# Lab Fox Report: Google Chrome on FurAffinity



## XerxesQados (Sep 2, 2008)

I've been playing with the new beta of Google's Chrome browser for a while and I'm very pleased with it. It loads up just about any site really, really, really fast.

FurAffinity is one of these fast sites. I think we can all agree that FA is a few milliseconds behind other sites in performance...at least in Firefox and IE and the like. Chrome manages to load both FA pages and images noticeably faster. The only time it doesn't pass Firefox dramatically is for Flash files, and that's understandable considering Flash is a plugin with its own loading and rendering system.

Keep in mind that this is all eyeballed evidence and I don't have any actual times, but Chrome seems to be doing something that loads FA (and just about everything) speedier than Firefox.

It's my personal, unofficial, non-Dragoneer-endorsed recommendation that Windows-using viewers of FA use Chrome from now on. I know it's not quite as animal-named as Firefox, but it should provide you with a good experience.

Just saying.


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## Grimfang (Sep 2, 2008)

Hmm.. I might have to consider trying it out then. I haven't heard much negative (well.. much at all about it).

So are you saying it's a decent browser, or would you recommend it over FF? I'm so lazy.. trying to figure out if I should upgrade to FF3 (finally) or just go with Chrome. Yes, I'm so lazy, I have to come down to that decision x3


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## fx1 (Sep 2, 2008)

Too bad Chrome has (yet!) no add-ons like Firefox, those are quite essential for me. I also noticed that Chrome is fast, even anonymous browsing of these forums is tolerable. With Firefox it is slow, somehow caused by the yellow banner notice "If you are not registered please join blaa blaa.." Maybe Adblock is the culprit..


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## XerxesQados (Sep 2, 2008)

Grimfang said:


> So are you saying it's a decent browser, or would you recommend it over FF?



Unless there's a real killer Firefox extension you need or if you don't use Windows (I'm a Mac user but I dual boot when I need to), I'd switch but keep Firefox installed just in case Chrome turns out to not be so great after a few days.



fx1 said:


> Too bad Chrome has (yet!) no add-ons like Firefox, those are quite essential for me.



Most of the add-ons I use in Firefox aren't essential, mainly because I don't use Adblock anymore. When I did use it I never found it to be that much of a help, and some weirdly coded sites crashed when it was enabled. If you can't function without Adblock, I guess that counts as a killer extension, so stick with Firefox until Google puts out a plugin manager. Or until Adblock reads the Chrome source code and makes their own plugin without Google's help.


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## CyberFoxx (Sep 2, 2008)

Well, I can't say anything about Chrome, but I do know that FA loads insanely fast in Arora. Faster than in Konqueror...


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## Eevee (Sep 2, 2008)

Er?  I don't have speed problems with FA using Fx.


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## Stratelier (Sep 2, 2008)

Eevee said:


> Er?  I don't have speed problems with FA using Fx.


FA mainsite doesn't give me any issues, although the thumbnail servers are slow to respond...  forums usually work fine, though again I do see some occasional lag and "connection reset" errors.


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## SFox (Sep 2, 2008)

I tried Chrome, but I think they took the interface's simplicity way too far.
I can't see many serious internet users switching to it unless they vastly expand upon the configurability of it.

Also, it seemed to load pages slower than Firefox 3 for me.


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## fx1 (Sep 3, 2008)

XerxesQados said:


> Most of the add-ons I use in Firefox aren't essential, mainly because I don't use Adblock anymore. When I did use it I never found it to be that much of a help, and some weirdly coded sites crashed when it was enabled. If you can't function without Adblock, I guess that counts as a killer extension, so stick with Firefox until Google puts out a plugin manager. Or until Adblock reads the Chrome source code and makes their own plugin without Google's help.



Not only Adblock, but NoScript (great for security), DownThemAll, No Squint, Refcontrol, StumbleUpon.. All the other browsers are so seriously bare in comparison that I can't even consider them.

Btw. with Adblock (Adblock Plus is better), you shouldn't use Filterset.G Updater, only select few filter subscriptions from http://adblockplus.org/en/subscriptions, it works better that way.


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## WarMocK (Sep 3, 2008)

Honestly: I wouldn't be THAT enthusiastic about a browser made by Google.
When I read some IT news this morning I stumbled over a serious problem that comes with the browser'S EULA: If you use Chrome to transfer any content (pics, music, etc) you grant Google to use a copy of that data for anything they want (wirhout paying fees, of course). And I wouldn't want to see one of my pics cobbled together with some other stuff as an advertising banner - especially since Chrome will pop up banners as it sees fit and you are not allowed to do something about it (part of the licence agreement!).


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## Armaetus (Sep 3, 2008)

I'll wait till Chrome is out of beta or something like that.


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## Firehazard (Sep 3, 2008)

WarMocK said:


> When I read some IT news this morning I stumbled over a serious problem that comes with the browser'S EULA: If you use Chrome to transfer any content (pics, music, etc) you grant Google to use a copy of that data for anything they want (wirhout paying fees, of course).



AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

You know, I said yesterday that their logo reminds me of those surveillance drones in Half-Life 2.  This makes it all the more appropriate.


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## Tweek (Sep 3, 2008)

Yeah, I use NoScript to *block* Google's statistics bots...I would never use a browser that could track everything I do online. If you use Firefox and a concerned with speed, download the Tweak Network add-on; It's better than FasterFox and it works with both versions 2 and 3.


