Chromium (web browser)
Encyclopedia
Chromium is the open source
web browser
project from which Google Chrome
draws its source code. The project's hourly Chromium snapshots appear essentially similar to the latest builds of Google Chrome aside from the omission of certain Google additions, most noticeable among them: Google's branding, auto-update mechanism, click-through licensing
terms, usage-tracking, a built-in PDF viewer and bundling of the Adobe Flash Player
. Chromium uses the WebKit
layout engine
.
The Chromium Project takes its name from the element chromium
, the metal from which chrome
is made. Google's intention, as expressed in the developer documentation, was that Chromium would be the name of the open source project and that the final product name would be Chrome. However other developers have taken the Chromium code and released versions under the Chromium name.
One of the major aims of the project is for Chrome to be a tabbed window manager, or shell for the web, as opposed to its being a traditional browser application. The application is designed specifically to have a minimalist user interface
. The developers state that it "should feel lightweight (cognitively and physically) and fast".
It is possible to download the source code and build it manually on many platforms. Google takes this source code and adds:
By default, Chromium only supports Vorbis
, Theora
, and WebM
codecs for the HTML5 audio and video tags; whereas Google Chrome supports these plus AAC
and MP3
. On 11 January 2011, the Chrome Product manager, Mike Jazayeri, announced that Chrome will no longer support the H.264 video format for its HTML5 player, equally as Chromium does not. Certain Linux distributions may add support for other codecs to their customized versions of Chromium.
, the LGPL
, the Ms-PL, and an MPL
/GPL
/LGPL
tri-license.
As of March 2011, some parts of the code lack an appropriate free license.
Because Chromium is the open source project that results in releases of Google Chrome, the history of the two is intertwined. Chromium is a project, making all releases developmental, with Chrome being the official release.
Upon its first release in September 2008 Chromium was criticised for storing saved passwords in a manner so that any casual user of a computer can easily read them from the GUI. Users have filed many bug reports and feature requests asking for a master password option to access stored passwords, but Chromium developers have consistently insisted that this provides no real security against knowledgeable hackers. Users have argued that it would protect against co-workers or family members borrowing a computer and seeing the stored passwords in clear text. In December 2009 Chromium developer P. Kasting stated: "A master password was issue 1397. That issue is closed. We will not implement a master password. Not now, not ever. Arguing for it won't make it happen. "A bunch of people would like it" won't make it happen. Our design decisions are not democratic. You cannot always have what you want."
In May 2009 the first alpha Linux version of Chromium was made available. In reviewing that alpha version Ryan Paul said that it was "still missing features and [has] lots of rendering bugs, but it is clearly moving in the right direction." The first developer releases for Chrome on the Linux and Mac OS X platforms were made available in June 2009, although they were in a very early stage and lacked Adobe Flash
, privacy settings, the ability to set the default search provider and even printing at that point. In July 2009 Chromium incorporated native theming for Linux, using the GTK+
toolkit to allow it fit into the GNOME
desktop environment.
Chromium 3.0 was released on 28 May 2009 as version 3.0.182.2. Chrome 3.0 followed in September 2009 and introduced a much faster JavaScript engine, a system for user-selectable themes, improvements to the Omnibox and a redesigned new tab display page.
Chromium 4.0.212.0 was the first Chromium 4.0 version and appeared on 22 September 2009 with Chrome 4.0 publicly released in December 2009. Both brought support for extensions, plus synchronization of bookmarks along with Chrome beta versions for Mac OS X and Linux. The all-platform market penetration of Chrome/Chromium 4.0 combined was at 6.73% by the end of April 2010.
Chromium 6.0 was introduced in May 2010 with the first release version 6.0.397.0. In July 2010 Chromium 6 daily builds introduced new features focusing on user interface minimalism, including a unified single page and tools menu, no home button by default (although user configurable), no "go button", a combined "reload/stop" button, bookmark bar deactivated by default, an integral PDF
reader, WebM
/VP8
support for use with HTML5 video
, a smarter URL bar. Chrome 6 was released in both a stable and beta version on 2 September 2010 as version 6.0.472.53. The switch to 6.0 brought security fixes, a slightly updated user interface, improvements to form autofilling, synchronizing of both extensions and autofill data, along with increased speed and stability.
Chromium 7.0 was released on 17 August 2010, with 7.0.497.0 as the first version made available. This version boosted HTML5 performance to double the speed of Chromium 6. It also added hardware acceleration, which speeds up the browser in complex graphics situations by a factor of 225 times, integration of instant search, UI Tabs which move all the remaining user interface windows into the browser tabs, including the "options" menu, and 3% faster JavaScript performance.
7 October 2010 marked the release of Chromium 8.0, seven and a half weeks after that of Chromium 7. The initial release in this series was version 8.0.549.0. The development of Chromium 8.0 focused on improved integration into the Google Chrome OS
, and improved cloud
features. These include background web applications, host remoting (allowing users centrally to control features and settings on other computers), and cloud printing. On 12 January 2011 versions of Chrome and Chromium prior to version 8.0.552.237 were identified by US-CERT as "contain[ing] multiple memory corruption vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities include a stack corruption vulnerability in the PDF renderer component, two memory corruption vulnerabilities in the Vorbis decoder, and a video frame size error resulting in a bad memory access...By convincing a user to view a specially crafted HTML document, PDF file, or video file, an attacker can cause the application to crash or possibly execute arbitrary code." This vulnerability was publicized after Chrome version 8.0.552.237 was released fixing these problems, to alert users to upgrade versions as soon as possible.
