Google Releases Chrome 5.0 For Win/Mac/Linux 347
ddfall writes "Four months after the release of version 4.0 for Windows, Google has announced the availability of Chrome 5.0 for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux — the first stable release to be available on all three major platforms. Chrome 5.0.375.55 is available to download from google.com/chrome. Users who currently have Chrome installed can use the built-in update function."
Google is catching on fast (Score:5, Funny)
Just look at the version numbers. It's already 5! On the contrary Firefox is still lagging behind with 3.6.
Re:Google is catching on fast (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Google is catching on fast (Score:5, Funny)
The web is only 3.0 !!?
This is confusing!
Re:Google is catching on fast (Score:5, Funny)
Bleh, Emacs is already at version 23. Take that, Microsoft!
Note: if you're thinking of replying "Emacs isn't a web browser!", you clearly have never used Emacs.
Re:Google is catching on fast (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, but remember, they are shooting for version 10^100. They have a long way to go.
Re:Google is catching on fast (Score:5, Funny)
Nigel Tufnel: The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and...
Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most amps go up to ten?
Nigel Tufnel: Exactly.
Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it's louder? Is it any louder?
Nigel Tufnel: Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?
Marty DiBergi: I don't know.
Nigel Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?
Marty DiBergi: Put it up to eleven.
Nigel Tufnel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder.
Marty DiBergi: Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?
Nigel Tufnel: [pause] These go to eleven.
Re:Google is catching on fast (Score:2)
Well my "Hello world" program is on version 9001.
So, it's over 8000, then.
Sweet... (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe now they'll "officially" release Android 2.2 with chrome built-in...
yay? (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to be looking forward to this day; I used Chrome until the day my http:// disappeared. Due to that, I'm sticking with Firefox.
Re:yay? (Score:2)
Explanation please?
Re:yay? (Score:4, Informative)
In 5.0.375.55 the protocol appears to be back in the location bar, at least on Linux.
Re:yay? (Score:2)
Re:yay? (Score:2, Informative)
your looking a beta/dev versions. They are still trying things out there. They make it to beta or not based on feedback.
Re:yay? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent is not a troll. It's a valid complaint. Displaying the entire URL, including the protocol, is absolutely the standard and should remain that way.
Re:yay? (Score:2)
Why? Should you need to copy-paste a URL or part of one from the address bar it'll Do The Right Thing and pre-pend http:/// [http] to it.
I can't see much use for showing the protocol for most people otherwise.
Re:yay? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:yay? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:yay? (Score:5, Insightful)
If Chrome does this, then this is a flaw. Transparent clipboard modification should never be done, by any program.
A (much) better method would be to insert the protocol string when the user clicks on the URL bar.
I can't stand all this extra logic they've stuck into URL bars (and other text fields, for that matter) in the last ten years or so... It's a text entry field, it should act like one. It shouldn't select all when I click on it, it shouldn't try to guess where I want my selection to end, snap it to word boundaries or whatever... And the simplest, most straight-forward way of making the protocol selectable for copy/paste is just to have it in the URL bar in the first place.
Re:yay? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:yay? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because users who want to know what their browser is doing want to see it, that's why. No other justification is needed.
One of the commenters on the CNET story on the issue compared it to the Windows practice of hiding file extensions, which is a good analogy. We know how well that worked out (click here on mysterious_attachment.doc{.exe} and see what happens!) Sure, the protocol name may be gabble to most users, but at least the information's there, right out front. And occasionally it even leads them to educate themselves, asking a more technically knowledgeable friend, "What is that http thing, anyway?"
Re:yay? (Score:2)
I just don't see that it's a big deal, and I'm a rather technical user who's been known to copy-paste urls on a regular basis.
Your extension-hiding analogy is flawed. To be closer to the security-threat that is hidden extensions, you'd need a browser that hides .com and other TLDs in URLs. That would be seriously sub-optimal - "hey, does slashdot/user.pl go to the real site, or slashdot.ru?"
http is the only hidden protocol that I've noticed, which is fine because it's the most common, so you'll know things are unusual when you see the protocol in the address bar.
