Jump to content

Google Chrome: Difference between revisions

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Browse history interactively
← Previous editNext edit →
Content deleted Content added
VisualWikitext
SHARD (talk | contribs)
311 edits
m It's a preview release not a final.
Line 36: Line 36:


;Incognito
;Incognito
Chrome includes an ''Incognito'' mode (similar to [[Safari]]'s ''Private Browsing'' and [[Internet Explorer 8]]'s ''InPrivate'') which "lets you browse the web in complete privacy because it doesn’t record any of your activity" and discards cookies. When enabled for a window "nothing that occurs in that window is ever logged on your computer."<ref name="chrome-books" />
Chrome includes an ''Incognito'' mode (similar to [[Safari]]'s ''Private Browsing'' and [[Internet Explorer 8]]'s ''InPrivate'',as a result this has been nicknamed ''Porn Mode'') which "lets you browse the web in complete privacy because it doesn’t record any of your activity" and discards cookies. When enabled for a window "nothing that occurs in that window is ever logged on your computer."<ref name="chrome-books" />


===Speed===
===Speed===

Revision as of 19:04, 2 September 2008

Google Chrome
Developer(s)Google
Stable release
Windows, macOS, Linux131.0.6778.264/265[1] Edit this on Wikidata / 7 January 2025; 3 days ago (7 January 2025)
Android131.0.6778.260[2] Edit this on Wikidata / 7 January 2025; 3 days ago (7 January 2025)
iOS, iPadOS132.0.6834.78[3] Edit this on Wikidata / 8 January 2025; 2 days ago (8 January 2025)
Extended Support Release130.0.6723.191[4] Edit this on Wikidata / 7 January 2025; 3 days ago (7 January 2025)
Preview release
0.2.149.27 / September 2, 2008
Engine
  • Blink
  • V8
  • WebKit
Edit this at Wikidata
Operating systemCross-platform
TypeWeb browser
LicenseBSD license
Websitewww.google.com/chrome

Google Chrome is an open source web browser developed by Google. It builds on components from other open source software, including WebKit and Mozilla, and is aimed at improving stability, speed and security with a simple and efficient user interface.[5] The name is derived from the graphical user interface frame, or "chrome", of web browsers.

It was released on September 2, 2008, and is available in 43 languages. Google held a press conference that day at 18:00 UTC (11:00 A.M. PDT). Mac OS X and Linux versions are under development and will follow the Windows version.[6][7][8]

Announcement

The official announcement was scheduled for September 3, 2008 and was to be sent to journalists and bloggers with a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial No Derivative Works 2.5 licensed comic by Scott McCloud explaining the features of and motivations for the new browser.[9] Copies intended for Europe were shipped early and German blogger Philipp Lenssen of Google Blogoscoped[10] made a scanned copy of the 38-page comic available on his website after receiving it on September 1, 2008.[11] Google has since made the comic available on Google Books and their site[12] and referenced it on its official blog along with an explanation for the early release.[5]

Design

Security

Blacklists

Chrome periodically downloads updates of two blacklists (one for phishing and one for malware) and warns users when they attempt to visit a harmful site. This service is also made available for use by others via a free public API called "Google Safe Browsing API". In the process of maintaining these blacklists, Google also notifies the owners of listed sites who may not be aware of the presence of the harmful software.[11]

Sandboxing

Each tab in Chrome is sandboxed to "prevent malware from installing itself" or "using what happens in one tab to affect what happens in another". Following the principle of least privilege, each process is stripped of its rights and can compute but can't write files or read from sensitive areas (eg documents, desktop), this is similar to "Protected Mode" that is used by Internet Explorer 7 on Windows Vista. The Sandbox Team is said to have "taken this existing process boundary and made it into a jail"; for example malicious software running in one tab is unable to sniff credit card numbers, interact with the mouse or tell "Windows to run an executable on start-up" and will be terminated when the tab is closed. This enforces a simple computer security model whereby there are two levels of multilevel security (user and sandbox) and the sandbox can only respond to communication requests initiated by the user.[11]

Plugins

Plugins such as Adobe Flash Player are typically not standardised and as such cannot be sandboxed like tabs. These often need to run at or above the security level of the browser itself. To reduce exposure to attack, plugins are run in separate processes that communicate with the renderer, itself operating at "very low privileges" in dedicated per-tab processes. Plugins will need to be modified to operate within this software architecture while following the principle of least privilege.[11]

Incognito

Chrome includes an Incognito mode (similar to Safari's Private Browsing and Internet Explorer 8's InPrivate,as a result this has been nicknamed Porn Mode) which "lets you browse the web in complete privacy because it doesn’t record any of your activity" and discards cookies. When enabled for a window "nothing that occurs in that window is ever logged on your computer."[5]

Speed

JavaScript

The Javascript virtual machine was considered a sufficiently important project to be split off (like Adobe/Mozilla's Tamarin) and handled by a dedicated team in Denmark. Existing implementations were designed "for small programs, where the performance and interactivity of the system weren't that important" but web applications like Gmail "are using the web browser to the fullest when it comes to DOM manipulations and Javascript". The resulting V8 JavaScript engine was designed for speed and introduces new features with that in mind such as hidden class transitions, dynamic code generation, and precise garbage collection.[11] Tests by Google show that V8 is about twice as fast as Firefox 3 and the Safari 4 beta.[13]