Chromium 9.0 was released on 23 October 2010, just 16 days after Chromium 8.0, with 9.0.562.0 as the initial version. The new version introduced an infobar refresh feature with the aim of preventing website spoofing attack
s. Reviewer Wolfgang Gruener noted that the first builds of Chrome 9 have now doubled in size between Chrome 3 and Chrome 9 to a compressed download of 28.2 MB, calling it "notably more bloated". Gruener also criticized the seemingly arbitrary numbering breaks between major versions, saying, "even by more progressive standards, the version numbering may be a bit excessive. By the end of this year, Google will have gone through seven or eight different browser versions. Some may doubt the benefit of that strategy." Chromium 9 introduced two new test features in November 2010 intended to load web pages more quickly, "pre-rendering" and "false start", plus sandboxing
for Adobe Flash
. Stable releases of Chrome and Chromium were version 9.0.597.84 and included features such as Instant Search which allows the URL bar to act through Google Instant when Google is the default search. Other features included GPU/hardware acceleration, default 3D graphics though WebGL and access to the Chrome Web Store
on the New Tab page.
Chromium 10.0 was released on 3 December 2010, with 10.0.601.0 as the initial version. It introduced 18 new features, including "Instant Type" searching as well as "GPU accelerated compositing". Development of "Webpage pre-rendering" was reduced to an inactive while selectable "snap start" was introduced.
in Sunspider tests.
In February 2011, Google’s Jeff Chang announced to Chromium developers that there would be further large-scale interface changes. These may include eliminating the "Omnibox" URL bar and combining the current two line layout which has tabs on one line and and navigation buttons, menu and URL bar on a second line into one single line, thus freeing up more screen space for content. Chang indicated that this would result in URLs not always being visible to the user, that navigation controls and menus may lose their context and that the resulting single line could be quite crowded. Other proposed changes include being able to log into multiple accounts in different windows and improved URL suggestions from the user's history. By the middle of 2011, after some experimentation, the developers decided that eliminating the URL bar was too risky and shelved the idea.
Chromium 12.0 was released on 11 March 2011, with 12.0.700.0 as the first version. Initial changes in the first versions of Chromium 12 included
In March 2011 Google announced directions for the project for the year, including a plan for seven new major versions, planning to end the year with Chrome 17 out. Development priorities will focus on reducing the browser's size, integrating web applications and plug-ins, cloud capabilities and touch interface. The size is a concern to developers, who have noted that Chrome 1 was 9.0 MB in Windows download size, compared to Chrome 10 for Windows at 26.2 MB, as a result they have created a "bloat taskforce". Larger download sizes are a problem for a number of reasons, as Chrome Developer Ian Fette explained: "1. We do distribution deals with Chrome, where we bundle Chrome with other products. These get difficult when our binary grows. 2. We see increased download failures / install dropoffs as the binary grows, especially in countries with poor bandwidth like India. India also happens to be a very good market for Chrome (we have good market share there and growing), so that's also very problematic."
With the release of Chromium 12.0.742.0 on 19 April 2011 the interface incorporated some new changes, the most significant since Chromium 6 was released. A multi-profile button was introduced allowing users to log into multiple Google and other accounts in the same browser instance. The new tab page was also redesigned and separated into four horizontally-scrollable screens, providing access to most visited pages, Google apps, plus two identified pages. The page reload button was also redesigned along with minor changes to the URL bar. The first stable version of Chrome and Chromium 12 released was 12.0.742.91 which brought malware detection and support for hardware-accelerated 3D CSS transforms.
Chromium 13.0 was released on 26 April 2011, with 13.0.748.0 as the initial version. Early versions of Chromium 13 included a menu button to enable users to switch between multiple Google profiles, multi-selection of tabs and an improved omnibox engine. This version also included several minor GUI changes, including a slightly lightened menu bar. By early May 2011 the results of Google's attempts to reduce the file size of Chromium were already being noted. Much of the early work in this area concentrated on shrinking the size of WebKit
, by removing Wireless Markup Language
(WML), the Image Resizer, datagrids and the Android build system. The largest Chromium nightly build was 35.3 MB on 15 April 2011, but this was reduced to 29.9 MB by 20 April 2011. Later builds of Chromium and Chrome in mid-May 2011 introduced the optional "compact navigation view", aimed at mobile device users. This view combined the tab and URL/menu bars into one bar, by making the URL bar hide when not in use, thus saving 30 pixel
s of vertical space.
Chromium 14.0 was released on 2 June 2011, with 14.0.783.0 as the initial version. This initial version included
(NaCl) which permits native code supplied by third parties as platform-neutral binaries to be securely executed within in the browser itself.
