![]() SunSpider JavaScript benchmark, and Chromium (my build, anyway) was about 12 percent faster than Safari 4 Beta, the previous speed champ on my machine. V8 JavaScript engine (which only works on Intel Macs as of now) is speedy I ran Apple’s The page rendering (HTML and CSS) seems to be all there, as pages look the same in Chromium as they do in Safari (barring omitted Flash imagery, of course). But beyond that, page loading times are good, and moving back and forth between pages is nearly instantaneous. A Remove Thumbnails link makes it easy to remove some or all of the thumbnails on this start page.Ĭhromium is a fast browser-sure, some of that is because things like Flash ads can’t load. In addition, you can easily search your history, see recently-added bookmarks, and recently-closed pages. In this case, Chromium shows the nine most-visited sites in your browsing history. The Chromium start screen (click for larger)Ĭhromium features a fast start page, much like what you see in theįast Dial extension installed. Despite the unfinished elements of the browser, the stuff that’s there works really well, and there are some new ideas in how to handle certain routine browsing tasks. With all the limitations on Chromium, you’d think I’d have tested the browser, then removed it as quickly as possible. Final determinations on memory requirements will have to wait for the final version of the browser-but for now, if you’re going to test Chromium, just be aware that it will take up lots of RAM each time you open a new tab or window. ![]() Second, the advantages of separate processes per tab or window are very real and tangible-the first time you don’t lose all your open tabs to one bad JavaScript, you’ll thank Chromium profusely. First, they’re incredibly preliminary I doubt much (if any) work has been done to reduce Chromium’s memory footprint. There are two very important things to keep in mind about these figures, however. A quick test with 15 open tabs (loading the same sites in each browser) showed Chromium requiring over 520MB of RAM versus 310MB for Safari. Opening a new tab or window in Firefox or Safari only adds about 2MB of real RAM usage to each program’s memory footprint. This isn’t all that different than Firefox or Safari, but as the number of open tabs and windows increases, the numbers start to diverge. New processes for each tab/window mean memory usage increases dramatically with open tab/window count.Īll told, that’s about 336MB of RAM for my seven-tab browser. (Those “not responding” processes aren’t crashed they just weren’t doing anything when I took the screenshot.) Here’s a look at Activity Monitor for Chromium, showing the browser with seven open tabs. As those tabs then gained content, their RAM usage would increase. Each new blank tab I opened in the browser took about 20MB of real RAM. However, this new feature isn’t without its costs-in this case, the cost is RAM usage. This is a tremendous advance in terms of usability I can’t count the number of times I’ve lost a nicely-set-up collection of tabs in Safari or Firefox just due to an issue on one tab. Instead, the tab (or window) that loads the crashing page will have to be shut, and you’ll see the crash message (or whatever it evolves into) as seen at right in that tab or window-but all of your other windows and tabs will remain intact. What you’ll see when a tab or window crashes. Tweeted that newer builds can now play YouTube videos these builds are not yet downloadable.) (Mike Pinkerton, a Chromium developer, has Based on my initial testing, though, that’s about it-everything else is still to come. Want to watch videos on YouTube, Apple’s movie trailer page, or any other site? Want to view a PDF? Or access a page protected by Apache’sīasic access authentication, play games in Flash or Shockwave, or listen to internet radio? If you answer “yes” to any of those questions, then Chromium is not for you-at least not yet.Īs of today, Chromium can load Web pages, and JavaScript support is there. Second, while Chromium runs and seems relatively stable (though it did crash on me a few times), it’s really only usable for basic browsing needs. ![]() ![]() First, this isn’t any sort ofīeta release. This is not for everyoneīefore you jump in, though, there are some things you should be aware of. Note that things are changing rapidly-in the time it took me to write this First Look, there have been sixteen new builds posted, and a total of nearly 50 for the whole day. To get the newest build, scroll to the bottom of the page, and click the folder above the entry that reads LATEST. The download page contains a ton of folders, each with a unique number and timestamp. If you’re interested trying Chromium, you canĭownload OS X Chromium builds from the Chromium Web site.
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