Notices

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/...n-browser.html

Google's got a new browser going beta tomorrow; they've (inadvertently, and then deliberately) released a comic to explain it.

Salient features from a quick skim:

• Open-source
• V8 JS VM; improved GC, JIT, and more
• Webkit
• One process per tab/plugin
• Gears built-in
• Start page rather resembling Iamthewalrus's in functionality
• Allegedly "light", "clean" UI
  --which means that it might fit ok on a tablet screen, but also that it definitely breaks the UI spec.

And yes, it's available tomorrow; no word on what platforms they'll release binaries for, though. It looks at least as interesting as FF3 as far as desktop browsers on tablets go.

Here's to hoping for an n8x0 port

Aargh, after at last TC39 agreed on the future of Javascript (ECMAScript 3.1), another engine enters the scene... Oh well, at least there will be good things in the new browser, apart from the "new" IE7-ish interface.

Looks too powerful for the tablets.
Super multi process application on a poor little NIT?

Maybe it will work out though..

I hope the tablet can run it. Microb is just giving me headaches now when i open multiple windows of it. trying to open two new web pages results in one or both stop and not load.

They don't have linux support yet... ARM probably even after that.

And of course, Google will not use this to further gather any data or direct people to their own online services...

... as somebody wrote in an Austrian news forum today: Google is obviously trying hard in becoming the world's most hated company instead of Microsoft. :/


EDIT: Actually, I get the feeling that during the last months Apple became #1 as the world's most hated company, with MS being #2. But this could be a local phenomenon here... Anyway, I certainly agree with it, I don't think MS is all that bad.

Amen to that.

Or at least propagate text ads

I somehow doubt that the Google browser concept would work well on limited platforms like the NITs. The strength of Google's concept is that every tab is isolated from the rest by running as an own process. On the NIT, however, you don't have that much RAM available, so that it's better to have all tabs running in once process sharing as much resources as possible. That's why Nokia introduced "browserd".
Also, from what I have seen, the Gecko engine is currently a bit faster than Webkit (but let's see what speed improvements Google will achieve with Webkit).

But what's definitely interesting for the NITs is Google's new approach of a JavaScript VM with JIT and proper garbage collection. Since it's opensource, I'm sure it won't take long until Firefox gets the same.