Thursday, September 25, 2008
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Google Chrome
A beta version for Microsoft Windows was released on 2 September 2008 in 43 languages. Mac OS X and Linux versions are under development and are scheduled to be released sometime in the future.
Security
Chrome periodically downloads updates of two blacklists (one for phishing and one for malware) and warns users when they attempt to visit a harmful site. This service is also made available for use by others via a free public API called "Google Safe Browsing API". In the process of maintaining these blacklists, Google also notifies the owners of listed sites who may not be aware of the presence of the harmful software.
Speed
The Javascript virtual machine was considered a sufficiently important project to be split off (like Adobe/Mozilla's Tamarin) and handled by a separate team in Denmark. Existing implementations were designed "for small programs, where the performance and interactivity of the system weren't that important" but web applications like Gmail "are using the web browser to the fullest when it comes to DOM manipulations and Javascript". The resulting V8 JavaScript engine has features such as hidden class transitions, dynamic code generation, and precise garbage collection. Tests by Google show that V8 is about twice as fast as Firefox 3 and the Safari 4 beta.
Stability
The Gears team were considering a multithreaded browser (noting that a problem with existing web browser implementations was that they are inherently single-threaded) and Chrome implemented this concept with a multiprocessing architecture similar to the one developed by Opera in 1994 or that was recently implemented by Internet Explorer 8
Chrome features a process management utility called the Task Manager which allows the user to "see what sites are using the most memory, downloading the most bytes and abusing CPU" (as well as the plugins which run in separate processes) and terminate them
Standards
The first release of Google Chrome does not pass the Acid3 test; however, it scores 78/100, which is higher than both Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox
Security
Chrome periodically downloads updates of two blacklists (one for phishing and one for malware) and warns users when they attempt to visit a harmful site. This service is also made available for use by others via a free public API called "Google Safe Browsing API". In the process of maintaining these blacklists, Google also notifies the owners of listed sites who may not be aware of the presence of the harmful software.
Speed
The Javascript virtual machine was considered a sufficiently important project to be split off (like Adobe/Mozilla's Tamarin) and handled by a separate team in Denmark. Existing implementations were designed "for small programs, where the performance and interactivity of the system weren't that important" but web applications like Gmail "are using the web browser to the fullest when it comes to DOM manipulations and Javascript". The resulting V8 JavaScript engine has features such as hidden class transitions, dynamic code generation, and precise garbage collection. Tests by Google show that V8 is about twice as fast as Firefox 3 and the Safari 4 beta.
Stability
The Gears team were considering a multithreaded browser (noting that a problem with existing web browser implementations was that they are inherently single-threaded) and Chrome implemented this concept with a multiprocessing architecture similar to the one developed by Opera in 1994 or that was recently implemented by Internet Explorer 8
Chrome features a process management utility called the Task Manager which allows the user to "see what sites are using the most memory, downloading the most bytes and abusing CPU" (as well as the plugins which run in separate processes) and terminate them
Standards
The first release of Google Chrome does not pass the Acid3 test; however, it scores 78/100, which is higher than both Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox
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