Assented Order

On September 1, 2008, Google sent a comic to several blogging news sites showcasing their new browser that has been in development for two years. They were going to unveil the browser on September 3, 2008, but it was scanned and leaked onto Google Blogoscoped’s website.

The new Google browser has been dubbed, “Chrome.” You can read the web comic that is now on Google Books here: Google Chrome Comic. Download Chrome Beta. After having read this comic, I must say that I am impressed. It has been long suspected that Google would eventually get into the browser market, but not in this way.

Google has been true to its goal of open source projects - Chrome will be open source. It will also be featuring a number of aspects that Mozilla Firefox has used, and that have now become main stream. It will focus less on just viewing the web, and more on being a portal to viewing websites and running applications. This is reflected in its operating structure.

Functionality

Chrome will not use multiple threads to run like modern browsers, it has been engineered from the ground up to run with multiple processes like an operating system or application. Each tab will be its own process, and not affect other tabs. In fact, you can drag tabs to different windows without affecting its use. When you close a tab, you close a process and memory is cleaned immediately.

Google is using the Webkit browser rendering software to render pages. It has also used the V8 Javascript Virtual Machine. This was developed by their team from Dublin. The whole browser was made to run fast, and this VM is no exception. It turns all interpretations of Javascript on the web page to machine language. It reduces interpretation times and uses precise pointers to keep track of objects. It also cleans them more efficiently when they are to be collected for deletion - freeing up memory.

Another feature of Chrome is security and functionality. Since the browser is running of processes instead of threads, it is more secure. If spyware or malware compromises one process, the others are not affected. Likewise, each browser component is a process, so threats are less severe should they hit. As an added benefit, a number of areas in the browser are sandboxed to prevent code execution from taking place, and regular blacklists are downloaded to be proactive in threat prevention.

Security

Chrome also introduces an “incognito” mode that prevents cookies and history from that session being logged. This allows you to search and browse in a “read only” mode to be more secure.

An additonal feature and behavior of the browser is how it manages pop ups. No more will you have tons of them littering your desktop, they now just litter the tab they are related to. Want to get rid of them? Just close the tab. Then, if it is something you want, you can drag it to its own window.

Applications

For applications, Google made Chrome open them in their own streamlined window without the URL bar. Their idea was to be as less invasive as possible in what your saw. It also makes it more user friendly, allowing you to just focus on one thing.

Fighting Malware and Spyware

In the development of Chrome, Google built it with the assumption that eventually you would encounter Malware and be compromised. So, they developed the Sandbox idea (similar to their SE) and stripped away all the rights of the tab. So, if one tab gets compromised, it doesn’t affect the others and the compromised tab can’t harm your computer by writing to it or reading from sensitive areas on your hard drive. So, no watching your keyboard presses, mouse movements, or affecting yoru startup actions.

While Google Chrome runs at a very low level of permissions because they built it that way, the plugins you install can run at that level or higher. They have no way of sandboxing them yet - until the plugin makers build them with that capability. So, while Chrome isn’t the end-all solution to malware, it has limited it to be up to the user if they want to download something onto their computer - such as installing a plugin.

One neat thing about how plugins are used however, is that Google has made Chrome so that the interactions of plugins are perfomed separately than the rendering of HTML and Javascript. They all execute independently and only interact if they need to. So, a bad execution in one of them will not stop all the others. It also allows the sandbox model to be applied to most of a page’s execution.

While the sandbox helps stop malware, phising is still possible. So, to fight it, Chrome is constantly downloading updated blacklists of known malware and phishing sites to warn or block you from visiting them. Another thing that Chrome does is notify site owners if the browser detects potential malicious behavior when someone visits a website. It helps those who didn’t know they were being malicious to fix their mistakes.

Gears

Gears help improve the web for developers. It is the oposite of Chrome’s other goal - to improve the web for users. Gears allow the browser to be extended and enhanced. Gears focuses on making developers able to enhance all browsers -not just one. So, all can be beter and there is less time spent making features for different browsers to have the same functionality.