Re:yay? (Score:3)
It's inconsistent UI on 2 counts:
1. Copying to clipboard:
- selecting the whole URL prepends http:/// [http] in front in the clipboard (expected behavior would be to only copy what is being selected)
- it is impossible to copy the full URL without the protocol
- selecting part of the URL only copies the selected part (which is expected), unless you select just the domain part, in which case it prepends http:/// [http] again
2. Protocol display: Chrome will display https, file, ftp, and whatever protocols it does/will support in the future; just not http.
It would get really annoying really fast if all apps I use had their own quirks like that.
Re:yay? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because users who want to know what their browser is doing want to see it, that's why.
That's a pretty small minority -- I've actually seen more people at the other end of the scale, where they don't know what the URL display is at all. If they want to eg check their yahoo mail, they don't go to the URL box and type "mail.yahoo.com", they go to the search box, type "google", search (using google) to find google, click on the first result to get to the google home page, then type "yahoo mail" into that box, search, and click the first result there...
(This is what happens when we train people to follow patterns with no understanding of how it actually works :( )
Re:yay? (Score:2)
Even if you use X's built in auto-copy (and middle mouse button to paste)?
Re:yay? (Score:2)
The triple slash was a Slashdcode fail. FTP:// is still shown, so for the moment it appears to be just http:/// [http] that is hidden.
Dunno about using X idioms to copy/paste, and I'm not on a *nix machine right now.
Re:yay? (Score:2)
this is legit why, exactly?
you can enter any link with or without http and it will still open just fine, since we have that good ole dns thing.
Meanwhile, people don't even understand "slash slash" because they're computer retarded. this just makes it a little easier. You say "go to google", they type in google and hit enter.
Re:yay? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:yay? (Score:4, Insightful)
Heh. I didn't even realize that. The funny thing is, I have no idea how to upgrade anyway. They don't have the usual File/Edit/View menus. There's just a wrench icon, and it doesn't appear to have any updater under its menu hierarchy.
Googling around (heheh) I found out they left out the F/E/V on purpose. That might make sense for mobile, but I'm using a nice wide LCD with more screen real estate than you can shake a stick at. Without F/E/V I feel like I'm subject to somebody's vision of "clean minimalist design" where they thought they knew what was best for the user. For cryin' out loud, if I wanted to use a Mac I'd already be using one. Hey... maybe it'll automaticly upgrade to 6.0 if I throw it in the recycling bin... no, wait... AHA! The updater is in the "About Chrome" thingy.
Oh sure, bury the updater in the widget that usually just shows copyright info. That's, just... wonderful. To be fair though, interfaces to updaters aren't quite as standard as F/E/V.
Re:yay? (Score:3, Informative)
"Without F/E/V I feel like I'm subject to somebody's vision of "clean minimalist design" where they thought they knew what was best for the user. For cryin' out loud, if I wanted to use a Mac I'd already be using one."
FWIW, the Mac version of Chrome *does* have File/Edit/View still in the menubar (working as expected), and does not hide http:/// [http] or in any other way mangle your copying of urls.
Re:yay? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:yay? (Score:2)
Well, nor is https: information, since the padlock icon shows that you're using an HTTPS site.
They should be consistent and either always remove the protocol when it's superfluous, or not.
They also need to fix the horrible display on high-DPI screens.
Re:yay? (Score:2)
If I were you, I'd demand a full refund.
Re:yay? (Score:2)
If I were you, I'd demand a full refund.
Ha, that'll learn ya! It is morally wrong to point out flaws in zero-cost software!
Re:yay? (Score:2)
The downside of this is that (at least for me, on Ubuntu 9.10) the clipboard unreliably re-adds the http to copied URLs - it often does, but sometimes it just leaves it off, risking links like this [slashdot.org] when not paying attention.
Re:yay? (Score:2)
What OS is this for? My Chrome still shows http/https on Linux and Mac.
Re:yay? (Score:2)
It's still there, at least in the version they just released that I'm using right now.
Re:yay? (Score:2)
Re:yay? (Score:2)
Yeah, that's why Wave and other Google messaging services are based on XMPP instead of HTTP.
Heck, if it was up to Google, even the traffic on the internet that acts like HTTP wouldn't use vanilla HTTP, it would use SPDY.
