See Chrome's inner workings--and an Easter egg
Google's Chrome browser has as Spartan a user interface as possible, but the browser's Omnibox also turns out to be a window into a much more elaborate view of the browser.
That's because Chrome users can type several commands into the browser's address box to uncovers a wealth of nitty-gritty detail and an amusing Easter egg.
Google Chrome can display lots of detailed information, such as which plug-ins are running. (Click to enlarge.)
(Credit: CNET News)Firefox can be fine-tuned by typing "about:config" into its address bar, and other about: commands shed light on many details. Google followed suit.
Most folks won't care a whit, but the feature is notable for programmers--both those creating Web pages and those who might want to toy with Chromium itself, the open-source project behind Chrome. Programmers are a key audience for Chrome, which Google hopes will advance the state of the art in particular for Web applications.
One Firefox tool popular with Web developers is the Firebug extension, which permits detailed analysis of a Web site. Although Chrome lacks an extensions ability for now, right-clicking on Web page elements offers an "inspect element" option that reproduces some of Firebug's abilities.
Happy Easter
For you non-programmers, there's an Easter egg, too: type "about:internets" into the Omnibox. I'm not going to be a spoilsport by revealing what happens, but here's a hint: Ted Stevens.
Because I'm interested in browser user interface limits, though, I'm very curious what rendering technology is used to produce the Easter egg output. Feel free to offer your theories in the comments field below.
Among the "about" features:
• about:memory shows how much memory the browser--and any other Web browser--is using. Conveniently for Web developers, it also shows how much each Web site in a browser tab is using.
• about:stats shows a wide range of internal measurements such as the time taken to initialize Chrome, load Gears, or perform various operations while running JavaScript programs with Chrome's V8 engine. The page also carries the amusing note, "Shhh! This page is secret!"
Typing about:histogram into Chrome's address bar shows many performance details. (Click to enlarge.)
(Credit: CNET News)• about:version shows details of what version of Chrome is running, along with the user-agent text that the browser reports when identifying itself to Web sites. Why "Mozilla" is in this string is a mystery to me, though perhaps it has to do with the way Chrome can use Firefox plug-ins; why "Mozilla" is apparently in the iPhone's user-agent text is even more a mystery.
• about:histograms graphs various performance measurements such as the time taken to autocomplete text users type into the browser.
• about:crash crashes the active browser tab.
With a little noodling around, I also found out that some of these services, but not all, can be retrieved with a different syntax. Try typing "chrome-resource://about/stats" for example.
One more tidbit for folks closely following Chrome: TG Daily uncovered a so-far hidden "themes" folder that's empty for now but that presumably could be used later to give Chrome different, well, chrome. Depending on how Google proceeds, this could be useful for adapting the browser to the native looks of Linux and Mac OS X, operating systems that Chrome will support later.
This is the error page that results from invoking the about:crash command in Chrome.
(Credit: CNET News)(Via Google Operating System and Tech-Pro.net.)
Stephen Shankland writes about a wide range of technology and products, but has a particular focus on browsers and digital photography. He joined CNET News in 1998 and since then also has covered Google, Yahoo, servers, supercomputing, Linux and open-source software, and science. E-mail Stephen, or follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/stshank. 
*Everyone* these days uses Mozilla at the front of the user agent strings. Even Internet Explorer uses it, though it hints that they really just mean "Mozilla-compatible". It seems that this started when IE copied Netscape's user agent "Mozilla" (since Netscape was codenamed Mozilla).
www.google.com
While I realize that at least one of the creators of Mosaic went on to Netscape, etc.. It's still different and was before Netscape.
Just wanted to make the point since one should be careful in seeming to be suggesting one persons mistake means they don't know what they're talking about. That would suggest their own mistake means.... something.
I would hate to think that if I asked a question or made a comment here, I would receive a response that started with "Why is someone commenting on a...that does not understand...?"
Definitely wouldn't make me feel luvved!
how much does Google pay you?
The EULA states that this is spyware, how difficult is that for you to grasp?
Yeah, "about:n3td3v" brings that up. And your bank info.
It's a beta version of an open source project, there's nothing stopping you adding the finishing touches and compiling it yourself :)
There is nothing inherently wrong with this as it can serve the users well. The problem is whether you Trust the company offering you the services. A trustworthy company does those things the user is interested in and agrees to. If this trust can be built and privacy maintained then this is a win-win, instead of foolgle's They Win - You Lose, and a successful company will make.