Through this use of gears, different parts of a User Interface (UI) could become standards. With standards, it means better adaptation to different browsers. This is further enhanced by the open source model of Chrome.

Cool Things I found

Chrome is in beta, but since it is coming from Google, they have a massive database of webpages. Chrome is tested against millions of webpages at each stage of its process and their Chrome Bot is visiting popular web pages that most users go to to help prevent and fix bugs.

Since the browser is open source and there will be bugs to report, I felt that this was a neat initiative that Google is useing to be proactive. Also, since it is an open souce browser, this feature might eventually be available to other browsers.

Some Intersting Thoughts

Mozilla has been in affiliation with Google for years, and the two have worked closely on a few projects. I am curious to see where Firefox will end up by the end of 2011 when their new contract they just signed with Google to have Google as the default search engine is up.

Five years is a long time on the Internet, and by then Chrome could easily be packaged in most new Windows OS like the Google Desktop is. While I am sure that Internet Explorer will still be as stagnant as it has always been and Microsoft will want to resist the move, it would be neat to see if Chrome does wind up there.

Related Blogs

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• 7 Reasons Why Google Chrome, the New Google Browser is a Bad Idea
• Holy Open Source, a Google Browser!

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• McCloud announces Google Chrome
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Back in February 2007, Yahoo! released their version of a social bookmarking website - Yahoo! Buzz. I recently was directed to it, and thought that you all might enjoy it as well. After looking it over, it is definitely meant to be second nature to Digg users. The format is much the same, but it all is done with the clean style that Yahoo! is so fond of.

After doing some research, I stumbled onto a report from May that showed Buzz was overtaking Digg in April of this year. The report stated that Buzz received 7,000,000 unique visitors in April, while Digg only received 6,000,000. I was intrigued by this as surely it would have been broadcasted more within the Internet circle. Here is the graph from the website (and a link to the page for my hotlinking) comScore.

comScore Buzz and Digg unique visitors

Yahoo! Buzz is still in beta, which says a lot for them since we all know Digg has flawed algorithms and they are out of beta. I havn’t found a recent traffic analysis, but Buzz seems to be helping push Yahoo! around the rank 1 spot in Alexa. This is a good reason to explain why Google was so interested in Digg, but eventually backed out of the deal again. As with any business, the more resources you have to put behind a project, the more successful it will be. If Yahoo! can successfully market Buzz and have a better algorithm, they will burry Digg.

Related Blogs

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• The Easiest Way To Social Bookmark A Blog Article

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• Comparing Yahoo Buzz and Digg After Hitting Buzz’s Homepage

Before you begin cringing, this is not a Pro-Vista article. Whatever personal preferences led to the OS running on your computer is your business. However, Vista was an element of the article that inspired this post, so I am getting the preliminaries out of the way.

In today’s Wall Street Journal on page D1, there is an article titled “PC Makers Offer Enhancements for Speed and Ease of Use.” I have linked this title to the online article for you all who happen to have online subscriptions.

This article details how manufacturers have began to bundle their own software with Vista, and capitalizing on its “wonderful” organizational structure. For instance, Dell has their own toolbar that they are using to make finding your favorite file or program easier to get too with fewer clicks.

Since Vista is not going away within the next couple of years and all new computers that are Windows based will have it on there, there is a large market potential for this type of bundling. This is where I want to take this post.

Marketing your services:

With Dell, they have come to understand that once someone buys a computer, they may or may not see that customer until they need a new one. This would be why most new computer wallpapers have the manufacturer’s branding - it keeps them in the customer’s mind. Dell has taken this a step further and wanted to branch out and “help” their customers by adding functionality that Vista made hard to do.

So, how does this OS fit in to inspiring Web Developers? The fact is, Vista has allowed MSN Live and other mediums to interface with it. You have a website offering a customer following, so why not capitalize on them? If Dell, HP, and Sony are all finding ways to use Vista to continually keep customers and gain new ones, why can’t you?

