Mac Chromium early builds available for public consumption

Tue, 05/12/2009 - 7:33am — Seth Weintraub

If you don't mind a few bugs, lack of Flash and a lot of speed, you may want to give the new Google Chrome (Chromium) builds a try. The repository is being updated almost hourly.

First impressions:

It doesn't come with Flash but Flash can be installed and will be in future versions
It is really fast. Even with several tabs going, it is Safari 4 type fast.
Each tab is a seperate process (see below). Each one takes 1GB of Virtual Memory but less than 100MB of real RAM.
It doesn't run 64-Bit in Snow Leopard yet, only 32-Bit. It also doesn't run on PowerPC, the first Mac browser not to do so.
Ironically, it tripped up on GMail (with several Labs features enabled) which Firefox and Safari handle just fine
I'm doing this post in Chromium...and spel chek doesn't work. Neither do file uploads

Google is ramping up the publicity of the browser by airing several TV spots which it hopes will spread awareness of the browser.

The Chrome browser is based on the same Webkit platform that Safari, Symbian's browser and Adobe's Air are based on. Firefox has responded to Chrome by making tabs their own processes in upcoming builds. Many people think that Safari 4's tab layout is inspired by Chrome as well.

The browser wars certainly seem to be back on.

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Comments

http://www.youtube.com/watch?

Tue, 05/12/2009 - 8:30am — Derry Quinn (not verified)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlNRQ1sBINs

There's a little video hands-on I made yesterday, you might wanna take a look before you download :)

It just doesn't feel like a

Tue, 05/12/2009 - 8:42am — Benjamin Dobson

It just doesn't feel like a Mac app.

No support for PowerPC? Epic

Tue, 05/12/2009 - 8:43am — mdrisser (not verified)

No support for PowerPC? Epic FAIL. No Chromium for me thanks. Move along now Google.

We all know...

Tue, 05/12/2009 - 8:56am — Dave Park

We all know you NEED the spellchecker :P

Ouch (butt totaly tru)

Tue, 05/12/2009 - 10:24am — admin

Ouch (butt totaly tru)

Flash

Tue, 05/12/2009 - 9:05am — 9to5Mac Noob (not verified)

You mention that flash can be installed, care to share how?

So they make a super fast and

Tue, 05/12/2009 - 9:11am — Daniel (not verified)

So they make a super fast and responsive app and won't deliver it for PowerPC users, who could benefit from it not being resource-hungry.....? WTF?

Thanks God it's open source. Let's hope some PPC geeko will bake it for us...

Yeah, I'm curious how you

Tue, 05/12/2009 - 10:41am — 9to5Mac Noob (not verified)

Yeah, I'm curious how you install flash on this baby also.

It sure looks like it was

Tue, 05/12/2009 - 11:30am — Gazoobee (not verified)

It sure looks like it was beaten with the ugly stick. Here's hoping that Safari gets separate processes in it's tabs in version 4.0 so we won't have to install Chromium at all. :)

Can't beat Firefox with AdBlock

Tue, 05/12/2009 - 12:10pm — 9to5Mac Noob (not verified)

After using Firefox with Adblock, I can't see myself using anything else until someone else has the same add-ons.

You can get adblock for

Tue, 05/12/2009 - 7:30pm — 9to5Mac Noob (not verified)

You can get adblock for safari. Am using it right now.

So...flash

Tue, 05/12/2009 - 12:58pm — 9to5Mac Noob (not verified)

How do you install flash?

try stainless link here: it

Tue, 05/12/2009 - 6:38pm — 9to5 mac expert (not verified)

try stainless
link here: it is basically a mac port of chronium that also works on ppc. Details here:
http://www.stainlessapp.com/

Also, you may look at this (only for intel): http://www.codeweavers.com/services/ports/chromium/

try stainless link here: it

Tue, 05/12/2009 - 6:41pm — 9to5 mac expert (not verified)

try stainless
link here: it is basically a mac port of chronium that also works on ppc. Details here:
http://www.stainlessapp.com/

Also, you may look at this (only for intel): http://www.codeweavers.com/services/ports/chromium/

Virtual Memory wrong?

Wed, 05/13/2009 - 2:08am — 9to5Mac Noob (not verified)

There is a known bug with Activity monitor which is reporting virtual memory wrongly (at least in Leopard).

If you have a look with "top" in the Terminal, the VMem often is only one third of the memory reported in Activity Monitor.

Oddly, the Bug seems to vanish if you enable the column "Private Memory" in Activity Monitor.

Virtual Memory wrong?

Wed, 05/13/2009 - 2:11am — 9to5Mac Noob (not verified)

There is a known bug in Activity Monitor (at least in Leopard) which reports the virtual memory wrongly.

If you enable the column "private menory" or have a look at "top" in the Terminal, you will see that the vmem of Chromium is much less then 1 GB, actually, I have only 200-300 MB of vmem.

Wow - and i thought Safari

Wed, 05/13/2009 - 9:51am — 9to5Mac Noob (not verified)

Wow - and i thought Safari had a simple and elegant interface! I think they just need to slim down the title bar a tad more...a little too much grey above the tabs.

Obviously a few bugs still to note, I can't seem to get and bookmarks to show in the bookmarks bar, or the home button to show, and upon launching it always resets it's window size and positions itself in the top left corner of the screen in that annoying way similar to office 2008 - they better not be keeping that!

Generally though it's very promising, and super fast - bring on the final release!!!