Web Browsers / Chrome

[flyingcheesehead]

So I put a poll on this to get an idea of what everyone else is using, but I'm mainly interested in discussing Google's Chrome browser.

I downloaded it for some reason a couple of weeks ago, and have found it to be pretty darn good - Good enough that I've been using it for my most frequent browsing, though I've had Safari open the entire time, too.

Stuff I like about Chrome:
* It's fast. Safari, like every other browser I've tried, starts out fast but ends up slowing down as I use it. I use a metric boatload of tabs, and I open and close them frequently, and that wreaks havoc on memory management in most browsers. Currently, I have 8 windows containing 52 tabs open in Safari, and 7 windows containing 31 tabs in Chrome. When I read PoA, I open each thread into a new tab, and close them as I read them. I open interesting links in new tabs and close those as I read them too. When I get busy, my tab count tends to increase until I get time to read it all. I wish there was a way to get "uptime" readings on individual apps but Safari has been up about as long as the machine (31 days currently) and Chrome since I downloaded it a couple of weeks ago.
* The keystroke for switching tabs works almost no matter what - In Safari, if you're in a text field or the URL field, it doesn't work - Probably because Safari uses Command-Shift-Arrow which is also the keystroke for selecting all text to the end of the line when editing text in any application on the Mac, while Chrome's Command-Option-Arrow does not have any text-editing functions.
* It's fast

Things I like about Safari:
* New tabs come up faster than Chrome
* Text entered into a field is re-filled when you hit the back button. For example, let's say I write a long PoA post and for whatever reason the submission fails - I can just hit "Back" and my post is still there for me to try again later.
* There's a blue star next to pages on my home screen that have new content. I've noticed since I've been using Chrome that I'm missing it when certain sites are updated.
* "Reopen all windows from last session." So when Safari starts hogging too many resources due to all of my tab-wrangling or if I have system updates that require me to reboot, I can go back to where I was quite easily.
* "Open in tabs". Any folder of bookmarks can be instantly opened in a new window in a series of tabs. Coupled with the ability to bookmark all of the tabs in a window simultaneously, this allows me to come back to a series of pages later instead of leaving them open indefinitely.
* Seems more stable. I'm having problems in Chrome with it suddenly saying that a whole group of pages are unresponsive and would I like to "Kill Them" or "Wait." I'm used to Flash quitting, but I'm seeing this on some fairly simple pages.
* YouTube, etc. videos don't play until they're the frontmost tab. In Chrome, I hate that when I command-click several YouTube (or other) video links at once to open them, and they all start playing simultaneously so I have to go through and pause each of them before I can go back to the first one and start watching it.

I still haven't decided what I'm gonna do - I might just keep using 'em both for now.

Thoughts? What's your favorite browser, and why?

 

[zaitcev]

I'm on Linux, even on Fedora. Packaging of Chromium was reportedly a challenge, Google is not very cooperative and ships a boaload of weird library forks. In the end I just use pre-packaged RPM that that Google threw together, google-chrome-beta-5.0.375.70-48679. "Use" is probably too big a word, I basically start it once in a while when I want an alternative Twitter account or just a throwaway browser where I can decimate cookies without looking.

One thing that annoyed me about Chrome is that its AdBlock operates on a sharply different principle from Firefox'. It latches on structures in the document instead of URLs. You'd think it were a big improvement, in case of bulk generated documents that have ad scripts inlined, but actually it's a major downside for me, because sometimes I really need just to kill an URL and there's no way to do that. Its UI is pretty poor and does not always work, there is no workaround or manual configuration. So, it's the pits... with good intentions.

The too-smart AdBlock soured me on Chrome as a primary browser, and once I relegated it to secondary role, it hardly saw any use. I rarely have more than 5 tabs open, and tab isolation is rarely a problem for me.

-- Pete

 

[bigred177]

So I put a poll on this to get an idea of what everyone else is using, but I'm mainly interested in discussing Google's Chrome browser.

I downloaded it for some reason a couple of weeks ago, and have found it to be pretty darn good - Good enough that I've been using it for my most frequent browsing, though I've had Safari open the entire time, too.

