. The opt out doesn't come close to covering all the bases.

The solution is..
If you use Chrome, press ctrl+shift+delete at the end of a session and clear browsing data.

If you're using Firefox, set it to permanent private browsing mode.

Disable 3rd party cookies regardless of the browser. If you really want to step it up, use a hosts file or adblock method.

No cookies in the cache means no tracking, spam, personalized advertisements and other crap. This of course, doesn't affect flash cookies which you'll have to regulate separately or simply turn off.

Also Hungry Man, I'm curious, why would you expect Firefox to collect and share personal information but not Chrome? Mozilla is funded in the majority by Google and FF allows users to remove all Google strings in the about:config settings. I would pitch Firefox as the more secure and private browser compared to Google Chrome (but not necessarily some of the other Chromium browsers) if it were my call.

 

A bit OT, but I found this java scrip function to be very helpful when I am printing from a web page in Chrome. The Printliminator

 

hammer, meet screw.

you should care. you use the wrong tool for the job. this is a specific application that you use, made for ie6 or something, and obviously best for that.

chrome is a web browser, tailored for the WEB (not the intranet, it normally has massively different rules. much more proprietary, much less modern). and it excels at the web (but ie9 caught up nicely, gladly. only thanks to chrome, though).

it works great on any reasonably normal webpages (anything frame is not considered normal by today anyways, btw, for a multitude of reasons). it renders them fine, it prints them fine, does it all very well.

that's how you should judge chrome.

it's like saying word sucks, it's terrible at writing my c# code in it. i even have to manually compile then from the command line. word isn't made for coding. it's made for writing documents. both very similar (writing, layout of text important, error correction, etc..), both vastly different.

NEVER consider any browser for an intranet that is NOT the one the company suggests/supports. they all fail. i hate intranets for that. one intranet app (an addressbook), i had to use recently to get all the relevant data from all our workers (several ten thousands). no ie9 support yet, there. no chrome or firefox support. the old browser blocked my whole system for over half an hour to process that crazy javascript-riddled thing to process and layout all the data (i just wanted to press one button to create the excel file, but it first generates the result output). chrome did the same job in a matter of 10 seconds. but as the script failed at creating the excel button (and the document was that borked that you couldn't import it when saved in any way into excel to get a meaningful table), i couldn't use the output data.

NEVER consider a browser for intranet, that is not the one supported by the company. it just doesn't work.

now for the WEB, all have pro and cons, but all work without major flaws about all of the time.

so does chromes print function.

you shouldn't care? oh yes you should. if you don't, you don't deem credible on this page, so nobody listens to the stuff you state. you should never interfere your personal one-of-a-kind experiences with reality (but most do that). so you have one page that is absolutely nonstandard in any way that fails on chrome (and even on ie, but you have a workaround there)? and then say "chrome printing sucks". yeah, way to missjudge stuff.


oh and btw: chrome is extensible: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kdhjgkkaacdhdioocfbpmhjidbinfajj?hl=de

you seem to not have a clue how ads work in the web.

not that i care about privacy, or tracking on the web. just saying.


oh and just for saying: deleting cookies does not give you that much more privacy actually. most don't have their ip's changed often, and are thus easily trackable without the cookies. and even when my ip would change, ad serves could just notice "it's one of those in augst, switzerland, that browses nbr, engadget, facebook, 20min, and some other pages". then match that to their database, and back on track i am (heh, pun intended). they can use your internet cache as pseudo-cookie, too. so deleting cookies only doesn't help (and purging the cache all the time slows down the internet). oh + the header information on each request, which is chrome devbuild for me. most likely not for much others. all easily usable to track me.

they know exactly what pr0n you watch, too. maybe not when you go trough a proxy (tracking is quite a bit harder, then). the easiest tracking is ip based. that doesn't need cookies. they only need something to compare once the ip adress switched. but that is in most situations not very often (at least since dsl, most people here are on the same ip for years).

 

Not responding to the first part out of laziness.

I never said I'd expect firefox to do that, perhaps someone else did.

As for firefox being more secure? Laughable at best, definitely dangerous if you're pitching that to people who don't know any better.

 

when you have it running a few tabs take a look in task manager how much memory it uses!!!1!!!

 

why should i care? as long as my system works well..

oh wait, i've not noted the !!!!1!!! showing it's just internet joking.

 

well there is no need to be rude about it?

It is no joke.

If there was a -1 I would have struck that button hard.

 

Chrome hasn't been correctly autofilling my user/pass since version 10. Anyone else?