Re:yay? (Score:2)
I haven't updated yet, but I can see now that hiding the http:// is a pain in the ass for communicating URLs onto other channels. Cut and paste a properly formatted URL into a chat window, email, or instant message, and most clients will correctly discover, highlight and support the hyperlink. Now people will have to edit the mangled URL when copying from their browser to get the same functionality. Perhaps the new Chrome will "auto-insert" the protocol prefix when copying the URL to the operating system's clipboard, but I kind of doubt this.
Re:yay? (Score:2, Informative)
It does.
Re:yay? (Score:2)
Me too [imageshack.us]
Re:yay? (Score:3, Informative)
If there isn't anything there, it's "http://". Considering that this is the vast majority of a browser's usage, it seems like a good compromise to me - and won't make any difference on your example.
On a side note, I am deeply disturbed by the fact browsers would render htm[l] files when using "ftp://". It just sounds horribly wrong to me.
Chome 6 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Chome 6 (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, you're going to have to use the dev channel, and get ready for a hell of a bumpy ride...
6.0.414.0 (Score:2)
You don't have to wait, I'm posting this from Chrome 6.0.408.1
You're falling behind... I'm using 6.0.414.0 obtained using Ubuntu's package manager.
Re:6.0.414.0 (Score:2)
Bleeding edge! :) http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/ [chromium.org]
Re:Chome 6 (Score:2)
I only noticed a while ago that the dev channel was silently updating, I had a week of weird crashes, but otherwise it's been quite good.
Re:Chome 6 (Score:2)
I like the sound of hexavalent chromium
Yeah, you and PG&E [wikipedia.org].
Re:Chome 6 (Score:2)
But Chrome is a soft metal. You want Tungsten, if you're going in that direction. Since it's now fashionable to design web browsers in a layered fashion, Graphene might actually be the better bet.
Chrome vs Chromium on Ubuntu? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why would I download Chrome when I already have Chromium which gets updated automatically by Update Manager, remaining consistent with everything else on my laptop?
Re:Chrome vs Chromium on Ubuntu? (Score:2)
That's very nice for you, but neither Windows nor OS X allow third-party applications to be updated via the built-in updater.
(Actually, that's not strictly true, I believe there was talk of Microsoft allowing it in Windows but I don't know of many applications taking advantage of that).
Re:Chrome vs Chromium on Ubuntu? (Score:4, Informative)
Installing Chrome .deb will neatly add "http://dl.google.com/linux/deb/ stable main" to the list of software sources. This will give you automatic updates.
stable? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:stable? (Score:2)
Och aye? The Win32 version I just installed a couple hours ago didn't say that.
Be helpful to know what platform you're on.
Re:stable? (Score:2)
I don't see any 'beta' on mine...
http://twitpic.com/1r0t5g [twitpic.com]
Re:stable? (Score:2)
BETA Chrome vs 5 - 64-bit linux Ubuntu 10.04 (Score:2)
Still says beta for me - in true Google style!
Re:stable? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:stable? (Score:2)
Stable channel vs beta channel in Ubuntu (Score:2)
Re:stable? (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:this is going to be (Score:4, Insightful)
Why not go with Chromium?
Re:this is going to be (Score:2)
Re:this is going to be (Score:3, Insightful)
which saps my bandwidth on the backend to report my surfing habits back to google.
The whole german wifi debacle is making this company just as hot to handle as facebook.
Several points...
1) If you want to eliminate the "phone home", you can do so very easily under options-->under the hood. Uncheck the top 5 boxes; now your data is secure. This is what I did on a live-boot cd where CPU and bandwidth are at a premium.
2) If you do not feel you can trust that it isnt communicating, you can actually VERIFY that, either through about:net-internals, or wireshark, or netstat, or router logs. Not to mention most of the source is actually AVAILABLE....
3) Google as a whole tends to be in line with foss philosophy. They make it clear what they are after-- your data-- but otherwise they use open protocols, with open access, unlike just about anyone else. Ever try and move your data off of AOL, or Yahoo? Ever try to access hotmail over imap? Ever try and do a contacts export from AOL?
