4 ms·

If you haven't tried out the chromium nightly desktop builds, they're actually quite nice. The team is still nailing down the plugins, but the browser itself is

by cdibona 17y ago

If you haven't tried out the chromium nightly desktop builds, they're actually quite nice. The team is still nailing down the plugins, but the browser itself is wicked fast and pretty stable (given its alpha nature)

buugs 17y ago
I think stable for a web browser these days requires flash/java support, I don't know if this has been fixed or not in the builds though. Probably less on the java side and more on the flash.
markbao 17y ago
If you're a Mac user, you can also download the latest nightly build here: http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/chromium-rel-mac/ http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/chromium-rel-ma... (scroll all the way down to the latest build directory) And yes, it is wicked fast. On my system, it doesn't even bounce in the dock before opening. It just opens. Plugins aren't supported yet, but I just open any sites that require Flash in Safari.
- pygy 17y ago
  It's so fast OS X is unable to register it as a recently launched application for the magic folder in the dock... Anyone knows why?
  - chaosmachine 17y ago
    Just a guess, but maybe the weird process-per-tab thing.
- dchest 17y ago
  > On my system, it doesn't even bounce in the dock before opening. I think it doesn't bounce for a different reason. For example, Firefox doesn't bounce when it autoupdates. Everything should bounce for at least one time in normal conditions.
trezor 17y ago
Even for a minimalistic web-browser Chromium is still rather lacking. While what used to be butt ugly font-rendering has gotten better, at least to the point of readable, as far as I can tell there is still no plugin support. The only way you can fully configure the browser is still trough running gconf-editor for some parts, and configuring Firefox and then importing settings from there. That being said, my biggest issue with the current chromium builds is that performance is truly horrible and majorly unstable. Sometimes things just works, snappy, as expected. But in more than 50% of the cases when opening a new page the entire browser locks, for what can be periods of up to 5 to 10 seconds. Wasn't process isolation supposed to fix this? If this browser is going to be the "OS" for the web, in it's current state its closest equivalent would be Windows 3.11. IMO Firefox 3.5 is a much better browser, while peak performance being somewhat slower, at least it performs predictably.
- davidw 17y ago
  > horrible ... unstable Wow - completely opposite from my experience. What are you running on? I'm on Ubuntu 8.10 right now, using the nightly builds. I've had a tab lock up once or twice, but in general it's very nice, way faster than FF 3.0, and pleasant to use. The key bindings are the only thing that seems a bit wonky, but I'm generally happy and at some point may start using it as my main browser, if FF 3.5 isn't significantly better.
  - trezor 17y ago
    I'm running this on a Asus EEE 901 with Ubuntu Netbook remix running the nightlies. My biggest issue is how the latency of the browser seems to vary between milliseconds and two-digit seconds. Performance is randomly varying over three orders of magnitude and that kind of performance instability is worse than performance being consistently "slow". As for Firefox 3.5: It is much better.
  - emhc 17y ago
    Also the complete opposite of my experience. I used the nightly builds almost exclusively for over a week on Ubuntu 9.04 and I had no performance issues. Things are certainly incomplete but I was slightly disappointed to go back to the poorer performance of Firefox. I should probably place that blame on the Flash plugin but I think Chrome will handle this problem much better.

by cdibona 17y ago

buugs 17y ago

I think stable for a web browser these days requires flash/java support, I don't know if this has been fixed or not in the builds though. Probably less on the java side and more on the flash.

markbao 17y ago

If you're a Mac user, you can also download the latest nightly build here: http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/chromium-rel-mac/ http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/chromium-rel-ma... (scroll all the way down to the latest build directory) And yes, it is wicked fast. On my system, it doesn't even bounce in the dock before opening. It just opens. Plugins aren't supported yet, but I just open any sites that require Flash in Safari.

pygy 17y ago
It's so fast OS X is unable to register it as a recently launched application for the magic folder in the dock... Anyone knows why?
- chaosmachine 17y ago
  Just a guess, but maybe the weird process-per-tab thing.
dchest 17y ago
> On my system, it doesn't even bounce in the dock before opening. I think it doesn't bounce for a different reason. For example, Firefox doesn't bounce when it autoupdates. Everything should bounce for at least one time in normal conditions.

trezor 17y ago

Even for a minimalistic web-browser Chromium is still rather lacking. While what used to be butt ugly font-rendering has gotten better, at least to the point of readable, as far as I can tell there is still no plugin support. The only way you can fully configure the browser is still trough running gconf-editor for some parts, and configuring Firefox and then importing settings from there. That being said, my biggest issue with the current chromium builds is that performance is truly horrible and majorly unstable. Sometimes things just works, snappy, as expected. But in more than 50% of the cases when opening a new page the entire browser locks, for what can be periods of up to 5 to 10 seconds. Wasn't process isolation supposed to fix this? If this browser is going to be the "OS" for the web, in it's current state its closest equivalent would be Windows 3.11. IMO Firefox 3.5 is a much better browser, while peak performance being somewhat slower, at least it performs predictably.

davidw 17y ago
> horrible ... unstable Wow - completely opposite from my experience. What are you running on? I'm on Ubuntu 8.10 right now, using the nightly builds. I've had a tab lock up once or twice, but in general it's very nice, way faster than FF 3.0, and pleasant to use. The key bindings are the only thing that seems a bit wonky, but I'm generally happy and at some point may start using it as my main browser, if FF 3.5 isn't significantly better.
- trezor 17y ago
  I'm running this on a Asus EEE 901 with Ubuntu Netbook remix running the nightlies. My biggest issue is how the latency of the browser seems to vary between milliseconds and two-digit seconds. Performance is randomly varying over three orders of magnitude and that kind of performance instability is worse than performance being consistently "slow". As for Firefox 3.5: It is much better.
- emhc 17y ago
  Also the complete opposite of my experience. I used the nightly builds almost exclusively for over a week on Ubuntu 9.04 and I had no performance issues. Things are certainly incomplete but I was slightly disappointed to go back to the poorer performance of Firefox. I should probably place that blame on the Flash plugin but I think Chrome will handle this problem much better.