 

!!1!!!! stuff normally means internet trolling jokes.

and yes, why should one care about memory usage as long as the system is perfectly working and fast. ram is there to be used. and btw: when you CLOSE a tab, that memory is released immediately. that's still not true for firefox. that is much more important: memory growth over runtime. remains constant in chrome (same tabs after 10 hours of runtime mean same memory usage as after boot time).

but most of all, MOST OF ALL, memory usage is unimportant as long as it's not impacting system performance.

and it's around 50-100mb per tab. that's not really that much (if you know what a browser all has to handle to perform well nowadays). extensions around 5-10mb.

 

so be polite next time. You should have wrote that first, instead of being impolite to me and then having to be snappy in response to me telling you I felt your response was rude.

I still will not use Chrome. Firefox does not use anywhere near as much memory as Chrome IMHO. I havent used chrome long enough to fully support that but, I have been following a thread in another forum and it was highlighted at the amount of ram used with chrome.

 

firefox was known to be the biggest memory hog for years, and is the biggest memory cummulator still in existence (meaning growth over time, which chrome can't have as it has individual processes per tab, so it allows the os to 100% clean a tab after usage. firefox still doesn't).

just google firefox memory leaking, memory hog, what ever. the discussion is on since version 2, i think.

and i was not unpolite. i was just stating the obvious:

why should i care? as long as the system runs well, why should one care AT ALL? exactly: for no reason other than "omg it uses much memory?!". so is it bad when you use much of your brain? never heard one saying "omg, that dude is using his brain, can't be good for thinking!". ram is there to be used.

and the other part, i explained myself very well:
"oh wait, i've not noted the !!!!1!!! showing it's just internet joking."
as this is typically the way. having typos like the 1 in the !!!marks shows typical "oh i'm so leeet wut?!? omgroflbbq!!!1!!+!++" style crap.

i was not unpolite, nor particularly polite. i was just commenting truthfully on the topic: does it matter at all?

 

we'll just leave it at that.

out of personal preference and from what I have noted of the two browsers I prefer FF.

 

well, i would chose a browser based on how well it serves you. because that matters. memory usage does not serve you ANYTHING.

+ i never noticed an increased memory usage compared to firefox, quite the contrary. memory usage was actually noticeable on firefox, and got reduced by moving to chrome (much less pagefiling). but that was on a 2gb ram system (like yours).

what changed when switching to chrome: everything was much faster. from first start to overtime usage.

so maybe, just maybe consider your choice based on facts (own experience) on what really does the job well FOR YOU, and not based on some random internet forum statement (like this one).

use: and chose wisely on your experience.

 

fair comment

 

Hasn't Mozilla literally said it's not a memory leak, it wastes resources by design?

 

well. they can say what you want. but an app, that can't let it's memory usage grow and shrink according to needs, but instead grows with time without actually growing in usage (means you could reduce back to the start-page, memory footprint would not be the same as when opened first time), and growing without bounds, that can be called feature all you want. in any software environment i know of, i call it a bug.

when i close a tab in chrome (or ie, or many others), then that process (of that tab) gets killed. the result: the os will release ALL memory and handles of that tab. even if the tab had a memory leak, the os doesn't care. it cleans up perfectly. so the next time you would open the same tab, it would use the same memory again, and on closing, releasing it all.

firefox just doesn't work that way yet (or does it? multiprocessed by now? no, i thought still not). that is both a security issue, and a memory-issue.

 

Sorry Dave, but you're better than this. Here, let me put this in very simple words: IE has a function to only print the material in specific frames. That function can be useful, and I happen to use it from time to time. Chrome does not have that function. Other than that, IE does everything I need it to do, and it does it faster than Chrome. -> I don't use Chrome. That's all.

Are you saying that web servers are given access to the browser cache??? I didn't know that.

 

I cant see where all this comes from about FF.

I have never seen any issues with it, I merely pointed out this



this is not my pic

 

well, you mainly stated in something that sounded "how can i take chrome serious, it can't even correctly print my intranet-crappage that is not really coded well and doesn't work in ie eighter, but i can specialprint it". which is a rather ridiculous argument, where you "should be better than this".
and btw, the print from frame feature got actually only removed some versions before (and was the first thing i wanted to suggest to try)

no, but they don't need to. feed an ad with more than one image, check if one doesn't get loaded, then it's in the cache => cache == mini-token to verify a user (create an individual image per user, and you're done)

and what's the problem with that?
it just shows that he had quite some tabs open (the >20mb chrome instances), and quite some extensions (the small ones).

the massive amount of processes is a security, stability, performance and memory saving feature, actually.

 

Ahh, got you...

 

Hmm, you're right. Someone somewhere else maybe. Apologies on that.