Chromium/Google Chrome

cantab · 01-23-2010, 05:52 PM

I've installed Chromium (version 4.0.249.64 (35722)) on my computer, and the speed is impressive, outdoing Firefox in both benchmarks and real browsing. But, I find it lacking some features. I wish to know if these features are available, and if so, how to enable them. The features are:

* Separate search bar. While I know I can search from the address bar, to have to configure and then remember names for a dozen or so search engines is a little annoying. I much prefer the Firefox way.

* Ad Blocking. Sooner or later there'll be an obnoxious ad that gets on my nerves, hijacks my browser, hangs the tab, etc.

* NoScript. Again, sooner or later I'll encounter a site with a troublesome script.

* Chinese and Japanese characters. Not that I understand them, but square boxes in their place are ugly.

* A chromium specific thing this - a way to distinguish the processes for each tab. If one manages to hang my whole system and I need to kill it from the console, a way to know which to kill would obviously be rather helpful. I suppose there's Process ID, relating to time started, but that's no good if all the tabs have been open for a while.

macemoneta · 01-23-2010, 07:36 PM

For process management, Chrome has its own: Shift-Esc in Chrome brings up the task manager, and you can end processes there. Ad Blocking and NoScript are not there yet. There are early versions available, but they don't work too well and are not worth the effort at this point. The Chrome search configuration lets you assign a single character to search a particular site (e.g. 'w' for wikipedia), which is very flexible and convenient. If you use it for a while, you'll find it faster than a search bar.

damgar · 01-23-2010, 07:59 PM

Does anyone know how to change the useragent in Chrome/Chromium?

macemoneta · 01-23-2010, 08:04 PM

You can start Chrome with the --user-agent="something" option to change the user agent.

cantab · 01-27-2010, 10:14 PM

Another issue, which Googling around has shown no answer to - how do I opem a file in a helper application? Say something like a PDF, or a word document. I don't want an in-browser plugin, I want to download the file and have epdfview, openoffice, whatever launched automatically.

It does increasingly look like though chromium is fast, that speed comes at the cost of a severe lack of features and configurability.

macemoneta · 01-27-2010, 10:21 PM

Docs PDF/PowerPoint Viewer (by Google)
Automatically previews pdfs, powerpoint presentations, and other documents in Google Docs Viewer.

https://chrome.google.com/extensions...edmbmedengocbn

cantab · 01-27-2010, 10:39 PM

But that is not what I want. I want to use my standard desktop applications.

The current behaviour has been that after downloading, Chromium offers to open files when I click them in the downloaded files bar that appears at the bottom. Which it does using...Firefox. Which then opens them in the intended application. Utterly, utterly, pointless behaviour by Chromium there.

I've found the settings file, ~/.config/chromium/Default/Preferences, but it's not very informative. The section pertaining to downloads is:

Code:

"download": {
      "default_directory": "/home/tw296/docs",
      "directory_upgrade": true,
      "extensions_to_open": "",
      "prompt_for_download": true
   },

I suppose the key troubleshooting question here is WHY is chromium offering to open saved PDF, Excel Spreadsheet, and other files, in Firefox of all things! This has to be configured somewhere - where?

macemoneta · 01-27-2010, 10:45 PM

Your mimetypes. The question is, why do you want to open them locally? There's no downloading, it's faster, and you use Google's resources instead of your own (can be important if you're using a slow machine or connection). You don't have to worry about malformed PDFs exploiting a security weakness in your viewer. You can print the file or save it after viewing, so there's really no loss of functionality.

cantab · 01-27-2010, 11:16 PM

When you say "Your mimetypes", do you mean to say that it is some sort of system default setting

Well it's not just pdf files. It's a problem with pretty much any file. Torrents would be another good example - I'd want to immediately open the .torrent file in my torrent client. Google Docs can't do that.

Also it's a matter of preference. I don't like this "do everything in the browser" mentality.

macemoneta · 01-28-2010, 10:55 AM

It sounds like you want to use Firefox instead of Chrome, at least right now.

cantab · 01-28-2010, 12:45 PM

Except for the fact that Firefox (well, at least the build in Arch's repos) is noticeably slower. I can't go back to that slowness. (I know there are some supposed Firefox speed-up tweaks, but I tried them before and they didn't seem to help that much). So now I'll never be happy with my browser :-(

macemoneta · 01-28-2010, 01:01 PM

Firefox 3.6 is about 20% faster than 3.5. If you autostart and minimize (using devilspie/gdevilspie) Firefox on login, the startup time is effectively eliminated. When Firefox implements multiple processes, performance will improve again on multi-core machines.

Firefox issues are really off topic for this thread, though.

damgar · 01-28-2010, 02:55 PM

Just as a test I downloaded a .pdf in Chrome and clicked on it in the bar and it opened with okular. Nothing opens FF that I can tell, although I did have to build against mozilla (seamonkey was the default, but I edited to build against FF3.6). But I'm using the Chrome beta, built with a slackbuild from the Chrome.deb file rather than Chromium itself. I've run both, and find for the most part they are the same.

MTK358 · 01-28-2010, 03:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cantab

Except for the fact that Firefox (well, at least the build in Arch's repos) is noticeably slower. I can't go back to that slowness. (I know there are some supposed Firefox speed-up tweaks, but I tried them before and they didn't seem to help that much). So now I'll never be happy with my browser :-(

Funny thing is that for me, even though Chromium passes all the tests visibly faster, it takes ages to load a simple web page.

GrubbySeismic · 01-29-2010, 10:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cantab

* Ad Blocking. Sooner or later there'll be an obnoxious ad that gets on my nerves, hijacks my browser, hangs the tab, etc.

If you have the Developer (i.e. Beta) version of the DEB installed, you get to DL this from the Extensions gallery (it's added to the Configure menu under Downloads). On DEB-based systems this does add a Repo' to your sources list though.

Also, AdThwart (port of Fx AdBlock) and something else called AdBlock are on the Most Popular list. Keep checking back for:

Quote:

Originally Posted by cantab

* NoScript. Again, sooner or later I'll encounter a site with a troublesome script.

Quote:

Originally Posted by cantab

* Chinese and Japanese characters. Not that I understand them, but square boxes in their place are ugly.

You're a YAST-user? Surely that has something in it for specific fonts (e.g. *-fonts-zh-han or *-fonts-ja)?