Third Chrome beta due in days, Google says

Updated 2 p.m. PDT to clarify details about indexing secure pages.

Google will soon begin distributing a third beta version of its Chrome Web browser, a release that takes on bugs, performance, and security weaknesses.

"You will automatically get updated in the next few days," Chrome program manager Mark Larson said in a mailing list post Wednesday night announcing the new version. People can check if a new version is available by clicking the wrench menu and selecting "About Google Chrome."

On the security front, Google Chrome version 0.3.154.9 stomps a security problem in which a site--if it convinces a user to open a pop-up window--could show a different Web address than the one that actually supplied the information.

"This flaw could be used to mislead people about the origin of a Web site in order to get them to divulge sensitive information," Larson said.

Found in the new beta: better performance and reliability for plug-ins such as Flash and Silverlight; support for scrolling with a touchpad; and better performance and reliability for people who browse the Web through a proxy intermediary. More details are expected to become available in the Chrome release notes page, though at present that page hasn't been updated.

Also, although Google aggressively promotes search technology to make people's lives more convenient, the company concluded it's not a good idea to index the contents of secure Web pages. "You can still search your history for the site's address, but not the contents on the page," Google said in a Chrome release notes blog post Wednesday. (To clarify, Chrome doesn't index secure pages, such as a bank's site, but does index openly accessible pages even if they're accessed over a secure connection, such as a password-protected wireless network.)

Other changes:

• The spell-checker underlines misspelled words in text-input boxes now, and users can right-click words to add them to a dictionary.

• Google, with some outside help, tidied up the process for launching regular and incognito windows, moving the option from the "control the current page" menu to the "control Chrome" among other changes.

• When users download executable programs, such as those ending with .exe or .dll extensions, Chrome now gives them dummy filenames until users confirm they really want to download the files. Unconfirmed downloads are deleted when Chrome exits.

Google released the first Chrome beta in early September and quickly followed up with a second release to fix serious security problems.

Google also offers a faster moving but less-well-tested developer release of Chrome. The newest beta version is the same as the most recent developer version except for one new feature: translation of text such as dialog boxes and menu commands into 42 languages.

I've been testing the Chrome developer releases, and one thing Google didn't mention in its release notes is better JavaScript performance over the earlier Chrome releases. Fast JavaScript is a key part of Google's ambition to use Chrome to spur faster Web application development.

Chrome is an open-source project, and Google maintains a Chrome issues list for those curious about new priorities. It's still only available on Windows, but Google is working on Mac OS X and Linux versions.

[mjconver]

Does it have Adblock Plus yet?

[Shankland]

There's still no word on when Google will add an extensions ability, though they have promised it at some point in the future. Here's the issue request if you want to track it:

http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=18

Note: if you want Google to pay more attention to the issue, click the star to vote for its importance. Google pays attention to the number of people who've starred feature requests.

[mjconver]

Thanks, Stephen, but I meant my comment facetiously. Why would Google put out a browser that turned off its primary revenue stream? Can you imagine what the VP of sales would say to this feature? But we'll see...

[BIGELLOW]

Google already heavily promoted (and continues to heavily promote) Firefox, which is the browser that makes it really easy to block ads.

I think Google's take on this is... if there are people out there who dislike ads so much that they make sure to install special software to block every ad possible, then these are probably not the people Google's advertisers want seeing ads. What makes ads successful is by showing them to people who respond positively to the ads, not by showing them to people who get upset by the ads. Otherwise, it creates the opposite effect.

So, I think Google is perfectly fine with this. As such, I expect a plug-in system will be made available and that a third-party will write an ad-blocker using this plug-in system. Google is likely not going to promote it (as they are not going to want to actively solicit people to install the plug-in)... but they also aren't likely going to prevent it (in the way Sony thwarts PSP hackers from writing their own software for the system.)

[geolemon]

Does it fix the problem "Oops! Google chrome has crashed!" when simply opening the options menu on Windows XP x64? That's a fundamental bug!!

[Lerianis]

That isn't a bug that I have heard anyone except you complaining about. I'm running Google Chrome on Vista 64-bit, and I can open the options menu just fine on it..... though maybe some things have changed from XP to Vista that makes that happen.

[DnetMHZ]

Is there any time line on the Mac version?

[joetesta70]

Yea - when the Mac reaches >5% market share, which is never. LOL!!!

