Google Chrome for Mac released (beta)

http://www.google.com/chrome?platform=mac&hl=en

by jsdalton • 17 years ago

92 59 17 years ago

NathanKP2• 17 years ago

Everyone must be downloading it all at once. 22 KB/sec download speed on a T1 connection. I would expect better of Google.

cscotta• 17 years ago

Really? My download completed in about 20 seconds. T1 lines are highly reliable, provide guaranteed bandwidth, and low-latency, but are also very slow at only 1.544mbps (on par with low-end DSL).

NathanKP2• 17 years ago

I might just be a local network condition, though the rest of the internet is loading at its usual speed. My Chrome download is still chugging away....

selven3• 17 years ago

Have you tried torrenting it?

jsdalton• 17 years ago

The first thing I did was convert the address bar to use a Google "I'm Feeling Lucky" search so that it functions more like Firefox.

Here's how: Right click the address bar, choose "Edit Search Engines...". Click the + to add a new search engine. Choose whatever name and keyword you wish, but for URL use http://www.google.com/search?q=%s&btnI=Im+Feeling+Lucky. Make this your default search engine. Works tolerably well.

nixme• 17 years ago

Still no functioning bookmarks manager or bookmark sync. I was hoping they'd enable that in the beta release.

kneath• 17 years ago

I'm pretty frustrated with this as well. I've been using Chromium for a while now, and I can't use this Beta because it doesn't share bookmarks, or allow me to import from Chromium, or even move/delete the existing bookmarks.

Guess I'll keep with the less stable nightlies for a while longer.

fjabre2• 17 years ago

Don't have my mac handy.. Does it have full screen support on OS X?

ChrisRicca2• 17 years ago

Yup, although the option is grey-ed out on my machine ATM, and I couldn't tell you why...

I've used it before, though

fjabre2• 17 years ago

I have yet to find a browser with full screen support on OS X - which makes me think it's an OS X limitation.. So odd.. When you have a 13 inch macbook this problem becomes readily apparent.

robgough• 17 years ago

Gray-ed out on mine too. Does anyone know why? This would definitely be nice to have.

ChrisRicca2• 17 years ago

If you want custom themes beyond what Google provides, I'm hawking a tool a hacked together a couple of weekends ago. It's a just-for-fun thing so the UI is pretty sparse, but it works! :)

http://sexychrome.com

I'm a big fan of Chrome. Favorite features include the speed, full-screen browsing, detachable tabs. Needs a robust extension for CSS inspection/manipulation, though. Built in one doesn't quite flow as well as Firebug. Decent JS console.

benpbenp• 17 years ago

Linux too!

http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/w00t.html

novum• 17 years ago

A fine tribute to XKCD. Good to see Google give credit (and a direct link!) to XKCD right on the page, too.

suvike• 17 years ago

Unfortunately, it shares Firefox's sloppy page scroll performance. Bleh. Guess I'll be sticking with Safari.

lg• 17 years ago

and it shares safari's inability to view XML documents. What's with that...

johns• 17 years ago

There's an extension for that: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/gbammbheopgpmaag...

Caged• 17 years ago

XML View plugin for Safari - http://www.entropy.ch/blog/Mac+OS+X/2009/02/09/Safari-Plugin...

alaskamiller• 17 years ago

Gmaps and Gcal aren't rendered properly. Am I the only one?

pkulak2• 17 years ago

Calendar looks great for me.

rbarooah2• 17 years ago

Does anyone know whether this has auto-update?

padmanabhan01• 17 years ago

Not sure if this is just me, but Google autoupdate is just broken for mac. It pops up even when the program is not running and the update only works if the current user is an admin. It does not prompt for admin password like all other updates do. And there was no way to not have autoupdate. That led me uninstall all Google software a while back.

rbarooah2• 17 years ago

I am not referring to the general google updater that comes with the google pack. I mean the silent autoupdate that chrome for windows has.

protomyth2• 17 years ago

I really do not like google's policy on updating. It presupposes that any organization has a lot of bandwidth and doesn't mind updates going off at inconvenient times. Since one of the places I work at has a couple labs of Macs and does video classes on the same internet connection, I see a real annoying situation.

joebasirico• 17 years ago

I've been using chromium for a while now and have been fairly happy with it (other than a bit of scrolling performance and some flash funnyness). Has anybody done a side by side comparison of Chromium and Google Chrome on the Mac?

The UI looks identical, functionally they look very similar, and performance seems about the same as well.

