For some reason the update to Firefox 3.0.4 caused a ton of problems in my system, the first and foremost being that the moment I installed Firefox update 3.0.4 every one of my add-ons was malfunctioning.  I would open my tools -> add-ons screen and when I tried to click options for any add-on, it would crash and lock up my firefox process.

I would get a popup error that said the following, when trying to update, install or modify any of my add-ons.

Firefox could not install the file at <blah blah>

Error Code
-203

Unexpected Installation Error

This led me to look at my error log which was completely loaded with error messages and garbage about js files, scripts, null file paths…etc.

I am going to try uninstalling cleaning up my registry and re-installing FireFox, but this really bugs me and I hope I can get it repaired. I am using Firefox only for a few specific add-ons now, Google Chrome is my default browser, but I still need Firefox for a few toolbars and Dashblog plug-in.

PS. My Google Chrome hardly loses cookies anymore, I don’t know if there was an update but the browser has been much more stable lately for me.

-Dragon Blogger

I have blogged about Google Chrome before with its excessive memory usage, it is the fastest browser for me to do Entrecard Drops and browse SocialSpark among other things, I use it for casual browsing, but not for when I need to do clipping of articles, cocomment, Stumble, Digg or anything that needs a toolbar or more plugins.

The Google team needs to put Chrome on some memory diet supplements or something, I realize that when I have 30 tabs open it takes up like 30 processes each with 20 megs of ram or more. The problem is, Google claims that each window is its own process, but if JavaScript or a site kills one tab, my whole Chrome locks up and reboots, killing all 30 tabs.

How isolated is one process really, if one tab locking up crashes the whole browser, they were no better than Firefox, you mine as well combine it all to a single process and save the memory utilization. The one good thing is I notice Google Chrome not crashing the cookies as often as previously, I can have 30 tabs open and only lose cookies once a day or two days, instead of every few hours.

But I can’t give it up, as much as I both don’t like the crashing instability of Chrome, I love the simplicity of the browser, speed of the surfing and the URL bar also being the search bar too much. I constantly use it because its fast and lets me find sites faster.

-Dragon Blogger

I have been using Google Chrome as my primary browser when using SocialSpark or Entrecard because it loads the pages faster, and I can open many tabs to many profiles and sites and they all load faster than Firefox.  However, when something goes wrong it can be a real pain in the behind.

Supposedly Google Claims that each tab is an independent process, yet when one tab fails they all fail as is evident here (click to enlarge)

In the meantime, I only use it for casual browsing, as the lack of plug-ins and the constant crashing make it useful only for doing various quick tasks that involve multiple tabs, but you can’t leave Google Chrome open for extended periods of time without having issues.

-Dragon Blogger

I decided not to break an article about Google Chrome the day it was announced like everybody else did, I wanted to spend three days playing with Google Chrome first before I made an accurate assessment of the Google Chrome Beta.  This way instead of just talking about promoted features I can lay out the pro’s and con’s I found with the browser immediately from my own point of view and opinion.

The browser is very minimal and I mean this in both a very good and somewhat bad way.  It is so light weight in that you aren’t even sure if it can do anything when you first open it.  There is no toolbar, no file menu, nothing to click and drop down as you are used to with every other browser.  It is only when you see the “wrench” symbol at the right of the search/URL bar and the “page” symbol at the right of the URL/Search bar that you realize those are drop down menu’s.

