Chromium-Based Spinoffs Worth Trying

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Serdar Yegulalp takes an in-depth look at six Chromium-based spinoffs that bring privacy, security, social networking, and other interesting twists to Google's Chrome browser. 'When is it worth ditching Chrome for a Chromium-based remix? Some of the spinoffs are little better than novelties. Some have good ideas implemented in an iffy way. But a few point toward some genuinely new directions for both Chrome and other browsers.'"

F-I-R-S-T

[Anonymous Coward]

The good thing about Chrome is that it doesn't have all that extra crap, unless you choose specific extensions. Browsers with novelties and whimsical features in some poor effort to differentiate themselves are so 2001.

yeah, only a couple gigabytes

[decora]

of various hodge podge pieces of source code all mashed together in an uncompilable, mountainous sploodge vomit of bizarre perversions of the once innocent C language

And none with a decent interface.

[Stormwatch]

The interface is what ruins Chrome, how come no one bothers to fix it? A good interface is consistent, internally and externally: the app must belong with the operating system around it. Chrome is alien in any system, it does not have the same window borders, menu bar, or anything else as every other app. That's tolerable from a tiny indie team, like jDownloader, but from a megacorporation like Google this is simply cringeworthy.

Re:SRWare Iron

[Anonymous Coward]

Is Iron a Scam? Yes [hybridsource.org]

Re:And none with a decent interface.

[scialex]

But OTOH it is consistently inconsistent. On any OS/platform you can be fairly certain that if you fire up chrome/chromium it will look almost exactly the same.
Furthermore the fact is that chrome's ui is quickly becoming the standard browser ui. Both IE 9 and Firefox whatever the hell version they are at now look very similar to it.

Re:And none with a decent interface.

[Anonymous Coward]

Chrome's interface is why I use it. It takes up less space and gets the bullshit out of my way. There is no reason to devote the entire top of my screen to the name of the application and the minimize, maximize, close buttons, when the only name I care about is the title of the website I'm currently looking at, and I have all these tabs I need to have displayed. Chromes interface makes sense

Re:F-I-R-S-T

[DrXym]

Every browser requires:

1. CSS parser & rules engine
2. JS parser & engine
3. HTML, XHTML & XML parsers
4. DOM
5. Network handlers for ftp, http, https
6. Encryption APIs for SSL/TLS
7. A layout & compositing engine
8. Plugin framework
9. Zlib
10. Password manager
11. Cookie manager
12. Cache manager
13. Jpeg, Png, Gif decoders
14. All the user interface functionality & resources that wraps the above and turns it into a browser - navigation bar, bookmarks, download manager, print preview, extensions etc

And some browsers also include pack-in:

1. An updater
2. Portable runtime API
3. Dictionaries for spelling correction
4. MathML / SVG support
5. Video and audio codecs
6. Accessibility
7. WebGL
8. Development tools like DOM inspector
9. Crash reporting & feedback
10. Incognito / Privacy mode
11. Malware / trojan site checks

It doesn't seem unreasonable browsers require 30-50MB footprint to supply all this and I'm not sure why anyone be splitting hairs over the difference.