Google Releases Chrome 5.0 For Win/Mac/Linux

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."

Re:Chome 6

[ElKry]

You don't have to wait, I'm posting this from Chrome 6.0.408.1

Of course, you're going to have to use the dev channel, and get ready for a hell of a bumpy ride...

Re:yay?

[yelvington]

In 5.0.375.55 the protocol appears to be back in the location bar, at least on Linux.

Re:yay?

[ElKry]

I didn't realize it until he mentioned it, but I see it now: The url field does not show the "http://" anymore. It does show "https://", but I guess someone decided that it was more useful to show more of the actual URL and remove "http://", as it's not informative in any way anymore.

stable?

[nnet]

Stable? Still says beta.

Cool, a Linux version... Oh never mind.

[Anonymous Coward]

So, it's RPM only release and only for Fedora (CentOS 5.3 apparently is not good enough).

Google, get a clue, some of us have evolved and never ever install third party RPMs. A self-contained tar.gz please!

But, like I said, it would not have worked anyway on my CentOS box.

So, Google try again, I'll stick with Firefox in the meantime.

Re:Correction

[Urban Garlic]

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:stable?

[The MAZZTer]

The "beta" indicator is an indication of your update channel... it's not part of the version number. I'm guessing you're on the beta channel and noticed the stable channel got the same version, but yours still says "beta". Am I right?

Re:Correction

[Anonymous Coward]

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:yay?

[Anonymous Coward]

Using Chrome 5 that was just released, I see "http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/05/25/1723248"

I resized the window smaller too and the "http://" remains.

Re:Correction

[Anonymous Coward]

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:Can it accept add-ons yet?

[moogsynth]

Yes we all know it has extensions. But Chrome doesn't have Noscript. It does have Javascript-blocking and whitelists but it's an all or nothing choice for each website, which is less than ideal. Chrome also has an adblocker, but it isn't a proper adblocker; it just hides the ads. So clearly, the you are wrong, and Chrome is still not a good choice of browser for the GP.

Re:Can it accept add-ons yet?

[The MAZZTer]

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:

1. Whitelists apply to PAGES, not to RESOURCES. So an offsite resource is still allowed if the host page is whitelisted. This also applies to frames. So this can't be used to block ad scripts like NoScript.
2. Plugin whitelist button doesn't always show up, most notably for swfobject.js (IIRC). The problem is that the whitelist icon shows if there is an embed in the page, but some JS will check for the presense of a plugin before placing the embed. With plugins blocked, the browser reports no plugins available, and so the JS never inserts the embed, so the whitelist icon never appears. I've opened a bug on this; JS access of the plugins array show cause the icon to appear.
3. It's hard to block the whole domain instead of a subdomain (you have to go into the dialogs and do it by hand) and sometimes it doesn't seem to work. Better than earlier versions where it wasn't possible (ytmnd, deviantart, etc were a pain).
4. Page doesn't automatically refresh when you whitelist a site, plus you have to do JS and plugins separately.
5. Some things in Chrome break; the JS features of the Developer Tools (Console, script tab) do not work right when the inspected page has JS blocked. Chrome has JS in its FTP directory listings for some reason; this is treated with the whitelist rules, for another unknown reason.

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:yay?

[Anonymous Coward]

your looking a beta/dev versions. They are still trying things out there. They make it to beta or not based on feedback.

can't install behind proxy

[FunkyELF]

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.

Re:Obligatory Adblock Reply

[correnos]

What are you talking about? I have the adblock extension running now. Just get it at Chrome Extensions-Adblock [google.com]

Unless Chrome doesn't have the same addon structure as Chromium, in which case you're on your own.

Re:Obligatory Adblock Reply

[Nysul]

Adblock for Chrome downloads the ads, then blocks them. I don't know how you could not notice this, the Chrome ad-block solution is half-assed at best.

Re:yay?

[Anonymous Coward]

It does.

Re:Chrome vs Chromium on Ubuntu?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:yay?

[agent_vee]

When you type in a URL directly to the address bar do you input "http://www.slashdot.org" or "www.slashdot.org"? Personally I think it's fine to leave out http and only display the protocol if it is different like https, ftp, etc... Of course I have updated to the latest version of Chrome and STILL see the http in the address bar so I don't even know what the fuss is all about.

Re:Correction

[somenickname]

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:yay?

[jensen404]

You have to copy at least apple.slashdot.org for the 'http://' to appear. Copying just the first character will not add the 'http://'

Re:this is going to be

[surveyork]

You might be interested in SRWare Iron, a Chrome mod that doesn't track you: > Version 5.0380 beta http://www.srware.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1482 [srware.net] Stable version: http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron_chrome_vs_iron.php [srware.net] Or you may like ChromePlus: http://www.chromeplus.org/ [chromeplus.org] ChromePlus is built on Chrome Dev builds, so v 1.3.4 will be based on Crhome 6.0.x

Re:Sidebars?

[chord.wav]

Not only that, I need tree tabs like I have in Firefox with the Treetab extension. What drugs are they on, that they keep doing the tabs horizontally?

Re:yay?

[ElKry]

I fail to see how that makes "http://" informative. "ftp://" is shown. Anything but "http://" seems to be shown, including "file://" etc.

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.

Acid3 fail??

[srix]

The Linux (Ubuntu) version seems pretty flaky on the Acid3 test. Every time I reload the page it gives me different results/scores - sometimes 98/100, sometimes 100/100, and almost every reload results in a bad rendering. FF 3.6.3 on the other hand gives exactly the same score (94/100) and the same rendering on each reload.

Re:yay?

[vitaflo]

"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.