Google chrome for mac - Calgarypuck Forums - The Unofficial Calgary Flames Fan Community

octothorp · 12-08-2009, 11:05 AM

At long last!!

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

KTrain · 12-08-2009, 11:25 AM

I thought there was an unwritten rule that FanIn80 is to post all Mac related news.

Regardless, this is good news. I'll probably still use Firefox but it's always good to have options.

FanIn80 · 12-08-2009, 01:10 PM

Ha!

I downloaded this earlier, but I'm done with posting stuff like this here. The PCers have ears...

Russic · 12-08-2009, 01:28 PM

I haven't had a chance to look at it yet. Does anybody know if it's less of a bloated beast like firefox can be? I downloaded istat menus a few days ago and am stunned at how almost every slow down in my system appears to be related to firefox in some way.

On the plus side for Mac users, I stat menus is a solid addition to any system. I really enjoy having a running log to look at when things get unexpectedly slow. I realize the activity monitor does this too, but I find it takes too long to get going when things get hairy.

HotHotHeat · 12-08-2009, 01:44 PM

I don't get it. I've had Google Chrome on my Mac for nearly a year... How is this new?

octothorp · 12-08-2009, 01:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HotHotHeat

I don't get it. I've had Google Chrome on my Mac for nearly a year... How is this new?

Were you using either the very incomplete developer version, or the "Chromium" port? As far as I know, those were the only two flavours of Chrome available on the mac, and both of them sorta sucked.

valo403 · 12-08-2009, 01:57 PM

Forgive my ignorance, but why should I switch over to this? I use safari for the most part and don't find much of a problem, although it locks up when there are gif's on a page sometimes. Is that the kind of stuff I'd be avoiding? Is it just generally quicker?

octothorp · 12-08-2009, 02:14 PM

I haven't had a chance to actually download it and install it on a mac yet, so I'm not sure if it'll be faster than safari, which is already pretty fast. It certainly won't be slower, and in my opinion Chrome has the best interface of any browser out there; the ability to drag tabs in and out of the interface, duplicate tabs (including full history), re-open closed tabs including full history, and the way it contains any crashes within a browser and not affecting the rest of the program are the features I like most.
However, I use google docs a lot, and the lack of support for Gears right now probably means that I won't switch over to it as my main Mac browser yet.

silentsim · 12-08-2009, 03:17 PM

It's fast. Im using it now, and loving it.

Yeah_Baby · 12-08-2009, 03:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by silentsim

It's fast. Im using it now, and loving it.

Is it fast enough to make me cheat on Firefox?

Jayems · 12-08-2009, 04:13 PM

I, for the most part, can't notice a difference between firefox and chrome, at least on a very superficial level. I don't like that there's no google search bar in the top right, but simply typing in the address bar like a search does the same thing. Preference, I suppose.

sclitheroe · 12-08-2009, 04:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by valo403

Forgive my ignorance, but why should I switch over to this? I use safari for the most part and don't find much of a problem, although it locks up when there are gif's on a page sometimes. Is that the kind of stuff I'd be avoiding? Is it just generally quicker?

It's based on Webkit, the same HTML engine that powers Safari, so from a performance and stability standpoint its going to be similar. It's currently lacking plugins like on the PC and Linux platforms. The theming support makes it look horrible, and I don't know how it will appeal to Mac asthetic fans in general.

I dunno, it's only a beta, but it doesn't appear, to me, to offer anything compelling over Safari on the Mac. Particularly on the performance front, Safari is already an extremely fast browser, with an excellent Javascript engine just like Chrome. Just my 2 cents.

Edit - some of the features that Octo points out are things I wasn't aware of. The ability to re-open old sets of tabs is a feature I miss from Omniweb.

kermitology · 12-08-2009, 05:04 PM

I've been using it for several months already.. I must have had an alpha version or something.

It's lower profile on memory than Safari is. That's the main difference I see. I just can't deal with firefox on my Mac. Actually, I don't use it at all anymore.

driveway · 12-08-2009, 06:33 PM

Just downloaded it and I notice an immediate increase in speed over Safari.

Russic · 12-09-2009, 12:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yeah_Baby

Is it fast enough to make me cheat on Firefox?

I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels filthy using other browsers.

Yeah_Baby · 12-09-2009, 09:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Russic

I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels filthy using other browsers.

I really tried to get into Safari a while back, but I came back. Maybe I need help for this unhealthy relationship.

sclitheroe · 12-09-2009, 10:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by driveway

Just downloaded it and I notice an immediate increase in speed over Safari.

It's still slower by about 12-15% than Safari in Javascript benchmarks, which is where the real action is in terms of the performance wars.

FanIn80 · 12-09-2009, 11:55 PM

Quote:

"According to tests run by Computerworld, the Chrome beta, which Google launched yesterday, is the second fastest of four Mac browsers tested. Chrome renders JavaScript 10 times faster than Opera 10.10 and almost twice as fast as Firefox 3.6 Beta 4, the most recently-released Mac version of Mozilla's open-source browser.

But Chrome can't match Safari 4.0.4's speed: Apple's browser is approximately 12% faster than Google's beta."

http://www.macrumors.com/2009/12/09/...-benchmarking/

Russic · 12-10-2009, 10:35 AM

I like Chrome quite a bit so far. I do enjoy the new tab view that is like Safari's (shows your most visited sites in thumbnails). On Safari I find that view loads a little too slowly, chrome seems to be a bit snappier. That being said I don't think I've tried Safari since the last big update, so perhaps I should give it a whirl. I want to use Safari so bad so I can keep my bookmarks synced between my two computers and my phone, but my website doesn't like Safari in the edit mode so I can't update anything.

Unfortunately the two biggest deal breakers at the moment are that there's no ad blocking and 1password doesn't work. I've been thinking about making a 1password thread for a bit now as it really seems to kick an unreasonable amount of ass. Suddenly not having it built into a browser makes the experience almost unbearable. I'm sure both are in the pipeline, so I might just have to wait a bit and come back to it.

I do notice a significant drop in resources needed to run it compared to firefox. That makes it a very interesting browser to come back to once the above 2 issues are ironed out.

FanIn80 · 12-10-2009, 11:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Russic

Unfortunately the two biggest deal breakers at the moment are that there's no ad blocking and 1password doesn't work. I've been thinking about making a 1password thread for a bit now as it really seems to kick an unreasonable amount of ass. Suddenly not having it built into a browser makes the experience almost unbearable. I'm sure both are in the pipeline, so I might just have to wait a bit and come back to it.

There's actually a very good adblocker for Mac that works regardless of the web browser. I like Safari over FireFox, so I had to really search for something that worked in Snow Leopard (64bit Safari doesn't allow hooks).

Anyway, PM if you're interested. I don't want to publicly advocate an adblocker here. This place survives off those ads.

(Plug: I actively disable adblocking on CP. Hopefully others do as well.)