Stuff I like about Chrome:
* It's fast. Safari, like every other browser I've tried, starts out fast but ends up slowing down as I use it. I use a metric boatload of tabs, and I open and close them frequently, and that wreaks havoc on memory management in most browsers. Currently, I have 8 windows containing 52 tabs open in Safari, and 7 windows containing 31 tabs in Chrome. When I read PoA, I open each thread into a new tab, and close them as I read them. I open interesting links in new tabs and close those as I read them too. When I get busy, my tab count tends to increase until I get time to read it all. I wish there was a way to get "uptime" readings on individual apps but Safari has been up about as long as the machine (31 days currently) and Chrome since I downloaded it a couple of weeks ago.
* The keystroke for switching tabs works almost no matter what - In Safari, if you're in a text field or the URL field, it doesn't work - Probably because Safari uses Command-Shift-Arrow which is also the keystroke for selecting all text to the end of the line when editing text in any application on the Mac, while Chrome's Command-Option-Arrow does not have any text-editing functions.
* It's fast

Things I like about Safari:
* New tabs come up faster than Chrome
* Text entered into a field is re-filled when you hit the back button. For example, let's say I write a long PoA post and for whatever reason the submission fails - I can just hit "Back" and my post is still there for me to try again later.
* There's a blue star next to pages on my home screen that have new content. I've noticed since I've been using Chrome that I'm missing it when certain sites are updated.
* "Reopen all windows from last session." So when Safari starts hogging too many resources due to all of my tab-wrangling or if I have system updates that require me to reboot, I can go back to where I was quite easily.
* "Open in tabs". Any folder of bookmarks can be instantly opened in a new window in a series of tabs. Coupled with the ability to bookmark all of the tabs in a window simultaneously, this allows me to come back to a series of pages later instead of leaving them open indefinitely.
* Seems more stable. I'm having problems in Chrome with it suddenly saying that a whole group of pages are unresponsive and would I like to "Kill Them" or "Wait." I'm used to Flash quitting, but I'm seeing this on some fairly simple pages.
* YouTube, etc. videos don't play until they're the frontmost tab. In Chrome, I hate that when I command-click several YouTube (or other) video links at once to open them, and they all start playing simultaneously so I have to go through and pause each of them before I can go back to the first one and start watching it.

I still haven't decided what I'm gonna do - I might just keep using 'em both for now.

Thoughts? What's your favorite browser, and why?

You can tell Chrome to reopen tabs from last session too. It's under the options. You can also open folders in your bookmarks in tabs, in Windows you right click and it gives you the option. You can also save all of your open windows in to one folder in a single right click. I don't know Macs though so it may be different.

Don't know if it helps your decision any but a little more info for you.

 

[denverpilot]

I just want tabs in Safari on the iPad. The iPhone doesn't have the screen real-estate, but I miss it on iPad.

 

[flyingcheesehead]

You can tell Chrome to reopen tabs from last session too. It's under the options.

But that's an automatic do-it-right-at-startup thing - In Safari, if I was in the middle of something I'm trying to finish quickly, I can reopen just that one, finish it, and then reopen the rest to load while I'm doing something entirely different - With as many windows/tabs as I keep open, it's usually not a quick process to reopen them all.

You can also open folders in your bookmarks in tabs, in Windows you right click and it gives you the option.

Aha... You just have to do it through the bookmarks bar instead of the bookmarks menu. (In Safari, each folder of bookmarks has an "Open In Tabs" item at the bottom, which is much more obvious.) Thanks!

You can also save all of your open windows in to one folder in a single right click. I don't know Macs though so it may be different.

Yeah, I found that one - It's also under the Bookmarks menu or can be invoked via Cmd-Shift-D.

Don't know if it helps your decision any but a little more info for you.

Well, the beautiful thing is that I don't have to "decide" - I can use both forever if I want. I just wish I could have ALL the good stuff in a single browser.

BTW, I forgot to mention that I do like Chrome's single-text-field approach (rather than the location field and search field). It also seems to automatically put wikipedia results in the menu when you start typing things, which is really cool.