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## Eevee (Sep 3, 2008)

WarMocK said:


> When I read some IT news this morning I stumbled over a serious problem that comes with the browser'S EULA: If you use Chrome to transfer any content (pics, music, etc) you grant Google to use a copy of that data for anything they want (wirhout paying fees, of course).


this is the standard Google EULA

it gives them permission to _host your crap_


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## WarMocK (Sep 3, 2008)

I'm talking about Â§11.2, the part talking about giving the content away to other companies DIRECTY RELATED to Google. -.-


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## Eevee (Sep 3, 2008)

...so that they can provide those companies' services to you

ianal but section 11 sounds like a whole lot of cloud-related CYA on google's part


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## Rhainor (Sep 3, 2008)

I installed Chrome, and yeah, it's pretty spiffy.  Very, very simple, though; not a lot of spiffy features.

I like my Fx extensions too much to switch to Chrome as my primary browser.  Chrome _does_ make a good secondary browser, though.



* _("Fx" is the official abbreviation for Firefox, for those who didn't know.)_


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## fx1 (Sep 3, 2008)

Notice the GoogleUpdate.exe process that comes with the install. I killed it and removed its startup entry from the registry, still it somehow started again. I uninstalled Crome, but GoogleUpdate.exe remained. I deleted the whole Google folder manually, and checked the computer with Sysinternals' Autoruns. Crome had setup a scheduled task, this is from its description:

"Google Update Task keeps your Google software up to date. If Google Update Task is disabled or stopped, your Google software may not be kept up to date, meaning we can't fix security vulnerabilities that may arise, and *features in your Google software may not work*. (what features, besides updating..?) Google Update Task uninstalls itself when there is no Google software using it. It may take a few hours for Google Update to detect it is time to uninstall."

Nice, but still a little suspicious.. As if there isn't enough background processes in Windows already  Firefox doesn't need extra background processes for updating. I'll forget about Chrome for now..


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## Stratelier (Sep 3, 2008)

fx1 said:


> Notice the GoogleUpdate.exe process that comes with the install.


If you don't want it enabled, I suppose you could always try playing musical filenames between GoogleUpdate.exe and a dummy sometime . . . .


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## Fallansig (Sep 3, 2008)

Furaffinity seems to randomly crash when I log into a new account though, and seeing as I am the type to have multiple accounts for multiple reasons, I often find myself turning back to firefox because of furaffinitiy's strange issues. I am not sure if I am the only one having this.


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## Dragoneer (Sep 4, 2008)

Fallansig said:


> Furaffinity seems to randomly crash when I log into a new account though, and seeing as I am the type to have multiple accounts for multiple reasons, I often find myself turning back to firefox because of furaffinitiy's strange issues. I am not sure if I am the only one having this.


Uh... how does Fur Affinity "crash" exactly?


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## fx1 (Sep 4, 2008)

Stratadrake said:


> If you don't want it enabled, I suppose you could always try playing musical filenames between GoogleUpdate.exe and a dummy sometime . . . .


Excuse me? Plain English please..


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## Wolfbane (Sep 4, 2008)

I myself have just downloaded Google chrome. It looks good except one little problem, I am unable to log into the main site when using it, however other sites and the FA forums work fine.


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## Armaetus (Sep 4, 2008)

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Google-Changes-Controversial-Chrome-TOS-97467


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## Stratelier (Sep 4, 2008)

fx1 said:


> Excuse me? Plain English please..


Delete GoogleUpdater.exe, then create a blank text file and save it with the name "GoogleUpdater.exe" .   VoilÃ*!  No longer executable unless it gets re-installed at some point.


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## Adrimor (Sep 4, 2008)

I don't mess with beta software, since my machine's unstable enough without it...

Here are some other good reasons I've found to avoid Chrome, though...

Two for security:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1843&tag=nl.e539
http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1847&tag=nl.e539

And a business/ethical reason:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/perlow/?p=9241&tag=rbxccnbzd1


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## Firehazard (Sep 5, 2008)

I don't think it's so much optimized for Google Apps as it is optimized in general.  If I'm not mistaken Google Apps just uses a buttload of Ajax, which is liable to run slowly on most browsers.  Chrome is just faster, period because their programmers know a thing or two about optimizing code.  Not surprising considering they also wrote a search engine that roots through an index of the _entire Internet_ in a matter of seconds.


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## Eevee (Sep 5, 2008)

Firehazard said:


> Chrome is just faster, period because their programmers know a thing or two about optimizing code.


actually they just used someone else's javascript engine

and someone else's rendering engine


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## icehawk (Sep 6, 2008)

AdriNoMa said:


> http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1847&tag=nl.e539





> â€œAn issue exists in how chrome behaves with undefined-handlers in chrome.dll version 0.2.149.27. A crash can result without user interaction. When a user is made to visit a malicious link, which has an undefined handler followed by a â€™specialâ€™ character, the chrome crashes with a Google Chrome message window â€œWhoa! Google Chrome has crashed. Restart now?â€. It crashes on â€œint 3â€³ at 0Ã—01002FF3 as an exception/trap, followed by â€œPOP EBPâ€ instruction when pointed out by the EIP register at 0Ã—01002FF4.â€




That doesn't immediately look like a security problem, or even a crash to me. Looks like they it's trying to deal with undefined handlers by calling into the debugger (INT 3 is the special assembly instruction used as a debugger breakpoint), which looks like a crash when you don't have a debugger installed.


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## Dragoneer (Sep 6, 2008)

Y'know, I hate to say it... I was psyched when Firefox came out. I can't give two shits about Chrome. I'm not against variety, but Chrome doesn't do anything really... well, new. At all. It's "fast", but great, if I'm suffering and missing out because Chrome renders a webpage .3 seconds faster than Firefox I really have my priorities wrong.


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