One of the odd things I have noticed recently, is how little companies that offer website design don’t optimize the websites they build for their clients. For example, when I was looking at a portfolio of this website design company, I saw this real-estate company’s site. Curious, I took a peek. Here are a few breakdowns of my evaluation of that website’s page.

Positives of the Website:

• Pages were developed with a server-side language
• The content was organized
• It had conversion forms, such as a simple contact form

Negatives of the Website:

• Page names were using variable names that were not Search Engine Friendly in the URL
• The content was somewhat static, and needed Javascript to view most of it around the images about houses
• The URL had (2) different domain names
• The Title was not filled with keywords that made sense
• The Description was longer than 150 characters
• Too many keywords in the Meta tag

In my experience, Search Engines like to view your site based on a good user experience. Too many web designers are still developing websites based on tactics that were “the in thing” in the late 90’s - early 2000’s. You can’t do that.

Since Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask, and other SE’s tend to be moving more to an organic and user-like way of crawling a site - you need to give them that. I will write more on this in separate pieces in the future, but I just thought I would cover some basic on-site SEO factors.

One of the things that intreagues me the most is what other people consider a great website. Is it the graphics, layout of the site, clean code, or a few flashy features? To each person, it is something different.

So, what do I think makes a great website?

First and foremost, I like a clean design. You could be giving away free money, but if your site isn’t clean - it will turn me off and I will leave. When I visit a site, I like to have everything congruent. If I have to hunt for navigation, or my mind starts wondering how something relates to the rest of the page - my mouse is headed for the exit.

The second thing I expect in a great website is quality content. If you are giving away free money, I want some good information about how to get it. If you are showing off your family photos, don’t stop with just a mess of them on a page - break them up and give some background on them.

Finally, my last big pet peeve is ugly design. If you have a clean design, it is not necessarily pretty. Likewise, if you have great content, it is not necessarily going to lead to you having the best breakdown of it. However, if you have a both of them, you can pretty design (I’m not talking about graphically). Pretty design is ensuring that your site is easy to follow, organizes content in the best and most logical fashion, and giving a great user experience.

Those are my top three areas I rank sites on: cleanliness, good content, and well laid out.

What do you look for in a great website?

Since the release of Google’s Knol, webmasters have been noticing a strange phenomena. I would like to dubb it - The Google Knol Effect. This is found when you make a new article for Knol and suddenly realize that its SERP is suddenly in the top 10 spots for its keywords.

There are a couple interesting options for this, and some are already being capitalized.

• It is a quick way for you to be ranked and drive traffic to your website without much effort. All you need to do is write a quality article.
• You can add authority to your site by getting a link in there, even if all the links are NoFollow.

What does this Effect say about Google though? I first thought that it was Google’s way to urge support for their Wikipedia-killer-to-be. However, now I think they have a broken system. Afterall, if the articles you write on Knol are suddenly more relevant and have higher authority than sites which aren’t Knol related but are actually what someone was searching for, something is wrong.

This similar effect cropped up back when DMOZ first was released. Every off-shoot of it suddenly allowed webmasters to soar with their SERP’s. It led to Google devaluing, or not even crawling those directories once they releazed the immitation. Can we expect to see this type of devaluing for Knol in the future, or even Wikipedia?

For awhile now I have been debating on whether or not to enter into the overpopulated world of blogging. I have been an avid reader of several blogs in this time, and finally feel the need to have my own place to express my thoughts.

Assented Order will be a place that will share industry practices, random thoughts, and ideas that you might find useful.

One other thing that I am going to do with this blog is praise my commenters. I want to have good feedback, and help you out at the same time. I feel that this site will be optimized enough that your links will not pull it down after it has time to grow, so I am going to make this a DoFollow Blog. I am also going to have recognition for you on the side bar (I just need to find a nice plugin).

Enjoy.