Chromium 15.0 was released on 28 July 2011, with 15.0.837.0 as the initial version. Work in this version included integrating the profiles and synchronization features, including moving synchronization into the main menu and introducing a profile manager. Synchronization data will be encrypted by default. Chromium 15 also expands webpage pre-rendering. Dan Bailey of Conceivably Tech stated about this version and the development of it, "it is obvious that Google is plugging along and is fine-tuning its browser...Chrome isn’t surrendering its perception of the most advanced browser today anytime soon." As development wound up in early September 2011 Chromium 15 also gained a "self-crashing" feature that crashes the browser if a close command is not completed in 25 seconds, smooth scrolling when using the space bar, automatic pre- and auto-logins to Google's own web pages, task bar logos to show different profiles, greatly enhanced synchronization customization, including optional search engine synchronization and improvements to the prerendering process.
Chromium 16.0 was released on 10 September 2011 at build 100523, with 16.0.877.0 as the initial version. Early in the development of version 16 an experimental Offscreen Tabs Module was incorporated which allows simultaneous user interaction with multiple web pages. This version for Mac OS-X included a move to Google's Skia 2D graphics library in place of Apple’s core graphics as previously used. This aligned Chromium for Mac with the Windows and Linux versions.
Chromium 17.0 was released on 19 October 2011, with the initial release version 17.0.913.0. This version introduced http pipelining as a test feature to increase web page load speed, starting with build 106364.
and Mac OS X
. These include:
Chromium - branded releases
CrossOver Chromium
ChromePlus
Comodo Dragon
Flock
Iron
RockMelt
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
web browser
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
project from which Google Chrome
Google Chrome
Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google that uses the WebKit layout engine. It was first released as a beta version for Microsoft Windows on September 2, 2008, and the public stable release was on December 11, 2008. The name is derived from the graphical user interface frame, or...
draws its source code. The project's hourly Chromium snapshots appear essentially similar to the latest builds of Google Chrome aside from the omission of certain Google additions, most noticeable among them: Google's branding, auto-update mechanism, click-through licensing
Clickwrap
A clickwrap agreement is a common type of agreement often used in connection with software licenses. Such forms of agreement are mostly found on the Internet, as part of the installation process of many software packages, or in other circumstances where agreement is sought using electronic media...
terms, usage-tracking, a built-in PDF viewer and bundling of the Adobe Flash Player
Adobe Flash Player
The Adobe Flash Player is software for viewing multimedia, Rich Internet Applications and streaming video and audio, on a computer web browser or on supported mobile devices. Flash Player runs SWF files that can be created by the Adobe Flash authoring tool, by Adobe Flex or by a number of other...
. Chromium uses the WebKit
WebKit
WebKit is a layout engine designed to allow web browsers to render web pages. WebKit powers Google Chrome and Apple Safari and by October 2011 held over 33% of the browser market share between them. It is also used as the basis for the experimental browser included with the Amazon Kindle ebook...
layout engine
Layout engine
A web browser engine, , is a software component that takes marked up content and formatting information and displays the formatted content on the screen. It "paints" on the content area of a window, which is displayed on a monitor or a printer...
.
The Chromium Project takes its name from the element chromium
Chromium
Chromium is a chemical element which has the symbol Cr and atomic number 24. It is the first element in Group 6. It is a steely-gray, lustrous, hard metal that takes a high polish and has a high melting point. It is also odorless, tasteless, and malleable...
, the metal from which chrome
Chrome plating
Chrome plating, often referred to simply as chrome, is a technique of electroplating a thin layer of chromium onto a metal object. The chromed layer can be decorative, provide corrosion resistance, ease cleaning procedures, or increase surface hardness.-Process:A component to be chrome plated will...
is made. Google's intention, as expressed in the developer documentation, was that Chromium would be the name of the open source project and that the final product name would be Chrome. However other developers have taken the Chromium code and released versions under the Chromium name.
One of the major aims of the project is for Chrome to be a tabbed window manager, or shell for the web, as opposed to its being a traditional browser application. The application is designed specifically to have a minimalist user interface
User interface
The user interface, in the industrial design field of human–machine interaction, is the space where interaction between humans and machines occurs. The goal of interaction between a human and a machine at the user interface is effective operation and control of the machine, and feedback from the...
. The developers state that it "should feel lightweight (cognitively and physically) and fast".
Differences from Google Chrome
Chromium is the name given to the open source project and the browser source code released and maintained by the Chromium Project.It is possible to download the source code and build it manually on many platforms. Google takes this source code and adds:
- an integrated Flash PlayerAdobe Flash PlayerThe Adobe Flash Player is software for viewing multimedia, Rich Internet Applications and streaming video and audio, on a computer web browser or on supported mobile devices. Flash Player runs SWF files that can be created by the Adobe Flash authoring tool, by Adobe Flex or by a number of other...
- a built-in sandboxed PDF viewer
- the Google name and logo
- an auto-updater system called GoogleUpdate
- an opt-in option for users to send Google their usage statistics and crash reports
- RLZ tracking when Chrome is downloaded as part of marketing promotions and distribution partnerships. This transmits information in encoded form to Google, e.g. when and from where Chrome has been downloaded. In June 2010, Google confirmed that the RLZ tracking token is not present in versions of Chrome downloaded from the Google website directly or in any version of Chromium. The RLZ source code was also made open source at the same time so that developers can confirm what it is and how it works.
