back to article Rejoice, Windows fans: Stable 64-bit Chromium drops for Win 7 and 8

Smoother video is on the way for fans of Google's Chrome browser on Windows 7 and 8. The Chromium development team has claimed delivery of a stable release of 64-bit Chrome for Microsoft’s platform. The news, announced on the Chromium blog, marks the successful of testing started in the Chrome dev and canary channels in June …

  1. SnowCrash

    You may need to add /high-dpi-support=1 /force-device-scale-factor=1 to your shortcut if you get blurry text. Been a bit of a problem for the last couple of versions of chrome and google don't appear to give a toss about the issue.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      The chromium team does seem to be pretty sloppy these days... or worse. They've changed various subtle javascript behaviour which has broken a ton of web sites because they've wrongly categorized these changes as 'trivial' and so failed to post notice in advance of deprecating them.

      They've then topped it off by responding to any complaints about the issues by saying that they (now!) follow the spec, and all those libraries written and tested against how chrome worked for years don't, so people must bitch at those other developers to 'fix' their bugs and not the chromium team.

      It seems this kind of arrogance and expectation that the rest of the web should jump to accommodate the whims of your corporate suits and devs comes with the territory when a browser obtains the largest market share. So much for 'don't do evil'.

      Say what you like about Mozilla, but I am not aware they've ever thrown their weight around, especially for corporate reasons (i.e. breaking other people's libraries that are used in competing products), like this.

      1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

        They've then topped it off by responding to any complaints about the issues by saying that they (now!) follow the spec, and all those libraries written and tested against how chrome worked for years don't, so people must bitch at those other developers to 'fix' their bugs and not the chromium team.

        It's always best (and easiest to maintain) to implement the spec and add workarounds for variants. Libraries that don't do this should be considered buggy. Chromium's release system allows plenty of scope for testing.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          The libraries affected were implemented in accordance with the spec, and then had workarounds for quirks in browsers not implementing it, which included Chrome. This is precisely the problem - if you fix a bug that has been there for 4 years, basically every library will have a workaround for chrome that is suddenly a 'bug' because chrome decided to change its implementation without warning.

          Chromium's release system allows plenty of scope for testing if changes to js implementation are not marked as 'trivial' when they are not, and hence sneaked in without warning in the next release.

          Browsers should be careful to implement fixes in a way that is conscious of the fact that the vast majority of users out there will have built their code to work as the browser is, not as it should be.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            I can't help but think of a linus style rant would fix this. When you fix something it shouldn't break legacy etc etc. Of course with a bit more swearing in there.

    2. Johnnie

      Brill: ta for that tip. Sorted for me by just the /force-device-scale-factor=1 bit.

  2. Richy Freeway

    Where's Mozillas offering of 64bit Firefox then?

    1. Phil W

      It exists but is really only for devs, it's produced internally at Mozilla as part of overnight code builds for testing. There are also third party releases based on this such as Waterfox but these are not supported by Mozilla. https://www.waterfoxproject.org/

      However the real question is why do you want or need a 64 bit browser? The performance benefits are negligible to non-existent for general purpose web browsing, it would only really be of use for specific applications.

      The other problem is most browser plugins will get broken if you use the 64 bit version of the browser, I'm sure with the release of 64 bit Chrome this will start to change but for now it is the case.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I just installed chrome 64 bit and to be honest, I cannot tell the difference.

      I'd settle, after 4 or 5 years, for being able to move my toolbar buttons around, something chrome still struggles to give me, and it's fairly useless plugin/addon implementation seems to be unable to address too.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    They might want to fix what looks like thread blocking on some large websites (Ebay and Guardian) which is much worse once you switch to Windows 8.1, on Windows 7 you usually see this as poor scrolling performance

    It doesn't happen on any other browser

    Then perhaps they can address why Chrome needs 500MB of ram to do nothing, and as much as 2GB for 10 to 20 tabs displaying pages which are probably about 1/500th the size in content

  4. CJatCTi
    FAIL

    Same story as yesterday

    Don't you read your own rag?

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/27/goog_says_patch_your_chrome/

    1. Phil W

      Re: Same story as yesterday

      Not really, that story is about patches and security fixes. The fact that those fixes are included in the 64 bit release is purely coincidental.

  5. Truth4u

    whats Chromium?

    Isn't that just Chome with some of the settings turned off, so you can like get the real chrome and turn those settings off yourself? might save a few random crashes.

    1. Test Man

      Re: whats Chromium?

      It's the original (i.e. stock) version. Chrome is Google's special build of this.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: whats Chromium?