This should be in the Mac vs PC commercial. Hi I'm a Mac, and I'm still waiting for software available on the PC.

[pellets007]

I hope you realize that they, Apple, have almost 18% of the market, compared to Windows. They also have 33% of revenue per computer sold, in other words, one out of every three dollars is spent on a Mac.

[sonymaster101]

@pellets007

you do realize that apple holds about 8%, and not your dream number 0f 18%, right?

keep in mind that Apple makes most of its money off of the overpriced hardware they sell, not the OS. Microsoft on the other hand, makes most of its money by selling software.

[pellets007]

No, I meant the retail market shares(US), which is 18%. Also, they really aren't that overpriced when you look at performance, not just specs. I'm sure Google would gain some valuable downloads, making Chrome available to Macs.

[seamonkey420]

do they fix the horrible horrible Scroll Wheel bug?? where you can scroll down but not up???

to me, that is a very critical bug since almost every person has a scroll wheel or equivalent on their touchpad.

[seamonkey420]

answered my own quesiton by checking.. and answer is.. YES! yay!

[FargoUT]

This is probably irrelevant at this point, but I do know that some programmer (since Chrome is open source) issued his own fix to correct the scroll wheel issue. I installed it when my touchpad's scroll function would not scroll up. That was frustrating, and kept me from using Chrome. But once I found a temporary fix, I began to use Chrome more and more. I'm pretty scattershot with my browser use -- I go from Chrome to Firefox to Flock to IE (I don't like using IE, but some websites just seem to require it, like NetFlix's "Watch Instantly" feature).

I'm glad Google has released Chrome. I really like the simplicity and uncluttered interface (as opposed to Flock, which takes up about a third of my screen real estate with various toolbars and social sidebars). If Chrome continues to run as quickly as it does, I'll continue using it for my primary browsing needs.

[JeffRutherford]

What about the Mac version?

[joetesta70]

Yea - when the Mac reaches >5% market share, which is never. LOL!!!

This should be in the Mac vs PC commercial. Hi I'm a Mac, and I'm still waiting for software available on the PC.

[rec9140]

Call me when the linux version is ready, till then this is not news.

Google remember YOUR using all those generic boxes RUNNING LINUX to power your searches so why the lack of support for what your company uses?????????

Linux!

[rapier1]

I'm not sure what this has to do with anything. Let say that google is using linux on their backend. How does this have any bearing on what they release to their end users?

[BIGELLOW]

I think the point he is making is that Google "eats their own dog food," so to speak. So, when they release a product to their end users, they also created this product to use internally. They likely had many employees using the product before it was released as a beta to end users.

It is also very common for Google employees to use Linux or Macs... so, I don't believe he is referring to the "back end"... but the client machines each of their employees use.

So, this comment makes perfect sense. If the employees use a lot of Macs and Linux boxes, and they use their own products extensively, why wouldn't they support these systems right out of the gates?

The real answer, though, is their philosophy of supporting the larger community first, then working backward. The reality is, each employee is allowed to use whichever operating system they are comfortable with. It is likely that a large portion of Google employees use PCs for the simple fact that they have to make sure their products work well on PCs, since these are the majority of the market. Developers will usually mimic the customers they are developing for. So, it is not unusual for Google to release for the PC first... followed by the Mac... followed by Linux.

[cnet_user_0]

Why reinvent the wheel? MSIE is the standard like it or not.

[tehscott]

Yes, but IE is terrible.

[quirK]

Thankfully some developers don't consider MSIE a standard. That would have been an insult to their intelligence, creativity and capabilities.

[joetesta70]

Still no Mac version because the Mac has no market share. LOL!!!

This should be in the Mac vs PC commercial. Hi I'm a Mac, and I'm still waiting for software available on the PC.

[iff2mastamatt]

I like chrome (on it right now). Keep up the good work google!

[Pricey]

Google toolbar in this next beta??????

[ijerbell1]

I love chrome. It loads so fast and is simple. I feel like IE has too much going on and it slows my system down... Its bad enough I have vista.

[fcs25]

I have used the google browser and yes it is fast however the one major problem it has is popups.Google has not as of yet fixed it's popup control program.They pop up on web sites that when I use IE7 or Foxfire they don't.That tells me the problem is with the browser and not my computer.I deleted the browser because of this problem and will not use it again until it is fixed.

[_merantron_]

No matter what it is better than IE.

[k12rswow]

I like it.

www.StevesPcGamez.com