Chromium Chrome Clones

[Guest]

[soyabeaner]

Firstly, what are the spin-offs or clones on Google Chrome?  I think so far the ones I know of (but totally unfamiliar) are SRWare Iron and Comodo Dragon.  Any other ones?  Pros and Cons of each one?

[Saxuality]

I dunno more, but PROS are that they don't use Google Updater and they have some of the Google's tracking features disabled or removed.
CONS - slower development and they will ALWAYS lag behing Chrome.

[LaserWraith]

First, how did you make that phone icon on the thread title?   <---


One con I thought of: Extensions probably have better support for Chrome, not as much for the "rip-offs" of it.

[soyabeaner]

some of the Google's tracking features disabled or removed.

Only some? .  So I take it that it's all built-in with no option whatsoever of disabling them unless you hack it.

First, how did you make that phone icon on the thread title?   <---

I tell you straight up: you can't do it in Chrome .  I had to use Firefox to hack it.  A few members in the past have done it.

[Saxuality]

Only some? .  So I take it that it's all built-in with no option whatsoever of disabling them unless you hack it.
I tell you straight up: you can't do it in Chrome .  I had to use Firefox to hack it.  A few members in the past have done it.

Well there's Google Chrome and and Open Source project Chromium. Dragon takes Chromium and can modify it however they want. But they will always be 1 version behind. 

[Kyle]

I wonder if that lag behind the original chrome will actually affect users...   Probably not people using comodo internet security, But other people using a traditional AV might really hurt from that 1 version behind - Vulnerabilities etc.

[LaserWraith]

I tell you straight up: you can't do it in Chrome .  I had to use Firefox to hack it.  A few members in the past have done it.

Er...hint? 

[soyabeaner]

PM

[Watasha]

Some variants of the Chromium code are:

Google Chrome
SRWare Iron
Chrome Plus
Comodo Dragon
Gentoo Linux

These all use the WebKit engine (as does Apple Safari). These aren't spin-offs of Chrome, they're spin-offs of Chromium.  


Laser............As far as extensions, the only one I've tried and haven't been able to get to work is WOT. I don't use it anyway so "whatever" but the Chrome extensions seem to work fine on all Chromium browsers for the most part.

[soyabeaner]

These aren't spin-offs of Chrome, they're spin-offs of Chromium. 

ok fine.  title updated.

A fellow co-worker of mine said very recently (about last week) in a hackers conference or something like that, only Chrome was unhackable at that time.  Supposedly every other browser was exploited.  Sounds impressive.  BTW, can somebody give the gist of Chrome's "spyware" behaviour?

[Saxuality]

These all use the WebKit engine (as does Apple Safari). These aren't spin-offs of Chrome, they're spin-offs of Chromium. 

WebKit was started by Apple 

History

WebKit was originally derived by Apple Inc. from the Konqueror browser’s KHTML software library for use as the engine of Mac OS X’s Safari web browser and has now been further developed by individuals from the KDE project, Apple Inc., Nokia, Google, Bitstream, Torch Mobile and others.

[Watasha]

Soya.........what do you mean when you say "spyware behavior"?

[soyabeaner]

Ask Mrs. Saxophone up there.  Something about tracking?  You call it tracking.  I call it spyware.  Same difference .


Has anyone tried the portable Chrome?  I couldn't get it to launch at all.  That was when I was experimenting SRP, so that may have something to do with it.

[Watasha]

Ask Mrs. Saxophone up there.  Something about tracking?  You call it tracking.  I call it spyware.  Same difference .

Oh yeah, that's why I switched from Chrome to CD.

From Wikipedia:

"Chrome sends details about its usage to Google through both optional and non-optional user tracking mechanisms."


Tracking methods

1. Installation - Randomly generated token included in installer. Used to measure success rate of Google Chrome. (not optional)

2. RLZ identifier - Encoded string, according to Google, contains non-identifying information how Chrome was downloaded and its install week. Used to measure promotional campaigns. (partially optional)

3. clientID - Unique identifier along with logs of usage metrics and crashes. (optional)

4. Suggest - Text typed into the address bar (optional)

5. Page not found - Text typed into the address bar (optional)

6. Bug tracker - Details about crashes and failures (optional)

Some of the tracking mechanisms can be optionally enabled and disabled through the installation interface and through the browser's options dialog. Unofficial builds, such as SRWare Iron and ChromePlus, seek to remove these features from the browser altogether. The RLZ feature is not included in the Chromium browser either.
In March 2010, Google devised a new method to collect installation statistics: the unique ID token included with Chrome is now only used for the first connection that Google Update makes to its server. This sole remaining non-optional user tracking mechanism is removed following the server ping.

[soyabeaner]

Wow.  Makes me think the only difference between them and M$ is their software isn't bloated .

I guess that's the second reason why I don't like Chrome.  The first is its bookmark mangement.  Other than that, its caching system is different from others: it makes pages (seem to) load faster and its developer tool (sorry laser ) is on par with Firebug.

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