- Irregexp, Google Chrome's New Regexp ImplementationFebruary 4 2009
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One of the new features in the most recent
dev-channel release of Google Chrome (2.0.160.0) is Irregexp, a completely new implementation of
regular expressions (regexps) in the V8 JavaScript engine. Irregexp builds on V8's existing infrastructure for memory management and native code generation and is tailored to work well for the kinds of regexps used by JavaScript programs on the web. The result is a considerable improvement in V8's regexp performance.
While the V8 team has been working hard to improve JavaScript performance, one part of the language that we have so far not given much attention is regexps. Our previous implementation was based on the widely used
PCRE library developed by Philip Hazel at the University of Cambridge. The version we used, known as JSCRE, was adapted and improved by the WebKit project for use with JavaScript. Using JSCRE gave us a regular expression implementation that was compatible with industry standards and has served us well. However, as we've improved other parts of the language, regexps started to stand out as being slower than the rest. We felt it should be possible to improve performance by integrating with our existing infrastructure rather than using an external library. The SquirrelFish team is following a similar approach with their JavaScript
- Google Chrome Release ChannelsJanuary 9 2009
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Release early, release often. We think that's the best way to develop software that delights people. With Google Chrome, we want to release fewer features more often instead of making you wait 12 months for the next Major Dot-Oh Release Jam-Packed With Features. We can get your feedback faster, fix things faster, and release new improvements as soon as they're ready. We want Google Chrome to stay nimble so it can keep pace with changes in the sites and web apps you use.
Because we don't have those big Dot-Oh release milestones on the calendar, we don't have long periods of Beta testing new features. Instead we use automatic update channels to release Google Chrome to a community of early adopters. The channels are essentially a never-ending Beta test and a continuous feedback loop that lets us rapidly develop new ideas into solid product features.
You can subscribe to one of our update channels:
- Stable channel. Everyone is on the Stable channel when they first install Google Chrome. The Stable channel is updated with features and fixes once they have been throughly tested in the Beta channel. If you want a rock solid browser but don't need the latest features, the Stable channel is for you.
- Beta channel. People who like to use and help refine the latest features subscribe to the Beta channel. Every month or so, we promote stable and complete features
- Tabbed Browsing in Google ChromeJanuary 7 2009
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Tabbed Browsing is a prominent feature of modern browsers. We think it's one of the key elements that makes the browser a window manager for the web. Since we thought of the tab as the "container" element within which all other aspects of the browser lived, we designed the Chrome UI with the tab strip at the very top. But we didn't stop at aesthetic upheaval. As we were designing Google Chrome, we designed our tab strip behavior with an eye to making heavy use efficient. Observing how we were using our existing browsers, we were able to identify some pain points and come up with solutions targeted at fixing them. In this post I'll talk a bit about some of the things we've done.
Ordering
One of the most persistently annoying issues with tabbed browsing was the following situation:
You have a full tab strip and a "hub" page open towards the left of the strip. Perhaps its your RSS reader, or a news site like Google News. You open interesting links in new tabs so you can keep reading through the headlines. The problem is, the new tabs open at the end of the tab strip, beyond many other unrelated tabs that also happen to be open. Sometimes, because of the "many-tab overflow" UIs in existing browsers, the tabs that you are queuing up to read in just a moment may disappear off the end of the strip. In short: finding tabs can sometimes be a challenge.
In addit
- Thanks for all Your HelpDecember 11 2008
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Today we
announced that with Google Chrome's fifteenth release, we are taking off the "beta" label. We set goals around improving the stability and performance of the browser, and many of you have helped us meet these goals. We are grateful to the many people around the world who have contributed patches to Chromium (we had our first come from Korea after only five hours), the dedicated volunteers who have filed and triaged bugs in our
issue tracker, the loyal users who braved the sometimes rocky
dev channel releases, and everyone who took the simple step of
opting-in to sending usage statistics and crash reports.
Google Chrome wouldn't be where it is today without your help. Of course, there's still a ton more to do, so keep the feedback, patches, bug reports, and moral support coming!
Posted by Ian Fette, Product Manager
- Putting It to the TestNovember 7 2008
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Historically, testing hasn't gotten much respect in the world of software development. As the old saying goes, "It compiles! Ship it!" Only a joke — but like most jokes, it hides a grain of truth.
Not so for the Chromium project. Our philosophy is to test everything we possibly can, in as many ways as we can think of.
Test drive: why test?
It's easy to find arguments against testing. Writing tests takes time that developers could be using to write features, and keeping the test hardware and software infrastructure running smoothly isn't trivial. (I'm one of the people largely responsible for the latter for Chromium, along with Nicolas Sylvain, so I know how time-consuming it can be.) But in the long run, it's a big win, for at least two reasons.
A well-established set of tests that developers are expected to run before sending changes in makes it a lot easier to avoid causing problems, which lets other developers stay productive rather than chasing down regressions. And testing submitted changes promptly keeps the code building cleanly and minimizes trouble in the longer term.
But even more importantly, an extensive set of automated tests gives us more confidence that Chromium is reliable, stable, and correct. We're not afraid to rewrite major portions of the code, because verifying correctness afterward is
