September 2nd, 2008
Liveblogging the Google Chrome announcement
In Focus » See more posts on: Google Chrome
I’m tuned in to the webcast press briefing and demo of Google Chrome and will live blog any interesting points from the briefing here.
Note: All times PDT.
- 11:08 - Google Chrome will go live 10:00 PDT.
- 11.09 - Sundar Pichai, VP Product Management on stage
- 11:11 - “We believe that browsers should evolve more …”
- 11:12 - Google Chrome influenced by Google Search … keeping things simple
- 11:12 - This is Google Chrome …
- 11:14 - 70% of browsing is going back to things you’ve seen before …
- 11:15 - Chrome uses WebKit so Google has not added another rendering engine to the world, so keeping things simple for developers
- 11:16 - Chrome is multi process to isolate tabs, increasing robustness, makes the browser faster and enhances security
- 11:18 - Emphasis that Chrome has been developed from scratch
- 11:19 - Talking about V8 JavaScript engine - faster so will encourage new innovation
- 11:19 - Chrome will initially be for XP and Vista, Mac and Linux to follow
- 11:20 - Will launch today in 100 languages
- 11:21 - Better web better for Google
- 11:21 - Announcing Chromium developer docs
- 11:22 - Next up on stage, Ben Goodger, UI (formerly from Mozilla)
- 11:23 - Tabs are titles for windows
- 11:23 - Tabs are draggable and movable
- 11:24 - Where’s the serch box? there isn’t one! Address bar doubles as a search box, elminating confusion - Omnibox
- 11:26 - “It’s a little bit psychic”
- 11:27 - Very similar to the Firefox Awesome bar except that the address bar is pre-filled
- 11:28 - Chrome detects search boxes so that you can search other sites directly through the Omnibox - no setup required.
- 11:28 - The Omnibox seems like a really cool, flexible feature
- 11:30 - Tab Page … seems a lot like Speed Dial on Opera … reinvents bookmarks
- 11:31 - Tab page is default page
- 11:31 - Introducing Incognito mode … eliminates the need to clear history and thus revert tab Page to default
- 11:33 - Incognito designed to keep information off your PC
- 11:34 - Chrome makes handling downloads easier
- 11:34 - Downloads seem a lot simpler - no having to click on OK, no having to worry where the files go … seems quick and simple
- 11:36 - Web apps break free of the browser, removes unnecessary chrome … web apps look and feel like desktop applications
- 11:36 - Next up, Daren Fisher, Tech Lead
- 11:38 - Web pages and web apps shouldn’t be able to affect one another - many benefits - stability, performance (especially for multi-core CPUs), and security
- 11:40 - All rendering engine privileges taken away - bad guys have to find a bug in the rendering engine and get out of the sandbox
- 11:41 - Process listing - showing memory, CPU, network usage … handy
- 11:41 - Plugins run in a separate process - prevents misbehaving plugins
- 11:43 - Simulating a hang demo … you can still switch tabs during a hang or close a tab … ending a process shows the “Sad Tab” … also easy to recover … even scroll position is saved!
- 11:45 - A crashed plugin can be recovered jsut by refreshing … neat
- 11:45 - Performance
- 11:46 - Speed demo - WebKit about 3x faster than IE on static pages
- 11:47 - Chrome is live - http://www.google.com/chrome
- 11:48 - Now onto V8 …
- 11:48 - I have Chrome running!
- 11:50 - JavaScript compiler, not interpreter
- 11:50 - Efficient memory management
- 11:51 - Here’s Chrome running under Vista …
- 11:53 - V8 increases the performance bar
- 11:55 - Chrome has no tie-in to Google services - if you used another search provider this is transferred over when you install Chrome
- 11:56 - Larry Page on stage … been using Chrome for some time, on older hardware
- 11:58 - Discussing benefits of open source … how Mozilla could choose to make use of, say V8
- 12:00 - Q&A …
- 12:03 - V8 will be ported to ARM and Intel CPUs and to a variety of OSes.
I’m now going to end live blogging and go to play with Chrome …
Adrian is a technology journalist and author who has devoted over a decade to helping users get the most from technology. He also runs a popular blog called The PC Doctor. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations
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