Chrome 10 released

Posted Mar 9, 2011 17:20 UTC (Wed) by rillian (subscriber, #11344)
Parent article: Chrome 10 released

Looks like they have in fact removed support for mp4 playback in the <video> element. Yay!

Chrome 10 released

Posted Mar 9, 2011 17:23 UTC (Wed) by clugstj (subscriber, #4020) [Link] (12 responses)

Wow, I haven't been paying attention, but they appear to have inflated the version number to 10. Needed to get ahead of IE?

Chrome 10 released

Posted Mar 9, 2011 17:42 UTC (Wed) by Kit (guest, #55925) [Link] (10 responses)

Chrome really doesn't advertise its version number. If you go to the Chrome website, you won't see the version number _anywhere_- unlike going to the website for pretty much any other web browser. Each of Chrome's releases generally also include fairly major changes that other browsers would hold on to for 6+ months while a bunch of other features stabilize at the same time.

Chrome's development model is just extremely aggressive and fast paced, and after using it extensively for quite a while, I've never had a single stability issue with it, or even it just acting 'funky'.

Chrome 10 released

Posted Mar 9, 2011 18:49 UTC (Wed) by rillian (subscriber, #11344) [Link] (9 responses)

I understand Google uses Chrome's live update feature to test patches. This allows developers to get rapid feedback on performance, usability and interaction with wild pages across their user base while bounding the amount of instability introduced. They can move very quickly because of this, but the trade-off is that users give up any control over what code they're actually running.

Chrome 10 released

Posted Mar 9, 2011 19:03 UTC (Wed) by Kit (guest, #55925) [Link] (8 responses)

There's not too many users out there with _legitimate_ reason to be running older, insecure versions of web browsers (those running old and insecure versions generally do so because updating the browser requires going out of your way). Those with legitimate reason are likely also in the position to be able to compile the version of Chromium they need from source.

Chrome 10 released

Posted Mar 9, 2011 19:53 UTC (Wed) by rillian (subscriber, #11344) [Link] (7 responses)

My discomfort with this arrangement is nicely illustrated by your use of "legitimate" there. The ability to choose what runs on one's computer is fundamental to software freedom. That not updating might be illegitimate implies some group of people other than the user must have a say.

I can think of a number of reasons why one might not update a particular application: dependence on specific behaviour, audit status, uniformity within an organization--none of which depend on one's facility with Chromium's build system.

Certainly it may be advantageous to subscribe to software updates from any given source, and open source provides great advantage in this because many parties can provide alternate or competing formulations of the same basic software.

Open standards allow even broader alternatives. Firefox is also a web browser, and it has not implemented this kind of testing, nor do they require automatic updates--although many of their developers would benefit from it--precisely because their focus is on user control and freedom.

Chrome 10 released

Posted Mar 9, 2011 20:03 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (2 responses)

> I can think of a number of reasons why one might not update a particular application: dependence on specific behaviour, audit status, uniformity within an organization--none of which depend on one's facility with Chromium's build system.

Yeah, how many are those actually legit? Seems most of it is just paranoia and being stuck with crappy internal websites more then anything else.

But....

I don't know how accurate this still is, Chrome annoyingly changes stuff and with all the excitement around it and the long long beta some documentation is way out of date... but pulling from a quick 'google':

Windows: Disable auto update through a registry key. This can be deployed via active directory group policies or other sane mechanism. If your managing lots of Windows systems and are not using AD, may God help you.. cause nobody else will. (until Samba4 reaches a stable release, of course.) :-P

MacOS: You can disable it through the 'defaults' command.

Linux: Chrome just uses the regular package management system. If you can't figure out how to disable automatic updates with that then you have serious problems. :-D

Chrome 10 released

Posted Mar 9, 2011 22:40 UTC (Wed) by johndrinkwater (guest, #65840) [Link] (1 responses)

The update to Chrome 10 disabled WebGL for me.
So I can understand the reason people would want to hold on to older insecure browsers that just bloody work.

Chrome 10 released

Posted Mar 9, 2011 23:59 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

I am happy with the fact that I get a browser that is up to date, directly from the developers, and I do not have to wait around for months for improvements while the distros re-engineer it to fit their own conception of how software should be properly compiled and packaged...

It's important to them, bless them, but it's mostly irrelevant for my purposes.

Chrome 10 released

Posted Mar 9, 2011 20:33 UTC (Wed) by Kit (guest, #55925) [Link] (2 responses)

> Firefox is also a web browser, and it has not implemented this kind of
> testing, nor do they require automatic updates--although many of their
> developers would benefit from it--precisely because their focus is on user
> control and freedom.

First off, what do you mean by 'this kind of testing'? Chrome's "testing" situation is similar to that of Debian than anything else: Stable vs Stable channel, Testing vs Beta channel, Unstable vs Dev Channel, features move down into Stable from Dev, via Beta (and there's also another Canary channel added a while back, closer to nightly builds).

Also, if you don't want Chrome to automatically update, just install the Standalone version: http://www.google.com/chrome/eula.html?standalone=1

In addition, Firefox also has an auto-updater- it's just less user friendly (it'll interrupt your work multiple times, and won't work if you're not an administrator/root... and last I checked, it wouldn't even automatically notify you of updates in those situations!).

Chrome 10 released

Posted Mar 9, 2011 21:14 UTC (Wed) by rillian (subscriber, #11344) [Link]

If the differential testing is opt in, and there's a way to turn off the auto updater, then I misunderstood the situation with Chrome. Apologies.

I also see I generally failed to make my point. There's a common itch to want to just take over management of everything for the convenience and benefit of one's users. And that's a great impulse while it really is beneficial. But like any situation were many people give power over themselves to a small group, it can easily become abusive. To the extent that we're Free Software advocates, it behooves us to watch such situations carefully and make sure real choice is in fact easy and available.

Chrome 10 released

Posted Mar 11, 2011 3:29 UTC (Fri) by jonabbey (guest, #2736) [Link]

It can still work if you're not an admin/root, assuming you have exploded the firefox.tar.gz in your own directory with your own user privileges.

Chrome 10 released

Posted Mar 9, 2011 23:46 UTC (Wed) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402) [Link]

"I can think of a number of reasons why one might not update a particular application: dependence on specific behaviour, audit status, uniformity within an organization--none of which depend on one's facility with Chromium's build system."

The biggest one I've found is testing. I discovered a bug in a webapp of mine with chrome which I didn't remember seeing before. So I needed to find out whether this was a bug in my code or a recently introduced bug in chrome. Of course, all the windows test machines I had access to had magically updated themselves to the latest chrome version, and I couldn't find any real way of testing against an older chrome.

I won't touch Chrome on any of my (real) systems because of its behaviour. Google treat the user's PC like another one of their websites. Theirs to do whatever they want with whenever they want.

Life with transparently self-updating applications is like living in a state of permanent amnesia.

Chrome 10 released

Posted Mar 9, 2011 22:37 UTC (Wed) by einstein (subscriber, #2052) [Link]

> they appear to have inflated the version number to 10.

Nope, the reason it's at version 10 is that it's the 10th iteration of the browser. There are no gaps in the succession of version numbers. 9 was stable and 10 was beta, now 10 is stable and 11 is beta, and so on.