
Google Chrome for Mac released (beta) - jsdalton
http://www.google.com/chrome?platform=mac&hl=en
======
slyn
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
two spaces

    
    
      like this.

~~~
gvb
...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.

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benpbenp
Linux too!

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

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

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ChrisRicca
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.

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

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

~~~
johns
There's an extension for that:
[https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/gbammbheopgpmaag...](https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/gbammbheopgpmaagmckhpjbfgdfkpadb)

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thaumaturgy
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.

~~~
blasdel
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!

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joebasirico
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
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.

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

~~~
kneath
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.

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jsz0
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
You can move tabs between windows in Safari on OSX.

~~~
jsz0
Is this new in Safari 4? I don't remember this ever working before.

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jsdalton
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](http://www.google.com/search?q=%s&btnI=Im+Feeling+Lucky).
Make this your default search engine. Works tolerably well.

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

~~~
selven
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
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.

~~~
selven
Ctrl+B (or Command+B on the Mac, I assume) opens up a bar at the top (or at
least it does in the Linux version) and you can drag your bookmarks between
the bar and the "other bookmarks" folder.

~~~
nixy
Yes, but there is still no bookmark manager. Try to create (on OS X) a
bookmarks folder in the bookmarks bar. Proceed to add two bookmarks into that
folder. Now... How do you edit/delete/rearrange the bookmarks that reside in
the folder? I can't figure it out.

~~~
Nogwater
Here's what I did (on OS 10.6). 1) Created two bookmark folders in the
bookmark bar named "NewFolder", and "OtherFolder" (right click on bar->Add
Folder) 2) Added two bookmarks to NewFolder (browse to site, click star,
select NewFolder in Folder drop down list) 3) Moved bookmarks from one folder
to the other (browse to bookmarked page, click the star, click Edit, change
the folder drop down selection, close)

This doesn't allow you to move folders around, and it's annoying that you
don't have a way to manage the bookmark of a page without browsing to that
page. It's not the full "Bookmark Manager", but you can manage bookmarks.

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rbarooah
Does anyone know whether this has auto-update?

~~~
padmanabhan01
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.

~~~
rbarooah
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.

~~~
cpr
Yes, that's been working in the dev version for a while.

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aubergene
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?

~~~
blasdel
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.

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pkulak
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.

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yumraj
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.

~~~
teilo
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.

~~~
yumraj
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?

~~~
andreyf
No, just trying to compete with IE8 in an enterprise environment. At the speed
they're going, they'll catch up pretty soon :)

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

~~~
cscotta
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).

~~~
NathanKP
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....

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

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

~~~
ChrisRicca
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

~~~
fjabre
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.

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tlrobinson
This feels even faster than the developer betas. Excellent.

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

~~~
pkulak
Calendar looks great for me.

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zooted
Let me know when it gets plugin support...

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