By default, Chromium only supports Vorbis
Vorbis
Vorbis is a free software / open source project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation . The project produces an audio format specification and software implementation for lossy audio compression...
, Theora
Theora
Theora is a free lossy video compression format. It is developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and distributed without licensing fees alongside their other free and open media projects, including the Vorbis audio format and the Ogg container....
, and WebM
WebM
WebM is an audio-video format designed to provide a royalty-free, open video compression format for use with HTML5 video. The project's development is sponsored by Google....
codecs for the HTML5 audio and video tags; whereas Google Chrome supports these plus AAC
Advanced Audio Coding
Advanced Audio Coding is a standardized, lossy compression and encoding scheme for digital audio. Designed to be the successor of the MP3 format, AAC generally achieves better sound quality than MP3 at similar bit rates....
and MP3
MP3
MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
. On 11 January 2011, the Chrome Product manager, Mike Jazayeri, announced that Chrome will no longer support the H.264 video format for its HTML5 player, equally as Chromium does not. Certain Linux distributions may add support for other codecs to their customized versions of Chromium.
Licensing
The Google-authored portion of Chromium is released under the BSD license, with other parts being subject to a variety of different permissive open-source licenses, including the MIT LicenseMIT License
The MIT License is a free software license originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . It is a permissive license, meaning that it permits reuse within proprietary software provided all copies of the licensed software include a copy of the MIT License terms...
, the LGPL
GNU Lesser General Public License
The GNU Lesser General Public License or LGPL is a free software license published by the Free Software Foundation . It was designed as a compromise between the strong-copyleft GNU General Public License or GPL and permissive licenses such as the BSD licenses and the MIT License...
, the Ms-PL, and an MPL
Mozilla Public License
The Mozilla Public License is a free and open source software license. Version 1.0 was developed by Mitchell Baker when she worked as a lawyer at Netscape Communications Corporation and version 1.1 at the Mozilla Foundation...
/GPL
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
/LGPL
GNU Lesser General Public License
The GNU Lesser General Public License or LGPL is a free software license published by the Free Software Foundation . It was designed as a compromise between the strong-copyleft GNU General Public License or GPL and permissive licenses such as the BSD licenses and the MIT License...
tri-license.
As of March 2011, some parts of the code lack an appropriate free license.
History
2008
Google Chrome was first introduced in September 2008 and along with its release the Chromium source code was also made available allowing builds to be constructed from it. The initial code release included builds for Windows and Mac OS X, as well as Linux, although the latter was at a very early stage of development and lacked complete functionality. Chromium 1.0 was released in December 2008 and with it Chrome was removed from beta status for Windows only.Upon its first release in September 2008 Chromium was criticised for storing saved passwords in a manner so that any casual user of a computer can easily read them from the GUI. Users have filed many bug reports and feature requests asking for a master password option to access stored passwords, but Chromium developers have consistently insisted that this provides no real security against knowledgeable hackers. Users have argued that it would protect against co-workers or family members borrowing a computer and seeing the stored passwords in clear text. In December 2009 Chromium developer P. Kasting stated: "A master password was issue 1397. That issue is closed. We will not implement a master password. Not now, not ever. Arguing for it won't make it happen. "A bunch of people would like it" won't make it happen. Our design decisions are not democratic. You cannot always have what you want."
2009
In January 2009 the first development versions of Chromium 2.0 were made available, featuring a bookmark manager and support for non-standard CSS features, including gradients, reflections and masks.In May 2009 the first alpha Linux version of Chromium was made available. In reviewing that alpha version Ryan Paul said that it was "still missing features and [has] lots of rendering bugs, but it is clearly moving in the right direction." The first developer releases for Chrome on the Linux and Mac OS X platforms were made available in June 2009, although they were in a very early stage and lacked Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...
, privacy settings, the ability to set the default search provider and even printing at that point. In July 2009 Chromium incorporated native theming for Linux, using the GTK+
GTK+
GTK+ is a cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. It is licensed under the terms of the GNU LGPL, allowing both free and proprietary software to use it. It is one of the most popular toolkits for the X Window System, along with Qt.The name GTK+ originates from GTK;...
toolkit to allow it fit into the GNOME
GNOME
GNOME is a desktop environment and graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system. It is composed entirely of free and open source software...
desktop environment.
Chromium 3.0 was released on 28 May 2009 as version 3.0.182.2. Chrome 3.0 followed in September 2009 and introduced a much faster JavaScript engine, a system for user-selectable themes, improvements to the Omnibox and a redesigned new tab display page.
Chromium 4.0.212.0 was the first Chromium 4.0 version and appeared on 22 September 2009 with Chrome 4.0 publicly released in December 2009. Both brought support for extensions, plus synchronization of bookmarks along with Chrome beta versions for Mac OS X and Linux. The all-platform market penetration of Chrome/Chromium 4.0 combined was at 6.73% by the end of April 2010.