I just want tabs in Safari on the iPad. The iPhone doesn't have the screen real-estate, but I miss it on iPad.

You can open 9 browser windows on the iPad - Yeah, it's not tabs, but I really don't care about tabs in and of themselves, I just want to see lots of stuff. I don't think the iPad has the memory to handle unlimited ones though. Maybe that'll be in iOS 5, rumor has it that will be intro'd in April. It certainly won't be any later than the WWDC in June, where we'll likely see the next iPhone as well.

 

[SCCutler]

I have been playing with Chrome, and it seems to be markedly faster than Firefox; jury's still out on whether I'll change to it for general purposes, though. It appears to have an issue with rendering certain content (I think it's some of the eBay description and picture stuff); but I have not documented that, and suspect it may be another of those "...well it worked in IE..." issues.

 

[SkyHog]

I used Chrome the day it came out. I used it for the first few versions but there was a major memory leak, and when the Mac version came out, the same leak existed there. It was a real killer, especially since it was, by far, my favorite browser.

I, unfortunately, haven't used it since, which is pretty big to me, since I am a giant (admitted) Google fan boy. Maybe I'll give it a shot again.

Can't wait for Chromium OS.

 

[JOhnH]

I just installed the V4 beta version of Firefox. It is much faster and I am quite happy with it. It has crashed a couple of times but after all, it IS a beta version. I was about to dump Firefox altogether because of its hanging and loading delays but that has been addressed nicely. I use a lot of tabs too.

 

[silver-eagle]

The only thing I use Chrome for is the games. I love World Golf Tour!
.
Firefox is the first choice. I usually have 8 to 10 windows with a number of tabs in each. Beta testing V4 now and have had it blow up on me (generally while I've been away from the system so I don't see what has caused it).
V3 has been very stable.

 

[EdFred]

Chrome just recently quit working with videos on the youtube page. Embedded youtube vids on here come up, but the videos on the page itself wont play. Works in IE. Go figure.

 

[SkyHog]

Chrome just recently quit working with videos on the youtube page. Embedded youtube vids on here come up, but the videos on the page itself wont play. Works in IE. Go figure.

Especially crazy since Google owns YouTube. lol

 

[bigred177]

Chrome just recently quit working with videos on the youtube page. Embedded youtube vids on here come up, but the videos on the page itself wont play. Works in IE. Go figure.

I had that happen not too long ago. It has something to do with the flash plugin. Google knows more specifically but it's something like turn your flash plugin off, go into Chrome's own task manager and kill flash, restart Chrome, turn flash plugin back on. I did that and all is well again.

 

[JOhnH]

Beta testing V4 now and have had it blow up on me (generally while I've been away from the system so I don't see what has caused it).
V3 has been very stable.

The same thing has happened to me. It hangs or crashes when I am away. Perhaps it has to do with their idle time or inactivity processing.

 

[astanley]

I've been a Chrome user for over 18 months. No other browser use.

Chrome will re-fill forms on "Back", but it depends on the headers sent. IIRC a no-cache HTTP header will force a reset of the form; I think Safari overrides this.

I prefer the Chrome experience to Safari, and I find it to be faster on most everything I do. However, comparing Safari to Chrome is like comparing PC-12 and a TBM-850; it becomes more about your mission and tastes than anything else. (Please don't jump on the "Cruise speed!" and "Short field capability!" angles. It's a trite analogy.)

If I couldn't use Chrome, I would use Safari. If I couldn't use either, I'm not sure I would use the internet.

Cheers,

-Andrew
warning: hyperbole above

 

[zaitcev]

Especially crazy since Google owns YouTube. lol

Maybe it's a hint to visit youtube.com/html5, it worked in Chrome from the start.

 

[flyingcheesehead]

I used Chrome the day it came out. I used it for the first few versions but there was a major memory leak, and when the Mac version came out, the same leak existed there. It was a real killer, especially since it was, by far, my favorite browser.

I, unfortunately, haven't used it since, which is pretty big to me, since I am a giant (admitted) Google fan boy. Maybe I'll give it a shot again.

Nick,

It seems like EVERY browser has a memory leak! But so far, Chrome seems to be doing pretty well. I killed it and relaunched it yesterday for the first time, it was still running well for the most part - Just was having too many of those "Page not responding" errors.