Thoughts?

symesc• 17 years ago

Near as I can tell: all that changed was the version number from .27 to .30.

iStat Menus processor graph still goes nuts when scrolling compared to Safari. That said, Chromium/Chrome has been my default browser for about a month now.

teilo3• 17 years ago

How can they call this a beta when there's NO BOOKMARK MANAGER?

selven3• 17 years ago

I might not know what you exactly mean by a "bookmark manager", but the star to the left of the URL textbox and Ctrl+B give you bookmarks.

tienshiao• 17 years ago

The Mac version doesn't have a bookmark manager. You can click the star, and it saves the bookmark (or removes the bookmark). But unlike the Windows version there isn't a dialog/window that shows all your bookmarks and lets you drag/drop/etc.

jpcx01• 17 years ago

Heh, I've been wondering that too. Not that I need it that much, but it'd be nice to maybe be able to delete a bookmark folder. A lot to ask, I know.

Still, bar none my favorite browser on the mac. Love the fact that the dev tools are the latest webkit version. I'm done with memory hogs that are safari and firefox (though I still use firebug every now and again).

slyn2• 17 years ago

The email they sent to announce the beta (if you signed up to get it) has some interesting stats:

  Hi there,
  
  Thanks for signing up to hear from us regarding Google Chrome for Mac! We're excited to let you know that Google Chrome is now available in beta for Mac OS X.

  Here are a few fun facts from us on the Google Chrome for Mac team:

  -73,804 lines of Mac-specific code written
  -29 developer builds
  -1,177 Mac-specific bugs fixed
  -12 external committers and bug editors to the Google Chrome for Mac code base, 48 external code contributors
  -64 Mac Minis doing continuous builds and tests
  -8,760 cups of soft drinks and coffee consumed
  -4,380 frosted mini-wheats eaten
  Thanks for waiting and we hope you'll give Google Chrome for Mac a whirl.

  Google Chrome Team
  www.google.com/chrome

The 8.43:1 ratio of LoC to soft drinks/coffee consumed made me laugh.

Shamiq• 17 years ago

two spaces

  like this.

gvb• 17 years ago

...but for a bullet list...

* Use a leading asterisk

* Separate the list items by a blank line (i.e. make them separate paragraphs)

- Leading dashes work too.

slyn2• 17 years ago

Thanks for that, looks a little cleaner now.

jsz02• 17 years ago

I like being able to move tabs between windows seamlessly with Chrome. Safari lets you detach a tab into a new window but that's about it. I don't think you can merge it with another window that already has open tabs or re-attach it. My biggest gripe, which is purely personal preference, is not having the progress bar integrated with the address bar. At least the status bar automatically disappears after a page loads. The feature that will keep me on Safari is bookmark syncing via MobileMe. It's really nice having it sync to my other Macs and iPhone.

kenshi• 17 years ago

You can move tabs between windows in Safari on OSX.

jsz02• 17 years ago

Is this new in Safari 4? I don't remember this ever working before.

thaumaturgy• 17 years ago

Intel only. Looks like I'll be sticking with Stainless (http://www.stainlessapp.com/) -- probably would've stuck with it anyway, it's a pretty nifty little Mac browser.

blasdel2• 17 years ago

V8 was i386-only for a long time, it's had x86_64 and ARM support for maybe 6 months. Android originally used Webkit's Squirrelfish, I think the Palm Pre shipped with V8 before Android did!

ams6110• 17 years ago

Never heard of Stainless before. Thanks!

aubergene• 17 years ago

I've recently switched from Ubuntu to a Mac (mainly just to learn wtf everyone says is so great), I'd been running Chromium there for ages, I'd prefer to use Chromium rather than give so much data to Google but I could find a package which will update like Chromium did on Ubuntu. Any suggestions?

blasdel2• 17 years ago

Google's official Chrome builds update themselves automatically while they're running without needing to relaunch.

The Mac Developer community has standardized on Sparkle, where the app downloads an update feed from the developer's site and prompts for an automatic update/install/relaunch.

To get the Chromium on Ubuntu behavior of manually-initiated centralized automatic updates, you'd have to use a package manager and the only viable one is MacPorts, which is just not a good fit for desktop software.

tlrobinson• 17 years ago

This feels even faster than the developer betas. Excellent.

yumraj2• 17 years ago

Whats with the versioning of Chrome for Mac.

"About Google Chrome" says 4.0.249.30 and AFAIK this is the only "Beta" software with a major version as high as 4.

teilo3• 17 years ago

Version parity. It's done all the time when porting to a new platform. Why would you want identical software to have different version numbers on three different platforms.

yumraj2• 17 years ago

OK. makes sense. But then how come Win Chrome is already at version 4.

In other words 4 as the major version seems high considering Chrome, for any platform, is fairly new. Compare that with FF which has been for much longer and is at 3.5.x

Are they tracking Webkit or any other version?

jazzdev• 17 years ago

Yea! File upload works now. Now I shouldn't need Camino any more.

pkulak2• 17 years ago

This Beta doesn't have a bookmarks manager. Does that mean we have to wait until the next release to get it? That would be pretty bad to ship a browser with no bookmark manager.

zooted• 17 years ago

Let me know when it gets plugin support...

aeroevan• 17 years ago

It has had plugin support (at least flash) for some time now.

Google Chrome for Mac released (beta)

Related Stories