2010
Chromium 5.0 was released on 26 January 2010 with 5.0.306.0 as the initial version. Google Chrome 5.0 followed on 25 May 2010 and provided stable (non-beta) releases for all platforms. At that time the web magazine, OMG! Ubuntu!, reported that Chrome/Chromium usage was at 36.53% for Linux browsers, compared to 55.52% for Firefox and 2.82% for Opera.Chromium 6.0 was introduced in May 2010 with the first release version 6.0.397.0. In July 2010 Chromium 6 daily builds introduced new features focusing on user interface minimalism, including a unified single page and tools menu, no home button by default (although user configurable), no "go button", a combined "reload/stop" button, bookmark bar deactivated by default, an integral PDF
Portable Document Format
Portable Document Format is an open standard for document exchange. This file format, created by Adobe Systems in 1993, is used for representing documents in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems....
reader, WebM
WebM
WebM is an audio-video format designed to provide a royalty-free, open video compression format for use with HTML5 video. The project's development is sponsored by Google....
/VP8
VP8
VP8 is an open video compression format released by Google, originally created by On2 Technologies.After purchasing On2 Technologies in early 2010, Google has provided an irrevocable patent promise for underlying patents for the VP8 format, and released a bitstream format specification under a...
support for use with HTML5 video
HTML5 video
HTML5 video is an element introduced in the HTML5 draft specification for the purpose of playing videos or movies, partially replacing the object element...
, a smarter URL bar. Chrome 6 was released in both a stable and beta version on 2 September 2010 as version 6.0.472.53. The switch to 6.0 brought security fixes, a slightly updated user interface, improvements to form autofilling, synchronizing of both extensions and autofill data, along with increased speed and stability.
Chromium 7.0 was released on 17 August 2010, with 7.0.497.0 as the first version made available. This version boosted HTML5 performance to double the speed of Chromium 6. It also added hardware acceleration, which speeds up the browser in complex graphics situations by a factor of 225 times, integration of instant search, UI Tabs which move all the remaining user interface windows into the browser tabs, including the "options" menu, and 3% faster JavaScript performance.
7 October 2010 marked the release of Chromium 8.0, seven and a half weeks after that of Chromium 7. The initial release in this series was version 8.0.549.0. The development of Chromium 8.0 focused on improved integration into the Google Chrome OS
Google Chrome OS
Google Chrome OS is a Linux-based operating system designed by Google to work exclusively with web applications. Google announced the operating system on July 7, 2009 and made it an open source project, called Chromium OS, that November....
, and improved cloud
Cloud computing
Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility over a network ....
features. These include background web applications, host remoting (allowing users centrally to control features and settings on other computers), and cloud printing. On 12 January 2011 versions of Chrome and Chromium prior to version 8.0.552.237 were identified by US-CERT as "contain[ing] multiple memory corruption vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities include a stack corruption vulnerability in the PDF renderer component, two memory corruption vulnerabilities in the Vorbis decoder, and a video frame size error resulting in a bad memory access...By convincing a user to view a specially crafted HTML document, PDF file, or video file, an attacker can cause the application to crash or possibly execute arbitrary code." This vulnerability was publicized after Chrome version 8.0.552.237 was released fixing these problems, to alert users to upgrade versions as soon as possible.
Chromium 9.0 was released on 23 October 2010, just 16 days after Chromium 8.0, with 9.0.562.0 as the initial version. The new version introduced an infobar refresh feature with the aim of preventing website spoofing attack
Spoofing attack
In the context of network security, a spoofing attack is a situation in which one person or program successfully masquerades as another by falsifying data and thereby gaining an illegitimate advantage.- Spoofing and TCP/IP :...
s. Reviewer Wolfgang Gruener noted that the first builds of Chrome 9 have now doubled in size between Chrome 3 and Chrome 9 to a compressed download of 28.2 MB, calling it "notably more bloated". Gruener also criticized the seemingly arbitrary numbering breaks between major versions, saying, "even by more progressive standards, the version numbering may be a bit excessive. By the end of this year, Google will have gone through seven or eight different browser versions. Some may doubt the benefit of that strategy." Chromium 9 introduced two new test features in November 2010 intended to load web pages more quickly, "pre-rendering" and "false start", plus sandboxing
Sandbox (computer security)
In computer security, a sandbox is a security mechanism for separating running programs. It is often used to execute untested code, or untrusted programs from unverified third-parties, suppliers, untrusted users and untrusted websites....
for Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...
. Stable releases of Chrome and Chromium were version 9.0.597.84 and included features such as Instant Search which allows the URL bar to act through Google Instant when Google is the default search. Other features included GPU/hardware acceleration, default 3D graphics though WebGL and access to the Chrome Web Store
Chrome Web Store
The Chrome Web Store is an online store from Google. It was announced at the Google I/O conference on May 19, 2010 by Vic Gundotra and released on December 6, 2010...
on the New Tab page.
Chromium 10.0 was released on 3 December 2010, with 10.0.601.0 as the initial version. It introduced 18 new features, including "Instant Type" searching as well as "GPU accelerated compositing". Development of "Webpage pre-rendering" was reduced to an inactive while selectable "snap start" was introduced.