 

[RyanShort1]

I'm on the Firefox 4 beta on Win7 and have not had a crash yet - and I typically have 15+ tabs open on my laptop...

edit: So I went to actually count them, and found it was over 30. Time to close a few .

Ryan

 

[jason]

<snip>
I wish there was a way to get "uptime" readings on individual apps but Safari has been up about as long as the machine (31 days currently) and Chrome since I downloaded it a couple of weeks ago.
</snip>

In terminal...

ps auxw |grep Firefox |head -n 1|awk '{print $9,$11}'

 

[flyingcheesehead]

In terminal...

ps auxw |grep Firefox |head -n 1|awk '{print $9,$11}'

Ooooh... Very nice. I had to pick that apart, I've never used head or awk before and I generally just use ps -ax. I was thinking that the head part was unnecessary until it picked up "grep Safari" too. LOL

So, Safari's been running since Feb. 5th, as expected. Too bad I didn't catch this before I relaunched Chrome.

[west-quad-203-246:~] shook% uptime
17:15  up 31 days, 20:38, 2 users, load averages: 1.06 1.05 0.98
[west-quad-203-246:~] shook% ps auxw | grep Safari | head -n 1 | awk '{print $9,$11}'
5Feb11 /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/MacOS/Safari
[west-quad-203-246:~] shook% ps auxw | grep Chrome | head -n 1 | awk '{print $9,$11}'
3:12PM /Applications/Google

 

[flyingcheesehead]

Hmmm.

Now I'm having trouble with Chrome. The past few days, sometimes it just quits responding when I click links or buttons. Seems to be happening fairly frequently to PoA new posts - I can't post 'em. Had to open FireFox to post a few times.

Anyone have any ideas? I've heard from at least one friend that they've experienced this too.

 

[jason]

no issues here...

 

[astanley]

No issues at all, and I run Chrome on all three channels (dev, beta, prod) on four platforms (windows, linux, mac, and Chrome OS).

Cheers.

 

[mikea]

One thing that's semi-annoying/scary about Chrome is the search for everything deal, or at least how Google tracks you once you've logged in.

If you do a Google search for any product or look at it, you'll see "coincidentally" that you suddenly see ads for that very product on various web sites.

 

[astanley]

If you want to search for something that you don't want tracked, you have a few options:

1) Open an "incognito mode" window. Ctrl-shift-n, or Wrench > New Incognito Window, or Link > Right Click > Open in Incognito Window
2) Wrench > Preferences > Under the Hood. A slew of privacy options.
3) Use a different search engine. Wrench > Preferencs > Basics > Search
4) Do not use the Omnibox for searching, and use a different search engine.
5) Opt out of Google tracking services. http://www.google.com/privacy/ads/

Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and others all perform similar tracking. It's what you agree to when you use their service for free.

Cheers.

 

[astanley]

Ooooh... Very nice. I had to pick that apart, I've never used head or awk before and I generally just use ps -ax. I was thinking that the head part was unnecessary until it picked up "grep Safari" too. LOL

So, Safari's been running since Feb. 5th, as expected. Too bad I didn't catch this before I relaunched Chrome.

[west-quad-203-246:~] shook% uptime
17:15  up 31 days, 20:38, 2 users, load averages: 1.06 1.05 0.98
[west-quad-203-246:~] shook% ps auxw | grep Safari | head -n 1 | awk '{print $9,$11}'
5Feb11 /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/MacOS/Safari
[west-quad-203-246:~] shook% ps auxw | grep Chrome | head -n 1 | awk '{print $9,$11}'
3:12PM /Applications/Google

I'll note that my MBP Mid-10 running Snow Leopard doesn't like being left up for more than a week. One week sees about 50-60 hibernate/sleep cycles, which plays a big part in this. Over time, Chrome does not like it; occasionally it needs a kill -TERM or a super helpful kill -9 to behave.

Cheers.

 

[flyingcheesehead]

No issues at all, and I run Chrome on all three channels (dev, beta, prod) on four platforms (windows, linux, mac, and Chrome OS).

