3rd September, 2008
Google's new Javascript JIT compiler V8 gets benchmarked and compared to both current and upcoming Javascript engines.
2nd September, 2008
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US)
AppleWebKit/525.13 (KHTML, like Gecko)
Chrome/0.2.149.27 Safari/525.13
Google Chrome is here and it's blinding fast. Its open source project is called Chromium and includes extensive documentation on the internals of the browser.
1st September, 2008
Quick facts on Google Chrome
Google has stealth-launched Chrome, a new open source browser, by sending a comic to a few journalists. Quick technical facts:
- Based on Webkit, but using a custom regression and testing system.
- OS-level address separation between the loaded sites/tabs. This is described as running multiple processes, so you get the full memory and system resources back after you close the tab.
- Processes run inside a sandbox with varying trust levels for extra protection. The browser includes a process manager.
- Since plugins cannot be sandboxed efectively they run inside a dedicated process .
- A new Javascript virtual machine named V8. It does JIT compilation, it's aware of object prototypes and has a strict, incremental garbage collector.
- Google Gears is included by default.
On the user interface side:
- The address bar is below the tab bar like in Opera.
- Full drag and drop, detachable tabs like in Safari.
- Fancy completion support in the address bar.
- A tiled view for new, empty windows/tabs, similar to Opera.
- Popups are launched in a minimized state inside the tab that created them, and can be dragged out when needed. This alone could be the killer feature for Chrome.
Update: official announcement of a beta version:
We will be launching the beta version of Google Chrome tomorrow in more than 100 countries.