4) If it is really that big of a deal, use Chromium; you really cant complain that that requires blind trust (as it is open source). Of course, note that with any browser, when you use google, you have 90% of the same privacy issues-- most of the Chrome issues stem from auto-suggest.
5) The "wifi debacle" amounted to Google coming out with no prompting or coercion and saying, "We may have goofed and gathered some data, bear with us while we investigate." Thats a lot different than having a leak or getting caught doing something, and I think it is unfair to try to equate them with Facebook. If you're a techie, and have used google products, you KNOW what theyre after anyways, and they generally give you tools to opt out anyways.
Re:this is going to be (Score:3, Insightful)
It's the pieces for which source isn't available that worries me.
I mean, would you eat at a place that said "90% of our food is bought from trusted sources"?
Re:this is going to be (Score:4, Interesting)
The whole german wifi debacle is making this company just as hot to handle as facebook.
I don't think so.
I do. The common mantra seems to be, "Enough privacy to get people to stop complaining." Google, Facebook, Myspace, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe are all guilty of this thinking, and they're showing no sign of letting up.
Some may argue that "people" should be replaced with "governments," but that's a pointless swap. Governments are made of people, and people will complain about privacy abuses to governments, knowing full well that it won't do any good to complain to the abusers.
Re:this is going to be (Score:5, Insightful)
Facebook went from being a closed network to an open one with several changes to the privacy controls, that awful Beacon feature, etc. They never back down until there's immense pressure. Usually even then they don't back down entirely. And it's all so they can monetize their site.
Google made a mistake with their wifi collection software and quickly admitted to it when asked about it, then came up with a plan to destroy the data.
How are these two things even remotely similar?
Re:this is going to be (Score:4, Insightful)
Sidebars? (Score:5, Interesting)
Does Chrome now support a bookmark sidebar? With the wide-screen TFTs everywhere these days a bookmark sidebar has become a must-have for me. I cannot stand bookmark pull-down menus. And to make things worse Chrome has put the default Bookmark menu in the upper- right hand corner of the screen, which for some reason is a place of the screen where my cursor never is.
Re:Sidebars? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Sidebars? (Score:5, Funny)
With the wide-screen TFTs everywhere these days a bookmark sidebar has become a must-have for me. I cannot stand bookmark pull-down menus.
You must be one of those... <shudder>... full-screen people. Dude... windowing environments were invented for a reason!
Can it accept add-ons yet? (Score:2)
Re:Can it accept add-ons yet? (Score:3, Informative)
Extensions have been in place since 4.0 or 4.1 or something. Unfortunately there are no APIs for PROPER blocking of resources (ie stopping Chrome from fetching them) but there are already extensions that can at least remove them from the DOM while the page is loading. My favorite is AdBlock [google.com].
As for NoScript, Chrome has "lite" functionality built in. You can use Options > Under the Hood > Content Settings to turn off JavaScript and Plugins and then whitelist individual sites when the icons pop up on the omnibar, kinda like NoScript. Only problems/differences:
So it could use improvement, but it's not too bad a start. Especially since it's built-in functionality which Firefox doesn't even have. I am looking forward to hopefully APIs that will allow for an extension that can work more like NoScript.
Re:Can it accept add-ons yet? (Score:2)
Chrome has many extensions and yes Adblock. However Adblock only removes the display of ads. It does not prevent downloading of the ad. So you may not see the ad, but it is still downloading, eating bandwidth and making money for whoever has ads on their site.
Firefox adblock is far better.
But I do like Chrome. Its fast, and the ui is nice.
I make good use of the sync bookmark feature. I like it.
Just wish it wasnt so nosey, and spywareish.
Re:Can it accept add-ons yet? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Can it accept add-ons yet? (Score:3, Insightful)
You also dismiss the Javascript blocking because it's all-or-nothing for each site, when OP said: "or at least disable scripts on a per-site level". So you've discounted another feature even though it meets his (minimum) requirement.
If you don't want to use Chrome then fine, but why are you answering on behalf of someone else??
Apple topic? (Score:2)
Why is this under the Apple topic? There is a Google topic!
Re:Apple topic? (Score:2)
That's what I was wondering myself.