2011
Chromium 11.0 was released on 28 January 2011, with 11.0.652.0 as the initial version. Development work in this version centered on cleaning up the settings menu, including the Sync menu and eliminating all checkboxes. Reviewer Wolfgang Gruener said "The Settings menu isn’t quite as messy anymore and looks much more like what you would expect from a professionally designed software." Language and spell checking support was expanded to 100 languages. Chromium 11 used WebKit 534.18 and V8 3.1.1 which resulted in improved speed in JavaScript and other benchmark tests. In early testing Chromium 11 was faster than Firefox 4 in V8 and Kraken benchmarks, but was 12% slower than Internet Explorer 9Internet Explorer 9
Windows Internet Explorer 9 is the current version of the Internet Explorer web browser from Microsoft. It was released to the public on March 14, 2011 at 21:00 PDT. Internet Explorer 9 supports several CSS 3 properties, embedded ICC v2 or v4 color profiles support via Windows Color System, and...
in Sunspider tests.
In February 2011, Google’s Jeff Chang announced to Chromium developers that there would be further large-scale interface changes. These may include eliminating the "Omnibox" URL bar and combining the current two line layout which has tabs on one line and and navigation buttons, menu and URL bar on a second line into one single line, thus freeing up more screen space for content. Chang indicated that this would result in URLs not always being visible to the user, that navigation controls and menus may lose their context and that the resulting single line could be quite crowded. Other proposed changes include being able to log into multiple accounts in different windows and improved URL suggestions from the user's history. By the middle of 2011, after some experimentation, the developers decided that eliminating the URL bar was too risky and shelved the idea.
Chromium 12.0 was released on 11 March 2011, with 12.0.700.0 as the first version. Initial changes in the first versions of Chromium 12 included
about:flags updates of test features, incorporating an fps counter for hardware acceleration benchmarks, a P2P API interface that may indicate future platform data exchange features, an enhanced URL bar and small changes to the tabs. Chromium 12 incorporated WebKit 534.24 and V8 javascript engine version 3.2.1.1. It is anticipated that a URL bar web app launcher will be added during the development cycle. Chromium 12 also introduced a new simplified 2D logo that replaced the 3D style logo used from the project since its inception. Early in the Chromium 12 cycle the history quick provider was introduced. This feature automatically searches the browser history for websites visited in the past 72 hours looking for matching page titles and URLs. It also searches through URLs that have been typed at least twice as well as URLs that have been visited at least four times ever. In March 2011 Google announced directions for the project for the year, including a plan for seven new major versions, planning to end the year with Chrome 17 out. Development priorities will focus on reducing the browser's size, integrating web applications and plug-ins, cloud capabilities and touch interface. The size is a concern to developers, who have noted that Chrome 1 was 9.0 MB in Windows download size, compared to Chrome 10 for Windows at 26.2 MB, as a result they have created a "bloat taskforce". Larger download sizes are a problem for a number of reasons, as Chrome Developer Ian Fette explained: "1. We do distribution deals with Chrome, where we bundle Chrome with other products. These get difficult when our binary grows. 2. We see increased download failures / install dropoffs as the binary grows, especially in countries with poor bandwidth like India. India also happens to be a very good market for Chrome (we have good market share there and growing), so that's also very problematic."
With the release of Chromium 12.0.742.0 on 19 April 2011 the interface incorporated some new changes, the most significant since Chromium 6 was released. A multi-profile button was introduced allowing users to log into multiple Google and other accounts in the same browser instance. The new tab page was also redesigned and separated into four horizontally-scrollable screens, providing access to most visited pages, Google apps, plus two identified pages. The page reload button was also redesigned along with minor changes to the URL bar. The first stable version of Chrome and Chromium 12 released was 12.0.742.91 which brought malware detection and support for hardware-accelerated 3D CSS transforms.
Chromium 13.0 was released on 26 April 2011, with 13.0.748.0 as the initial version. Early versions of Chromium 13 included a menu button to enable users to switch between multiple Google profiles, multi-selection of tabs and an improved omnibox engine. This version also included several minor GUI changes, including a slightly lightened menu bar. By early May 2011 the results of Google's attempts to reduce the file size of Chromium were already being noted. Much of the early work in this area concentrated on shrinking the size of WebKit
WebKit
WebKit is a layout engine designed to allow web browsers to render web pages. WebKit powers Google Chrome and Apple Safari and by October 2011 held over 33% of the browser market share between them. It is also used as the basis for the experimental browser included with the Amazon Kindle ebook...
, by removing Wireless Markup Language
Wireless Markup Language
Wireless Markup Language , based on XML, is a markup language intended for devices that implement the Wireless Application Protocol specification, such as mobile phones. It provides navigational support, data input, hyperlinks, text and image presentation, and forms, much like HTML...
