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Google Chrome Browser 55 Fixes Security Holes and Defaults to HTML5

The BBC website still insists I install Flash to view their videos, but that's absolute nonsense. If you change the user agent* to one of the iOS ones, such as "Safari - iOS 10 - iPad", the video will load and play just fine.

The BBC are giving a bad user experience when they could simply detect the browser and play the correct video. As it stands, we have to jump through a couple of hoops to get the video to play.

How many other sites are doing this?

* For those not sure of how to do this, Safari menu > Preferences > Advanced > Tick the "Show Develop menu in menu bar" checkbox, then change the user agent with the Develop menu > User Agent option.
 
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thisisnotmyname said:
My only complaint about phasing out Flash is that it is disabling my easy method of killing all auto-play videos. The more people and software move away from Flash the more sites move to HTML video that browser manufacturers seem incapable of actually blocking. Otherwise everything about killing Flash is good and necessary.

Yes, I know Chrome has had Flash baked in but I removed Flash from my systems otherwise.
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That's a valid point. Someone will find a way to block these, as I completely agree that's super annoying. The part that sucks is we will go through a period where the auto play will continue to happen.
 
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SeaFox said:
How many extensions are available for Safari?
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I consider myself a "power user" and haven't been missing any extensions in Safari. Actually, one that I use, Click2Flash, which forces YouTube videos to play in QuickTime (way nicer than their HTML5 player), isn't available for Chrome.
 
ForkHandles said:
Why do people use Chrome? Safari does a great job and syncs well across all devices. What does Chrome do so well that Safari doesn't?
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On very rare occasions, websites has buttons and videos that simply don't work in Safari. On the newest websites that uses the latest experimental features, Chrome has a wide lead over Safari in terms of adopting those features. Of course, it also comes with the memory hog feature and battery killer feature, which is why it has been my rarely used secondary browser for quite a while now.
 
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thisisnotmyname said:
My only complaint about phasing out Flash is that it is disabling my easy method of killing all auto-play videos. The more people and software move away from Flash the more sites move to HTML video that browser manufacturers seem incapable of actually blocking. Otherwise everything about killing Flash is good and necessary.

Yes, I know Chrome has had Flash baked in but I removed Flash from my systems otherwise.
Click to expand...

Would it just need third party developers to get off their backsides and support the blocking of HTML5 videos?
 
This is a definite step in the right direction. That said, I will not use Chrome on my personal Mac until they unbundle Flash completely. Even then, I will have hesitations due to their spyware-like data collection practices. I sometimes use Chrome on Windows (on my work PC or a VM) but only because it tends to perform the best. I do agree with others, though, about it being a resource hog.
 
punchwalk said:
I will not use Chrome on my personal Mac until they unbundle Flash completely. Even then, I will have hesitations due to their spyware-like data collection practices. I sometimes use Chrome on Windows (on my work PC or a VM) but only because it tends to perform the best. I do agree with others, though, about it being a resource hog.
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There are projects that unwind Google services from the open-source project Chromium, such as Ungoogled Chromium and Iridium Browser. These also do not bundle proprietary plugins, such as Flash.
 
KALLT said:
There are projects that unwind Google services from the open-source project Chromium, such as Ungoogled Chromium and Iridium Browser. These also don’t bundle proprietary plugins, such as Flash.
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I was just thinking I should clarify my original post before someone posts a reply about Chromium. I've tried Chromium on Mac. It wasn't better than Safari (though it did load most pages a little faster), so I didn't keep it around.
 
punchwalk said:
I was just thinking I should clarify my original post before someone posts a reply about Chromium. I've tried Chromium on Mac. It wasn't better than Safari (though it did load most pages a little faster), so I didn't keep it around.
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I have not observed any speed differences between Chrome and Chromium. I am not using Chrome for the same reasons, I think it is not better than Safari in any way that matters to me and I have to resort to builds managed by third-party parties to remove all the Google stuff that I do not want. I have also had bad experiences with many extensions, some of them are just crappy, others break when the browser is updated. I prefer to install few extensions and so far I have everything I need on Safari.

On Linux and BSD-based Unix, Chromium is the only viable alternative to Firefox though, so I appreciate that Google keeps the open-source project around and continues to support Linux.
 