Re:Apple topic? (Score:2)
To be fair chrome is based on WebKit which is apples fork of KHTML.
Re:Apple topic? (Score:2)
I did not notice until reading your comment, but I correctly guessed the answer immediately. kdawson posted it.
Obligatory Adblock Reply (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Obligatory Adblock Reply (Score:5, Informative)
"Slashdot Apple Story"?? (Score:2)
Did you just do that to taunt Google? Or slashdot turning into Gizmodo? ;)
can't install behind proxy (Score:5, Informative)
I'll keep using Firefox as it is actually possible to download and install it.
Since the day Google released Chrome you haven't been able to install their crappy 550k installer if you're behind a proxy.
Google and silent upgrades. I am on 6.0.408 (Score:2)
I installed a dev channel version a while back and didn't even realize it has been silently upgrading.
I only found out when I read this story and checked my version and found out it was 6.0.408.
Now I have to figure out how to stop that...
Google must be jocking... (Score:2)
...where is Print Preview?
wanted feature #1 for me (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll switch to Chrome the day it can support a plugin which can block the downloading of ads and other unwanted content, not just hide them with a bit of CSS and Javascript.
(An adblocking proxy isn't a viable solution for me.)
Re:Correction (Score:2, Interesting)
That's not how it works. If you download the .deb file for Chrome 5 from Google's site, it does not get updated by the package manager. It also doesn't get updated the way the Windows version does. It really looks like you'd have to update it yourself. According to help, there should be a button on the about box to check for updates. The Linux version doesn't have this.
Re:Correction (Score:5, Informative)
On Debian and Ubuntu, the .deb-packaged Chrome adds the Google deb archive in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-chrome.list, which is automatically searched by apt and aptitude, so your regular "aptitude update; aptitude upgrade" will pull in new versions of Chrome. Presumably the Synaptic package gizmo does the same things, but I am far too cool for GUIs, so I don't know.
If you want to turn this off, and leave it off, you can change the settings in /etc/default/google-chrome.
Re:Correction (Score:3, Informative)
One caveat: if you have it installed in ubuntu, it's the beta, so you'll have to remove it "apt-get remove google-chrome-beta" before installing "apt-get install google-chrome-stable".
Re:Correction (Score:2, Redundant)
Wow, I thought that you were joking, but you're right:
dcl:~$ aptitude search google
p akonadi-kde-resource-googledata - Google calendar and contacts resource for Akonadi
p calendar-google-provider - Google Calendar support for iceowl, sunbird, lighting- and iceowl-extens
v google-chrome -
i google-chrome-beta - The web browser from Google
p google-chrome-stable - The web browser from Google
p google-chrome-unstable - The web browser from Google
Re:Correction (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, you don't. You just need to "sudo apt-get install google-chrome-stable". They setup their packages in a sane way so that it removes the beta for you (and presumably would do the same if you downloaded it from the website and did a "sudo dpkg -i").
Re:Correction (Score:4, Informative)
I suggest, instead of actually installing the .deb, you simply extract the files from the archive to a local directory using dpkg -x chrome.deb.
This way, you're not giving Google any special permissions on your machine, which effectively amount to root access.
Chrome runs perfectly from a local user's home directory when extracted like this.
Re:Correction (Score:2, Insightful)
Presumably the Synaptic package gizmo does the same things, but I am far too cool for GUIs, so I don't know.
So... if you're too cool for GUIs, tell me, why are you using Google Chrome and not lynx or w3m?
Re:Correction (Score:2)
No, you're wrong. Chrome's deb installer automatically adds the Google repositories, so Linux users get updates for it like they for any other package.
But there really isn't any point in running Chrome instead of Chromium on Linux any way. They're the exact same thing except for the logo and Googe's stalky tracking system, and Chromium usually has better package management.
Re:Vertical tabs? (Score:2, Flamebait)
Placing the tabs horizontally was a serious blunder. A browser where the UI is designed for a maximum of ~5 tabs is horribly broken, as far as I'm concerned. Both for work purposes, and more importantly, for porn browsing.
Re:Vertical tabs? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:No Flash? (Score:2)
Flash works just fine in chrome.
Re:No PPC? (Score:2)