(WML), the Image Resizer, datagrids and the Android build system. The largest Chromium nightly build was 35.3 MB on 15 April 2011, but this was reduced to 29.9 MB by 20 April 2011. Later builds of Chromium and Chrome in mid-May 2011 introduced the optional "compact navigation view", aimed at mobile device users. This view combined the tab and URL/menu bars into one bar, by making the URL bar hide when not in use, thus saving 30 pixel
Pixel
In digital imaging, a pixel, or pel, is a single point in a raster image, or the smallest addressable screen element in a display device; it is the smallest unit of picture that can be represented or controlled....
s of vertical space.
Chromium 14.0 was released on 2 June 2011, with 14.0.783.0 as the initial version. This initial version included
about:flags testing support for preload instant search, permitting the user to preload the default search engine used in instant search and GPU-acceleration on all pages. Default changes includes 2D-accelerated canvas and the task manager incorporated a frames-per-second counter. There was also support for the Page Visibility API. By the time development of Chromium 14 had been completed and Chrome 14 stable released this version also incorporated Mac OS X Lion scrollbar compatibility and "presentation mode". It also had support for the new Web Audio API and Google Native ClientGoogle Native Client
Google Native Client is a sandboxing technology for running a subset of Intel x86 or ARM native code using software-based fault isolation...
(NaCl) which permits native code supplied by third parties as platform-neutral binaries to be securely executed within in the browser itself.
Chromium 15.0 was released on 28 July 2011, with 15.0.837.0 as the initial version. Work in this version included integrating the profiles and synchronization features, including moving synchronization into the main menu and introducing a profile manager. Synchronization data will be encrypted by default. Chromium 15 also expands webpage pre-rendering. Dan Bailey of Conceivably Tech stated about this version and the development of it, "it is obvious that Google is plugging along and is fine-tuning its browser...Chrome isn’t surrendering its perception of the most advanced browser today anytime soon." As development wound up in early September 2011 Chromium 15 also gained a "self-crashing" feature that crashes the browser if a close command is not completed in 25 seconds, smooth scrolling when using the space bar, automatic pre- and auto-logins to Google's own web pages, task bar logos to show different profiles, greatly enhanced synchronization customization, including optional search engine synchronization and improvements to the prerendering process.
Chromium 16.0 was released on 10 September 2011 at build 100523, with 16.0.877.0 as the initial version. Early in the development of version 16 an experimental Offscreen Tabs Module was incorporated which allows simultaneous user interaction with multiple web pages. This version for Mac OS-X included a move to Google's Skia 2D graphics library in place of Apple’s core graphics as previously used. This aligned Chromium for Mac with the Windows and Linux versions.
Chromium 17.0 was released on 19 October 2011, with the initial release version 17.0.913.0. This version introduced http pipelining as a test feature to increase web page load speed, starting with build 106364.
System requirements
Chromium can be built on Windows, Mac OS X (Intel only) and Linux.Community releases
Most Linux and BSD variants offer Chromium in their software repositories. It has also has been compiled by third party developers for use with Microsoft WindowsMicrosoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
and Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
. These include:
Chromium - branded releases
- Arch LinuxArch LinuxArch Linux is an independently developed, Linux-based operating system for i686 and x86-64 computers. It is composed predominantly of free and open source software, and supports community involvement....
has a package in the official repository. - DebianDebianDebian is a computer operating system composed of software packages released as free and open source software primarily under the GNU General Public License along with other free software licenses. Debian GNU/Linux, which includes the GNU OS tools and Linux kernel, is a popular and influential...
- Chromium is available. - FedoraFedora (operating system)Fedora is a RPM-based, general purpose collection of software, including an operating system based on the Linux kernel, developed by the community-supported Fedora Project and sponsored by Red Hat...
- unofficial repository. - FreeBSDFreeBSDFreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via BSD UNIX. Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called “UNIX”, as the direct descendant of BSD UNIX , FreeBSD’s internals and system APIs are UNIX-compliant...
- packages have been available since late 2009, and a port has been available from the FreeBSD ports system since late 2010. - Gentoo LinuxGentoo LinuxGentoo Linux is a computer operating system built on top of the Linux kernel and based on the Portage package management system. It is distributed as free and open source software. Unlike a conventional software distribution, the user compiles the source code locally according to their chosen...
has had a package in the official repository since September 2009. - LubuntuLubuntuLubuntu is a lightweight Linux operating system based on Ubuntu but using the LXDE desktop environment in place of Ubuntu's Unity shell and GNOME desktop...
- Chromium is the default browser with new versions delivered as updates through the Ubuntu update manager system, keeping the Chromium version up to the latest stable release of Chrome. - Microsoft WindowsMicrosoft WindowsMicrosoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
has a package in the official Chromium build repository. - NokiaNokiaNokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational communications corporation that is headquartered in Keilaniemi, Espoo, a city neighbouring Finland's capital Helsinki...
's MaemoMaemoMaemo is a software platform developed by the Maemo community for smartphones and Internet tablets. It is based on the Debian Linux distribution, but has no relation to it...
