[Infowarrior] - Google to Release Open-Source 'Chrome' Browser

[Richard Forno]

  Google to Release Open-Source 'Chrome' Browser

09.01.08

by Chloe Albanesius

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2329247,00.asp

Are Internet Explorer and Firefox ready to do battle with Chrome?

Google announced Monday that it has been hard at work on an open- 
source browser known as Chrome, a beta version of which will be  
released in 100 countries on Tuesday.

New features will included "isolated" tabs designed to prevent browser  
crashes and a more powerful JavaScript engine.

"Why are we launching Google Chrome? Because we believe we can add  
value for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the  
web," Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management, and Linus  
Upson, Google engineering director, wrote in a blog post.

Google was apparently looking to keep news of Chrome under wraps until  
after the holiday weekend. A 38-page, online comic book that provided  
details about Chrome hit the blogosphere Monday morning, but Pichai  
and Upson said in their blog post that Google had "hit 'send' a bit  
early" on the web comic.

The comic depicts various Google engineers describing Chrome's  
features, including the isolated tab idea.

"By keeping each tab in an isolated 'sandbox', we were able to prevent  
one tab from crashing another and provide improved protection from  
rogue sites," Pichai and Upson wrote.

Having a number of tabs open in a single browser eats up memory. If a  
browser is running slow, a user's natural inclination is to close a  
few tabs? In some cases, however, little bits of the closed tabs  
remain, which eats up space and requires the operating system to grow  
the browser's address space, according to Google. With Chrome, there  
will be a different tab for each process, including plug-ins.

"When a tab is closed in Google Chrome, you're ending the whole  
process," according to the comic. "You can look under the hood with  
Google Chrome's task mananger to see what sites are using the most  
memory, downloading the most bytes and abusing your CPU" so you can  
place "blame where blame belongs."

Google also promised "improved speed and responsiveness across the  
board."

"We also built a more powerful JavaScript engine, V8, to power the  
next generation of web applications that aren't even possible in  
today's browsers," Pichai and Upson wrote.

Like OpenSocial and Android, Chrome will be an open source initiative.

"We owe a great debt to many open source projects, and we're committed  
to continuing on their path," they wrote. "We've used components from  
Apple's WebKit and Mozilla's Firefox, among others -- and in that  
spirit, we are making all of our code open source as well. We hope to  
collaborate with the entire community to help drive the web forward."

The team selected Webkit because it uses memory efficiently, was  
easily adapated to embedded devices, and it was easy for new browser  
developers to learn to make the code base work, according to the web  
comic. "Webkit keeps it simple."

Google recently extended its financial deal with Mozilla until 2011,  
according to a blog post from Mitchell Baker, chair of the Mozilla  
Foundation.

Tuesday's beta release will be available for Windows users. "We're  
hard at work building versions for Mac and Linux too, and will  
continue to make it even faster and more robust," Pichai and Upson  
wrote.

"This is just the beginning -- Google Chrome is far from done," they  
wrote. "Google Chrome is another option, and we hope it contributes to  
making the web even better."

Last week, Microsoft released Internet Explorer 8 beta 2, which  
includes improved security and new browsing aids.

Earlier this summer, Mozilla released Firefox 3, which garnered 8  
million downloads in 24 hours.