Stability

Multiprocessing

The Gears team were considering a multithreaded browser (noting that a problem with existing web browser implementations was that they are inherently single-threaded) and Chrome implemented this concept with a multiprocessing architecture similar to the one implemented by IE8. A separate process is allocated to each task (eg tabs, plugins), as is the case with modern operating systems. This prevents tasks from interfering with each other which is good for both security and stability; an attacker successfully gaining access to one application does not give them access to all and failure in one application results in a Sad Tab screen of death, similar to the well-known Sad Mac. This strategy exacts a fixed per-process cost up front but results in less memory bloat overall as fragmentation is confined to each process and no longer results in further memory allocations.

Task Manager

Chrome features a process management utility called the Task Manager which will allow the user to "see what sites are using the most memory, downloading the most bytes and abusing (their) CPU" (as well as the plugins which run in separate processes) and terminate them.[11]

User interface

Gears

Chrome includes Gears which adds developer features that may or may not become web standards, typically relating to the building of web applications (including offline support).[11]

New Tab Page

Chrome replaces the browser home page which is displayed when a new tab is created with a New Tab Page. This shows thumbnails of the nine most visited web sites along with the sites most often searched, recent bookmarks and recently closed tabs.[14] This concept appeared first with Opera's Speed Dial.[11]

Omnibox

The Omnibox is the URL box at the top of each tab, based on the one in Opera. It includes autocomplete functionality but will only autocomplete URLs that were manually entered (rather than all links), search suggestions, top pages (previously visited), popular pages (unvisited) and text search over history. Search engines can also be captured by the browser when used via the native user interface by pressing Tab.[11]

Popups

Popup windows "are scoped to the tab they came from" and will not appear outside the tab unless the user explicitly drags them out. It is not clear whether they also run in their own process.[11]

Rendering engine

Chrome uses the WebKit rendering engine on advice from the Android team. The WebKit engine is simple, memory efficient, useful on embedded devices and easy to learn for new developers.[11]

Tabs

Tabs are the primary component of Chrome's user interface and as such have been moved to the top of the window rather than below the controls (similar to Opera). This subtle change is in contrast to many existing tabbed browsers which are based on windows containing tabs. Tabs (including their state) can be seamlessly transferred between window containers by dragging. Each tab has its own set of controls, including the Omnibox URL box.[11]

Webapps

Webapps can be launched in their own streamlined window without the Omnibox URL box and browser toolbar. This limits the browser chrome so as not to "interrupt anything the user is trying to do", allowing web applications to run alongside local software (similar to Mozilla Prism, Adobe AIR and Fluid).[11]

Testing

Like most large software projects, Chrome will be tested before release using several test methodologies, including unit testing, integration testing and fuzz testing. Because it relies on WebKit for rendering, it will also be tested with WebKit's layout tests. In addition, Google's page index is being used to form a test suite, with a sample of tens of thousands of commonly accessed sites.[11]

References

  1. ^ "Stable Channel Update for Desktop". 7 January 2025. Retrieved 7 January 2025.
  2. ^ "Chrome for Android Update". 7 January 2025. Retrieved 8 January 2025.
  3. ^ "Chrome Stable for iOS Update". 8 January 2025. Retrieved 8 January 2025.
  4. ^ "Extended Stable Update for Desktop". 7 January 2025. Retrieved 7 January 2025.
  5. ^ a b c Scott McCloud and Google Chrome team (2008-09-01). "Google Chrome By the Google Chrome team, comics adaptation by Scott McCloud". Google Books. Retrieved 2008-09-01. {{cite web}}: |author= has generic name (help); Check date values in: |date= (help)
  6. ^ Pichai, Sundar (2008-09-01). "A fresh take on the browser". Google Blog. Retrieved 2008-09-01. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  7. ^ "Google Chrome update: First screenshot, and live-blog alert". CNet. 2008-09-01. Retrieved 2008-09-02.
  8. ^ Associated Press (2008). "Google launches Chrome web browser". Retrieved 2008-09-02. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  9. ^ Scott McCloud (2008-09-01). "Surprise!". Google Blogoscoped. Retrieved 2008-09-01. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  10. ^ Philipp Lenssen (2008-09-01). "Google Chrome, Google's Browser Project". Retrieved 2008-09-01. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  11. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Philipp Lenssen (2008-09-01). "Google on Google Chrome - comic book". Google Blogoscoped. Retrieved 2008-09-01. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  12. ^ "Google Chrome". Google Books. 2008-09-01. Retrieved 2008-09-02.
  13. ^ Limi, Alexander (2008-09-02). "Chrome: Benchmarks and more". Retrieved 2008-09-02.
  14. ^ Philipp Lenssen. "Google Chrome Screenshots". Google Blogoscoped. Retrieved 2008-09-02.
Wikinews has related news:
Retrieved from "https://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Google_Chrome&oldid=235869852"