Google Chrome

A newer version of Google Chrome is available.

• 3.0 stars

  "A particular setting change reverts w/ each session."

  January 12, 2013  |   By phiphorphree

  Pros

  In the past I have found that Chrome has always been reliable at opening web pages or videos that would not open in another browser. It also seems fairly fast.

  Cons

  I do not want either Chrome or its background apps to run in the background upon closing Chrome. So I went into settings and unchecked the 'Continue running background apps when Google Chrome is closed' and while both Chrome and the background apps do then close after closing chrome after the setting had been changed, as soon as I reopen Chrome and go back into settings the check mark has mysteriously returned along with the Chrome icon on the Windows XP toolbar. Then if I don't uncheck it again before closing Chrome, after I do close, there in Task Manager I see several chrome.exe processes running using up nearly a half a gig of memory in total. Also I've noticed after closing Chrome that it uses up a lot of CPU power for ~45 seconds after closing before it settles down -- I'm thinking how difficult can it be for an application to just close and quickly free up resources for other programs.

  Summary

  Until Google can fix the above problems I'm going to just reserve Chrome as a backup browser and Firefox as my primary.

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4 replies to this review

• Reply by verdyp on January 14, 2013

  These processses are not directly part of Chrome itself, but for the **applications** that you have added to the Application panel.
  
  One of them is "Google Cloud printing" : ir will contoinue running if you have connected to it your local printer, in order to serve print requests coming from the Internet (from people or services to which you have sent an authorisation to send documents to your printer).
  
  But it's true that when quitting Chrome, you should have an option to ALSO quit background applications installed in your browser, or have an option to always display a dialog asking you if you want to also quit these external applications running within the sandbox of a "chrome.exe" instance.
  
  My opinion if that the "chrome.exe" sandbox for other apps should better run in another launcher process like "ChromeApps.exe" to make this clear that your browser is actually NOT running.

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• Reply by verdyp on January 14, 2013

  Chrome is developed in three parallel channels and has a very decent bug reporting system or feature requests system. And it is very active at following all standard developments in HTML5 and does NOT include in the main channel the experimental features that have not been experimented and aprroved by at least TWO other major browsers : IE, Firefox, Opera, Safari, and tested on desktop PCs as well as mobile devices : Windows, Mac OS, Linux, Android, iOS for iPhones)
  
  But if you don't participate to the bug reporting system (you have the option to not subscribe it), there's littel chances your problems will be fixed in ANY browser you use.

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• Reply by verdyp on January 14, 2013

  Note that Chrome DOES HAVE a "safe mode" for starting a session without any plugin enabled, or for navigating in an anonymius session (where cookies are limited to the current session and discarded after you quit any visited domain)
  
  Chrome is extremely stable compared to Firefox. Even if all browsers have their bugs (most bugs are temporary differences of implementations with newly introduced HTML5 features, which are still exerimental, but Chrome DOES NOT include any new HTML5 feature before evaluating them during several months (you can evaluate them too using a "Canary build" installation of Chrome, which runs with its own separate proigram, separate settings, separate sessions, separate caches, separate plugins and extensions, separate renderers... You can also get the "Canary build" on Linux with Chromium by subscribing to its "development" track.

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• Reply by verdyp on January 14, 2013

  I have the opposite opinion : Firefox is supposed to be safe, but ALMOIST ALL of its extensions are plugins are extremely badly written and unmaintained, and MOST OF THEM are severaly impacting the browser performance (so you get many more bugs in Firefox than with IE or Chrome now !)

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