5 mobile operating system - A proof-of-concept version of Chromium with an unmodified user interfaceUser interfaceThe user interface, in the industrial design field of human–machine interaction, is the space where interaction between humans and machines occurs. The goal of interaction between a human and a machine at the user interface is effective operation and control of the machine, and feedback from the...
was released on April 11, 2010. - MeeGoMeeGoMeeGo is a Linux-based open source mobile operating system project. Primarily targeted at mobile devices and information appliances in the consumer electronics market, MeeGo is designed to act as an operating system for hardware platforms such as netbooks, entry-level desktops, nettops, tablet...
uses Chromium in its netbook version. - openSUSEOpenSUSEopenSUSE is a general purpose operating system built on top of the Linux kernel, developed by the community-supported openSUSE Project and sponsored by SUSE...
has Chromium available in its repositories. - PartedMagic - offers Chromium as the default web browser.
- Puppy LinuxPuppy LinuxPuppy Linux is a lightweight Linux distribution that focuses on ease of use. The entire system can be run from RAM, allowing the boot medium to be removed after the operating system has started...
- offers Chromium, starting with Chromium 5.0.342 on Lucid Puppy 5.0.0, based on the Ubuntu application repository. - UbuntuUbuntu (operating system)Ubuntu is a computer operating system based on the Debian Linux distribution and distributed as free and open source software. It is named after the Southern African philosophy of Ubuntu...
started offering Chromium through the Ubuntu Software CenterUbuntu Software CenterUbuntu Software Center is a computer program for browsing, installing and removing software on the Ubuntu operating system. Based upon the GNOME application, gnome-app-install, which is similar in function and appearance, it serves as a GTK+ graphical user interface front-end to the Advanced...
with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS as part of the 'universe' repository. The initial version available in April 2010 was 5.0.342.9, with new versions delivered as updates, keeping the Chromium version up to the latest stable release of Chrome.
CrossOver Chromium
- CodeWeavers CrossOver Chromium is an unofficial bundle of a WineWine (software)Wine is a free software application that aims to allow computer programs written for Microsoft Windows to run on Unix-like operating systems. Wine also provides a software library, known as Winelib, against which developers can compile Windows applications to help port them to Unix-like...
derivative and Chromium Developer Build 21 for Linux and Mac OS X, first released on September 15, 2008 by CodeWeaversCodeWeaversCodeWeavers is a company that sells a proprietary version of Wine called CrossOver, for running Windows applications on Mac OS X and Linux. The company was founded in 1996 as a consultancy, eventually moving entirely over to Wine development and support...
as part of their CrossOverCrossover-Fiction and media:* Fictional crossover, a storyline combining characters or settings from separate fictional properties** Fictional crossovers in video games* Crossover , a 2002 documentary by Justin Lin...
project.
ChromePlus
- ChromePlus is a Chromium-based browser for Windows and Linux. It adds features such as mouse gestures, link dragging and IE tabs.
Comodo Dragon
- Comodo DragonComodo Dragon (web browser)Comodo Dragon is a freeware web browser implementation of Chromium, and is produced by Internet security firm Comodo Group. Sporting a similar interface to Google Chrome, Dragon eliminates Chrome's usage tracking and some other potentially privacy-compromising features, and provides additional...
is a rebranded version of Chromium for 32-bit Windows 7, Vista and XP produced by the Comodo Group which includes improved security and privacy features.
Flock
- FlockFlock (web browser)Flock was a web browser that specialized in providing social networking and Web 2.0 facilities built into its user interface.Earlier versions of Flock used the Gecko HTML rendering engine by Mozilla....
was a browser that specialized in providing social networking and had Web 2.0 facilities built into its user interface. It was based on Chromium starting with version 3.0. Flock was discontinued in April 2011.
Iron
- SRWare IronSRWare IronSRWare Iron, or simply Iron, is a free and open-source web browser implementation of the Chromium source code which primarily aims to eliminate usage tracking and other privacy-compromising functionality that the Google Chrome browser includes...
is a release of Chromium for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. It disables some configurable Chromium features that could share information with third parties.
RockMelt
- RockMeltRockMeltRockMelt is a free social media web browser developed by Tim Howes and Eric Vishria. The project is backed by Netscape founder Marc Andreessen....
is a release of Chromium for Windows and Mac OS X under a commercial proprietary licenceProprietary softwareProprietary software is computer software licensed under exclusive legal right of the copyright holder. The licensee is given the right to use the software under certain conditions, while restricted from other uses, such as modification, further distribution, or reverse engineering.Complementary...
. It integrates heavily with features from Facebook and Twitter.
See also
- Google Chrome OSGoogle Chrome OSGoogle Chrome OS is a Linux-based operating system designed by Google to work exclusively with web applications. Google announced the operating system on July 7, 2009 and made it an open source project, called Chromium OS, that November....
- Chromium OSChromium OSChromium OS is the open source development version of Google Chrome OS.Chrome OS's source code was released on November 19, 2009 under the same BSD license as Chromium OS.-User interface:...
- Google ChromeGoogle ChromeGoogle Chrome is a web browser developed by Google that uses the WebKit layout engine. It was first released as a beta version for Microsoft Windows on September 2, 2008, and the public stable release was on December 11, 2008. The name is derived from the graphical user interface frame, or...
- Comparison of web browsersComparison of web browsersThe following tables compare general and technical information for a number of web browsers. Please see the individual products' articles for further information.-Historical web browsers:...