Take heed my friends. There are things coming on the horizon that foolgle will not be able to combat. Credibility is everything. Once it's lost, it's a batlle to get it back. Honesty requires sacrifice and admitting to mistakes of clearly good intention, with the users' participation. Particular attention is critical if you're on the side of user controlled, and company enforced, privacy.
Trust me when I tell you, you are a lot worse than brian dead. No amount oif spin from you is going to change the fact that Google is pure, unadulterated evil.
What all this saber rattling by you people boils down to is that Google is no longer the 50 person company it once was, so you automatically feel threatened. Oh boo hoo. So they are a pretty damn large company. They are easily one of the most open companies on the market. The embrace open source more then even Apple. You don?t like Chrome? Go and develop it yourself. http://code.google.com/chromium/ Don?t see MS or Apple doing that are we? How about Android. Again its open to the masses. But no. You tin hat wearing fools have to turn everything into a mass conspiracy.
Now when the day comes that Google DOES start playing some underhanded slimeball tactics that MS has used in the past. Lets talk. For right now there are plenty of OS?s out there, plenty of other search engines, plenty of browsers, and plenty of online e-mail clients.
What google gives you is a set of tools, that while not one of the most robust on the net, is pretty damn rock solid. And yet you guys complain that they are out to steal your personal info. Whatever. AS if Google gives a crap about you.
Do you really think the people at Google are that stupid? A EULA is a legal document that, if it's poorly worded, could get the company in deep legal trouble. If a EULA is only as important you imply that it is, then there is absolutely no need for a EULA in the first place.
Inspect Element is not a mimicry of a plugin of a browser; it's a utility built into WebKit. Users of Safari can "unlock" the command in their own browser by either typing the proper code into Terminal or finding any one of a large number of programs which will execute the code for them.
For now I'm staying with Firefox, since Chrome still has it's rough edges and Apple's Safari works great in Mac, but sucks big time in Windows. IE7 sucks big time in Vista, but works great int XP. So in the end Firefox still rules.
BTW. When will there be a company bold enough to end this Mozilla crap. Browser ID are getting longer and longer and the initial version y getting useless.
IE has always said some thing like this:
"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0...."
Safari and Chrome read like this:
"Mozilla/5.0 (...) AppleWebKit/525.... (KHTML, like Gecko) ... Safari/525..."
and Firefox makes no difference
"Mozilla/5.0 (....) Gecko/2008070208 Firefox/3.0.1 "
I'm hoping that such bits of "geeky goodness" will help spur innovation.
If Google can win the hearts and minds of the geeks, programmers and other "software should be free and open" types, I think they'll win this round of browser/OS wars.
Michael Adams
www.chromevoice.com
What is that supposed to mean?
I am assuming you mean three times faster. Unless you did real benchmarking(and based on the quality of your comments, you didn't) you can't say that. Besides, how important is it when we are talking about 2 seconds at most?
Is that fraction of a second you are saving worth the privacy violations?
This thing is a security/privacy nightmare. It has been uninstalled already. Did Fisher-Price design it ?
They appear to have a plan that involves Chrome and its ability to better market advertising and Google's
own applications. In the end my conclusion is Google has too much information of mine and I don't intend to feed this apparent need for them to get more. To me this is not what open source should be about and it does seem Google is using it for its gain. Why is it all good things tend to become bad things?
Microsoft was the first failure for this, but Apple is showing signs of it and now Google has joined the fray.
Nor did they invent VisualVoiceMail. Sprint , Apple and others pay royalties to the patent holder.
I know may will scream about "consent"....read your EULA. Most all of them give the content provider consent to gather some type of information. Again, in this day and age there are a small percentage of people who read this crap. If they are paranoid enough, they simply won't use the product. The rest of us will click "accept" and "next"....
I love dragging tabs into new windows!
Cannot wait for mouse gestures and all the fun extensions to come!
This is a sweet browser!
See for yourself
- by bharper26 September 7, 2008 1:34 AM PDT
- As far as I can tell, "about:internets" isn't using any kind of web rendering technology. The class name is "d3dsaverwndclass" when you have about:internets running.
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