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Google to unveil open-source 'Chrome' browser

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Rafe Needleman CNET News

Published: 02 Sep 2008 08:58 BST

Google has confirmed it will unveil on Tuesday a new web browser dubbed 'Chrome', based on code from the WebKit project.

After rumours broke out all over the web about the new software, Google confirmed the plans on the company's official blog.

Word first surfaced of the plans in an online comic book introducing Google Chrome, the search giant's much-rumored open-source browser project. While the illustrations, created by cartoonist Scott McCloud, were not announced by Google, they contain quotes from and likenesses of 19 Google developers.

The detailed, 38-page comic first appeared on Google Blogoscoped, an unofficial Google blog. The comic is broken down into five main sections, covering stability; speed; search and the user experience; security; and standards.

Stability
Each browser tab will run in its own process. These processes will be completely isolated from each other, will be killable from the operating system's process manager, and will be sandboxed to prevent them from accessing information on the user's computer.

This architecture should lead to a more stable and more consistent browsing experience: performance of the browser should not degrade over time.

Google is using its search index to prioritise testing of the browser: the pages that are linked to the most results from Google Search are getting the most automated hits to make sure Chrome is behaving correctly on them.

Speed
The browser is being written with WebKit, the open-source engine at the core of Apple's Safari and Google's Android. The browser is also getting a new JavaScript virtual machine, V8. It is claimed to be a better solution for complex and rich web applications; it should yield better performance as well as 'smoother drag and drops' in interactive applications.

Search and user experience
In Chrome, browser tabs will take over the interface, becoming the primary navigational element. Each tab will get its own window controls. Users will be able to tear off tabs into standalone windows.

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Developers will be able to control which window controls appear in a tab, creating, if they wish, web applications that are embedded in a browser but that appear to be more like traditional desktop apps.

Chrome's URL entry field will be called the 'Omnibox', and, like Mozilla's 'awesome bar', will feed users suggestions based on their browsing history and live search results. It will be respectful of users, the comic states: "Inline completions will never flicker, never flash. It's perfect, aesthetically non-distracting."

The browser's default start page will show thumbnails of the user's most frequently visited pages and a list of their top searches. There will also be a private browsing mode, as Internet Explorer 8 has.

Security
Chrome's architecture lends itself to secure browsing. Each web page, or tab, runs in its own process, and is blocked from accessing other processes on the computer. "We've taken the existing process boundary and made it into a jail," the comic states. Different and more flexible permissions are being developed for plug-ins, however.

A database and API to access phishing and scam sites will be used in Chrome (and made public), which will hopefully reduce 'zero-day' scam exploits. The browser will be constantly updated with this information.

Standards
The browser will be released as an open-source project. Google will also build the open-source local runtime Gears into the browser, and is hoping that it will be taken up widely to "improve the base functionality of all browsers".

Credit: Google 'starting from scratch' with own browser, Chrome from CNET News