
Chrome Dev Hits Version 7; Native Client Part of Release - dcawrey
http://www.thechromesource.com/chrome-dev-hits-version-7-native-client-part-of-release/
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amalcon
Any updates on the security of NaCl? Every time that sort of thing has been
tried, it has been a total failure from a security standpoint, and I haven't
yet seen reason for NaCl to be any different.

~~~
Pengwin
I've never been aware of NaCl, but when I just read what it was, I was filled
with the exact same sentiment.

Isn't this what ActiveX was all about? We all know what happened in that
instance.

~~~
prodigal_erik
ActiveX never had a sandbox. They didn't even try to safely run untrusted
binaries. "Safe for scripting" merely meant the author claimed the control was
designed not to do horrible things to your system even if invoked by a
malicious script on a web page.

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lukev
Does anyone know if the native client is based on an abstract specification,
or purely Chrome-dependent?

In other words, is there a chance that other browsers might implement it in
the future as well, allowing web developers to write client-side applications
in any language that can compile to native code, not just Javascript?

If so... the day when one can actually write and deliver _any_ type of
application through the browser, with no penalty, might actually be on the
horizon.

People have talked about how webapps are going to kill traditional software
for the next decade. If the relevant browsers implemented this, could it
finally actually happen?

~~~
xtacy
> _People have talked about how webapps are going to kill traditional software
> for the next decade. If the relevant browsers implemented this, could it
> finally actually happen?_

I would say that the difference between webapps and desktop apps will
disappear.

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TrevorBramble
This basically makes Chrome a machine-independent development platform, right?

They might actually pull off this web apps store idea.

~~~
asb
Not yet, but they're working on a solution using the LLVM bitcode format:

<http://nativeclient.googlecode.com/svn/data/site/pnacl.pdf>
[http://www.chromium.org/nativeclient/native-client-
documenta...](http://www.chromium.org/nativeclient/native-client-
documentation-index/building-and-testing-portable-native-client)

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terrellm
Geesh they are already on version 7 and Chrome? Maybe someone at Google forgot
to include the "1." in front of the version.

It's interesting that Internet Explorer, which came out in 1995, is on version
9 while Chrome which came out just two years ago is already on version 7.

-

Edits below to address the downvotes:

Maybe I didn't communicate my point clearly. I certainly didn't intend to
knock Chrome - I use it along with Safari as my primary browsers.

My point was more to say "come on guys, 7 versions in 2 years while everyone
else (FF, IE, Safari, Opera) has had one or two?".

Maybe I'm biased because I worked at a software company years ago who wanted
to communicate their product was as mature as the competition's and skipped
straight from version 1.0 to version 4.0. An no, I'm not implying Chrome is
less mature than others.

~~~
js2
This is just how Chromium does versioning.

Chromium version #'s are four parts: major.minor.build.patch. Of these four
parts, major.minor are "marketing" controlled. The other two parts,
build.patch are engineering controlled and related to the Chromium branching
strategy.

Chromium develops everything on trunk. Typically, once a day, they increment
the build #. The build #'s are part of their branching process. Once a branch
is cut, its build # is fixed. Instead, only the patch # is incremented on that
branch, again about once a day.

So for example, the current stable release is milestone 5. This was built from
the 375 branch. So the full version # is 5.0.375.127, which indicates that
about 127 days have passed since the 375 branch was cut as you can see here:

[http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome?view=rev&revision=...](http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome?view=rev&revision=44206)

Chromium hasn't made much use of the minor part of the version #, the notable
exception being 4.1.

Also, historically, Chromium has aimed to release a new major version every 6
months. But they announced recently that they plan to move to an even shorter
release schedule:

[http://blog.chromium.org/2010/07/release-early-release-
often...](http://blog.chromium.org/2010/07/release-early-release-often.html)

So if you think it's got high versions now, just wait. I notice that even
though milestone 6 is only in the beta channel, the dev channel already has
milestone 7 loaded in it:

<http://omahaproxy.appspot.com/>

tl;dr: Chrome versions move fast because they have a major milestone release
every 6 months and soon the versions will move even faster.

~~~
est
> <http://omahaproxy.appspot.com/>

cf,dev,7.0.503.0,6.0.495.0

what does cf mean?

~~~
mtklein
Probably Chrome Frame, which lets you run Chrome in IE.

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wccrawford
“–enable-nacl” ... Enable Salt? What? Ohhh... "Native Client"

~~~
InclinedPlane
Chrome also uses the pepper plugin API.

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steve19
Does anyone know the status of side/vertical tab bar in Chrome? Last time I
looked it was incomplete and did not work in OS X.

I would really like to switch but I miss treestyle tab in Firefox.