ForkHandles said:
Why do people use Chrome? Safari does a great job and syncs well across all devices. What does Chrome do so well that Safari doesn't?
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It doesnt cause my 2009 Mac Pro to freeze...

Ever since the move to El Capitaine, Safari has caused my Mac Pro to randomly freeze resulting in a reboot. Tried a fresh install but no luck. Chrome is rock solid reliable by comparison.
 
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ForkHandles said:
Why do people use Chrome? Safari does a great job and syncs well across all devices. What does Chrome do so well that Safari doesn't?
Click to expand...

I use it because it syncs across multiple platforms. I use a combination of OS X and Windows and since Safari is Mac only, that rules it out as my main browser. I also find it much more intuitive to use, but that is clearly a personal preference.
 
ForkHandles said:
Why do people use Chrome? Safari does a great job and syncs well across all devices. What does Chrome do so well that Safari doesn't?
Click to expand...

Extensions and favicons (the latter seems odd, but when you're used to it it's very helpful).

No question that Safari runs better - faster loading times, uses less resources, etc. But there are too many things I can do in Chrome via extensions that I simply can't in Safari.
 
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Michaelgtrusa said:
Never heard of Ungoogled Chromium before but it's version 53. That version is to far back, better of with Chromium Freesmug.
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It is not that far back, a few months. A new release is imminent, when I look at the Github repo. Even Safari is only updated every few months. The point of these two projects is to modify Chromium to remove the Google code for more privacy. I see no point in downloading Chromium from a third source, when it is pretty much identical to Chrome anyway.
 
ForkHandles said:
Why do people use Chrome? Safari does a great job and syncs well across all devices. What does Chrome do so well that Safari doesn't?
Click to expand...

I find the lag time and general appearance and functioning of Safari to be extremely annoying. The only time I use Safari is when a web site appears to not function properly. I'll try it on Safari just to rule out a malfunction or incompatibility in Chrome. A couple of years ago, there were a couple of web sites I used regularly that did not render properly on Chrome, and I had to use Safari. But it's been a long time since I've visited a web site that failed to work on Chrome but did work on Safari.

Obviously, it's a matter of personal preference, but I cannot stand Safari.
 
I am torn on this one. At home, I use mostly Safari, but at work, we use vCenter 5.5 pretty heavily, and it requires flash. I have been using Chrome because I would rather not install the flash plugin on my work or home Macs (iMac at work, 13" MBP at home).

To anyone using vCenter 6+, does it still require flash?
 
darkpaw said:
The BBC website still insists I install Flash to view their videos, but that's absolute nonsense. If you change the user agent* to one of the iOS ones, such as "Safari - iOS 10 - iPad", the video will load and play just fine.

The BBC are giving a bad user experience when they could simply detect the browser and play the correct video. As it stands, we have to jump through a couple of hoops to get the video to play.

How many other sites are doing this?

* For those not sure of how to do this, Safari menu > Preferences > Advanced > Tick the "Show Develop menu in menu bar" checkbox, then change the user agent with the Develop menu > User Agent option.
Click to expand...

Opt into HTML5 beta here http://www.bbc.co.uk/html5
 
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Telos101 said:
Believe it or not, some regard Chrome as having one of the more secure codebases of any browser (as long as you opt out of everything Google related in the privacy options, heh). It's also got a pretty solid bunch of developer tools.
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Don't forget that Chrome was spawned from Safari (actually WebKit). Safari has the same powerful set of developer tools, along with a better UI for Responsive Design, imo. Chrome is now powered by a fork of WebKit called Blink, but some parts of the codebase are still based on WebKit.

WebKit and the public version of Safari are two separate entities. I think a different team at Apple builds and maintains Safari, separate from the WebKit project.

While Safari does remain my primary browser, I do find the current public version (v 10.0.1) to be painful to use at times. Frequently, it freezes up while doing *something*.

I don't believe in a single-browser-for-all. There's no need for that these days. Each browser has strengths over the others. In my workflow, I use Safari, Chrome and Firefox side-by-side for different web applications. This gives me great mix of control over the configuration of each browser that best meets the needs of the apps that I access. But then again, I'm a web developer, so my usage doesn't reflect that of a regular web "consumer".

I say - keep your options open. You don't ned to find fault in every browser that you don't use.
 
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