Well, all I've managed to discover since posting is that it seems that particular tabs go dead. I can open up a new tab in the same window, paste in the URL, paste my ramblings back in, and it'll submit perfectly fine. That particular tab, however, won't respond to links any more.

I'll note that my MBP Mid-10 running Snow Leopard doesn't like being left up for more than a week. One week sees about 50-60 hibernate/sleep cycles, which plays a big part in this. Over time, Chrome does not like it; occasionally it needs a kill -TERM or a super helpful kill -9 to behave.

So, why are you using kill instead of just quitting? Is it so you get the helpful option to re-open where you left off (which is a simple menu item in Safari, and one of the things I'd really like to see in Chrome)?

I did notice that a force quit (via Opt-Cmd-Esc) did NOT bring up that option at the next launch... Surprised me. I'll have to try a kill next time.

BTW, it's unclear from your message whether it's only Chrome that's affected by running for more than a week, or other parts of the system. I haven't had any problem prior to Chrome. I had a very unusual issue the other day where the display completely locked up except for the beach ball - The clock stopped and everything. I think that's maybe the 2nd time I've had to reboot it for anything other than a system software update in the 1.5 years I've had it - Usually I'd wait for Safari to leak enough memory to slow way down, and if it was dragging I'd just run Software Update and reboot the machine since I was going to have to reload a bazillion web sites anyway.

I'm wondering if I got some bad RAM, too... Put it in maybe 3 weeks ago and have had 2 unusual issues since then. Hmmm.

 

[jesse]

I did notice that a force quit (via Opt-Cmd-Esc) did NOT bring up that option at the next launch... Surprised me. I'll have to try a kill next time.

Force Quit is just a SIGKILL signal (same as kill -9) it gives the application no chance whatsoever to do anything which can produce less than ideal results. There's no real reason to be making a habit of SIGKILL unless the app is no longer responding.

Quit, which is a SIGTERM signal (a normal kill) will at least give the app a chance to catch the request and clean itself up into a stable state before checking out.

 

[flyingcheesehead]

Force Quit is just a SIGKILL signal (same as kill -9) it gives the application no chance whatsoever to do anything which can produce less than ideal results. There's no real reason to be making a habit of SIGKILL unless the app is no longer responding.

Quit, which is a SIGTERM signal (a normal kill) will at least give the app a chance to catch the request and clean itself up into a stable state before checking out.

Yeah, I was trying to kill it so that it'd give me the option to just reopen everything when I opened it back up like it did when I shut the machine's power off. No such luck... Dunno what triggers that.

 

[jnmeade]

Opera 99% of the time. Firefox when Opera won't work. IE if I'm absolutely forced to. I don't do Apple. Never tried Chrome, but am told it's OK.
Opera has my preferred email built in. It's fast and always has been fast. It is innovative. Works for me.

 

[SkyHog]

Found an issue with Chrome (happens in both Ubuntu and OSX):

When in a file upload dialog, while navigating through the filesystem to find a file, if it takes more than 30-45 seconds to find the file, Chrome reports that it has stopped responding and requests action to kill the tab or wait for a response.

Not a big deal, but slightly irritating.

 

[mikea]

Geeze, Kent, Other.

I just re-remembered that Mac users have another lite browser choice, Camino. It works great.

The complicated stuff I'm doing right now requires me to juggle multiple accounts on sites like Google so having multiple browsers to run helps a lot when it comes to auth cookies.

I guess I'll give Opera another try, too.

 

[EdFred]

Hmmm.

Now I'm having trouble with Chrome. The past few days, sometimes it just quits responding when I click links or buttons. Seems to be happening fairly frequently to PoA new posts - I can't post 'em. Had to open FireFox to post a few times.

Anyone have any ideas? I've heard from at least one friend that they've experienced this too.

No issues here, but I'm not on a Mac either.

 

[jesse]

The complicated stuff I'm doing right now requires me to juggle multiple accounts on sites like Google so having multiple browsers to run helps a lot when it comes to auth cookies.

You can run seperate Chrome windows in private mode and each will then have their own sessions. No need for a separate browser.