Within one click of the Wrench icon, you have access to the following:
History
Downloads
Clear Private Data
Import Bookmarks and Settings
Options (which control tab settings, download location paths, proxy settings and cookie settings)
About
Exit

Right off the bat I am concerned about privacy and security for the following reasons:

I run Comodo Firewall always as it is one of the best freeware firewall programs.  Google Chrome Browser triggers many defense alerts.  The Google Chrome.exe needs access to the keyboard, the SVCHost, the DNS/RPC Client Service, access to itself in memory.  As if that wasn’t enough it needs access to execute itself (chrome.exe) from within itself and upon loading Chrome.exe it needed access to /Dev/NSI, and to install a global hook dwmapi.dll.  This is seriously concerning to me as I am wondering what in the world is Google doing to my computer by installing and running Chrome.  It triggered 30 alerts from my Comodo firewall, accessed and installed services I have never heard of and makes me wonder what kind of tracking they are doing around on my computer.  Chrome.exe also needs to constantly modify protected registry keys such as HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\SystemCertificates\Root (this is probably just installing new Root CA’s though and isn’t that concerning)

Then I looked at task manager, and noticed that 4 Chrome Tabs = 6 Chrome processes running.  Chrome opens a new independent process for each tab, but has 3 processes for 1 tab.  If you combine the memory utilization from all 6 tabs, this had equaled more than 80mb of RAM utilization.  Though I have Firefox open with 1 tab and it consumes 102mb of ram, so this isn’t that concerning.

I left Chrome open for several hours and walked away from my desk, when I came back to my desk and used the application the application was very sluggish and seemed to get hung trying to load any websites from that point on.  Finally Chrome kicked out an unresponsive error popup below.

I let it die, but it never cleaned up one of the chrome.exe processes, I had to kill it manually via task manager.

I should note that I am running Microsoft Windows Vista Business Edition and my PC only has 1GB of Ram.  The problems I experience may not occur for people running Windows XP or those who have much more Ram in their computers.

Some of the things I really liked about Chrome are the following:

1. When it works and doesn’t stick from either triggering firewall alerts or the browser going non-responsive and crashing, it is very very fast.  Web sites load much faster, I can login to sites faster and most sites render as good as they do on Firefox.  In fact I tested about 50 web sites and found no incompatibilities at all yet.
2. The URL/Search bar serving as both a search function, a bookmark selector and a URL bar is brilliant, to be able to do everything from a single NAV bar is actually one of the best features of the Google Chrome Browser.
3. Opening a new tab shows mini-windows of your most recent sites that you visited, and when you open a new Google Chrome browser, this mini-tab can show your most commonly visited sites.  This is a very nice feature as most URL strings are so long, you can’t read them in the tabs and seeing a little picture window of the website is a very nice touch.
4. You can actually drag a tab out of the Google Chrome browser, and it will create its own Stand Alone Google Chrome browser in its own frame.  This is in case you want to just pull out one tab, and close out of all remaining tabs in one swift move.  It is a really neat feature although I am not sure how many people would use it.
5. The cookie and cache clearing is pretty standard, but it is fast.  Again, I haven’t investigated deeply enough to see how thorough it is, or if Google is keeping stuff hidden somewhere on the computer that it isn’t cleaning up.

• In Review:

The Google Chrome browser is still very buggy, consumes fair of memory, access many different resources, makes registry changes just by opening it, and spawns many processes.  Each little spawned process is typically 11-16mb in size, this is probably how the individual tabs perform so quickly.  The browser takes some getting used to, and lacks one of Firefox’s key features.  Plug-ins, without my dashblog, IE Tab among countless others, plug ins are very important.  No longer can a browser be used to just browse the internet, they have multimedia functionality as well as serve other purposes.  The ironic thing is, Google made Chrome to be as minimalistic as possible, yet if they plan on allowing plug-ins then Chrome will eventually sink under the weight of plug-ins as Firefox does now, and the minimalistic in theory now just becomes a theory and not an actuality.

It is going to be interesting to see how Google Chrome will pan out, I suspect without plug in support and vast amounts of it, it won’t catch up to Firefox, it will be used by internet surfers who are too impatient to wait the extra 3-5 seconds for a page to load.

Let me know what my fellow bloggers thing about Google Chrome, do you like it, dislike it, is it just too raw and unfinished.
I want to know your comments and opinions.

-Dragon Blogger

Dani writes her thoughts about the new Google Chrome Browser and discusses that she read about some vulnerabilities about Java and Java Applets being downloaded and compromising a whole system.