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Liveblogging the Google Chrome announcement

I'm tuned in to the webcast press briefing and demo of Google Chrome and will live blog any interesting points from the briefing here.
Written by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, Senior Contributing Editor

I'm tuned in to the webcast press briefing and demo of Google Chrome and will live blog any interesting points from the briefing here.

Note: All times PDT.

  • 11:08 - Google Chrome will go live 10:00 PDT.
  • 11.09 - Sundar Pichai, VP Product Management on stage
  • 11:11 - "We believe that browsers should evolve more ..."
  • 11:12 - Google Chrome influenced by Google Search ... keeping things simple
  • 11:12 - This is Google Chrome ...
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  • 11:14 - 70% of browsing is going back to things you've seen before ...
  • 11:15 - Chrome uses WebKit so Google has not added another rendering engine to the world, so keeping things simple for developers
  • 11:16 - Chrome is multi process to isolate tabs, increasing robustness, makes the browser faster and enhances security
02-09-2008-19-13-19.png
  • 11:18 - Emphasis that Chrome has been developed from scratch
  • 11:19 - Talking about V8 JavaScript engine - faster so will encourage new innovation
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  • 11:19 - Chrome will initially be for XP and Vista, Mac and Linux to follow
  • 11:20 - Will launch today in 100 languages
  • 11:21 - Better web better for Google
  • 11:21 - Announcing Chromium developer docs
  • 11:22 - Next up on stage, Ben Goodger, UI (formerly from Mozilla)
  • 11:23 - Tabs are titles for windows
  • 11:23 - Tabs are draggable and movable
02-09-2008-19-22-44.png
  • 11:24 - Where's the serch box? there isn't one! Address bar doubles as a search box, elminating confusion - Omnibox
  • 11:26 - "It's a little bit psychic"
  • 11:27 - Very similar to the Firefox Awesome bar except that the address bar is pre-filled
  • 11:28 - Chrome detects search boxes so that you can search other sites directly through the Omnibox - no setup required.
  • 11:28 - The Omnibox seems like a really cool, flexible feature
  • 11:30 - Tab Page ... seems a lot like Speed Dial on Opera ... reinvents bookmarks
  • 11:31 - Tab page is default page
  • 11:31 - Introducing Incognito mode ... eliminates the need to clear history and thus revert tab Page to default

02-09-2008-19-32-39.png

  • 11:33 - Incognito designed to keep information off your PC
  • 11:34 - Chrome makes handling downloads easier
  • 11:34 - Downloads seem a lot simpler - no having to click on OK, no having to worry where the files go ... seems quick and simple
  • 11:36 - Web apps break free of the browser, removes unnecessary chrome ... web apps look and feel like desktop applications
  • 11:36 - Next up, Daren Fisher, Tech Lead
  • 11:38 - Web pages and web apps shouldn't be able to affect one another - many benefits - stability, performance (especially for multi-core CPUs), and security
  • 11:40 - All rendering engine privileges taken away - bad guys have to find a bug in the rendering engine and get out of the sandbox
  • 11:41 - Process listing - showing memory, CPU, network usage ... handy
  • 11:41 - Plugins run in a separate process - prevents misbehaving plugins
  • 11:43 - Simulating a hang demo ... you can still switch tabs during a hang or close a tab ... ending a process shows the "Sad Tab" ... also easy to recover ... even scroll position is saved!
  • 11:45 - A crashed plugin can be recovered jsut by refreshing ... neat
  • 11:45 - Performance
  • 11:46 - Speed demo - WebKit about 3x faster than IE on static pages
  • 11:47 - Chrome is live - http://www.google.com/chrome
  • 11:48 - Now onto V8 ...
  • 11:48 - I have Chrome running!
  • 11:50 - JavaScript compiler, not interpreter
  • 11:50 - Efficient memory management
  • 11:51 - Here's Chrome running under Vista ...
02-09-2008-19-51-29.png
  • 11:53 - V8 increases the performance bar
  • 11:55 - Chrome has no tie-in to Google services - if you used another search provider this is transferred over when you install Chrome
  • 11:56 - Larry Page on stage ... been using Chrome for some time, on older hardware
  • 11:58 - Discussing benefits of open source ... how Mozilla could choose to make use of, say V8
  • 12:00 - Q&A ...
  • 12:03 - V8 will be ported to ARM and Intel CPUs and to a variety of OSes.

I'm now going to end live blogging and go to play with Chrome ...

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