        By special you mean all the phone home stuff installed?

  6. Michael Habel

    In all the possible ways Mozilla are mindlessly following everything Googly...

    This is One Page I'd wish they'ed lift up for both Linux, and Windows... 32-bit was so '90s, and needs to get dropped faster then 16-bit was back then. Really we've had x86-64 Architecture since the dawn of XP. (Athlon 64 anyone?)... Ok scratch make it by then by XP SP2 then. And, all the Market has done with it is to just sit on its Thumbs!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: In all the possible ways Mozilla are mindlessly following everything Googly...

      And, all the Market has done with it is to just sit on its Thumbs!

      Maybe on the consumer side there may be less (but there is plenty) but certainly there is plenty of 64bit only software in the big boys world.

    2. Chemist

      Re: In all the possible ways Mozilla are mindlessly following everything Googly...

      " I'd wish they'ed lift up for both Linux, and Windows."

      I don't know about Windows but Firefox has been 64-bit in the Linux distro I use for quite a while

      1. Michael Habel

        Re: In all the possible ways Mozilla are mindlessly following everything Googly...

        I don't know about Windows but Firefox has been 64-bit in the Linux distro I use for quite a while

        Please note... I was referring to Firefox. And not your favorite Linux Distro. Or other Windows 64 Users. From what I can see Firefox 64 is still a fairly newish thing.

        Inb4 But, its been in unsupported Alpha / Beta since forever.... Which I suppose is true enough, but in this instance irreverent.

    3. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: In all the possible ways Mozilla are mindlessly following everything Googly...

      Firefox has had a 64-bit build for Windows for ages but the market wants 32-bit plugins to work and a 64-bit browser prevents that. It seems neither Google nor Mozilla can get a plugin wrapper sorted out.

      1. Test Man

        Re: In all the possible ways Mozilla are mindlessly following everything Googly...

        What market wants 32-bit plugins? In fact seeing as the general trend is going towards not having plugins at all (and instead using extensions) plugins are becoming very irrelevant.

        1. Dan 55 Silver badge

          Re: In all the possible ways Mozilla are mindlessly following everything Googly...

          Even though Google invent something new to replace plugins seemingly every week or so, people still want Flash to work on the desktop (and Director in educational circles).

  7. Bill M

    Great News !!!

    Watching cat videos in Chrome was sluggish and chewed up cpu.

    Anything to enhance cat videos is warmly welcomed.

  8. Horridbloke

    64-bit Chrome available soon via the normal channel

    ...packaged with the next flash update.

  9. David Lawrence

    I just want a stable version!!!!

    Forget the 64-bit thing - I just want a version that's stable! Mine crashes on a regular basis (always something to do with Shockwave Flash according to the error message) after which it hangs, sulks, doesn't respond to me clicking the 'kill page' button and generally causes much wailing and gnashing of gums.

    Sometimes it takes 40-50 seconds to launch, again for no apparent reason. Other times it launches then goes into a sulk when I try and do something useful.

    I think I may go back to Firefox..... or maybe IE....!

  10. OmgTheyLetMePostInTheUK
    Unhappy

    Google Chrome 64 bit stable isn't stable...

    I found out about the 64 bit versions release early yesterday morning and grabbed it.

    Problem number 1... Chrome keeps multiple threads open for itself, and then apparent one (or more) threads for each and every extension, app, plug-in and whatever else names they want to call all these add-ons. When you have the 32 bit version, simply closing the Chrome window does not shut Chrome down. And since the 64 bit version of Chrome complained that its smaller sibling was still running, the only way I could kill the little brother was to go into Task Manager and manually kill off each and every Chrome entry, which was about 8 of them on my system.

    Only then was the big, stable 64 bit Chrome happy to install itself.

    Now I don't know what you call stable, but in the first 18 hours, I have come back to my computer to see this very low res unhappy face in the stable 64 bit Chrome window. Yes, that low res unhappy face is what Google Chrome puts on the screen when it crashes. Neither page that it crashed on was a complete page. In fact, the first page was XtremeTech a CNet page, and the second site was CNN. The only thing I can think of that they have in common is that they both refresh the page periodically if they have sat idle for awhile.

    I'm certain that someday soon, the Chrome team will find this unstable bit of code, and fix it. I did my best to help them know what crashed me the first time. Who knows, maybe they will now send me a $100,000 for finding a bug they couldn't find in this Chrome 64 Unstable release... Right???? What do you mean no??? I found a bug and reported it.... Oh man... I thought reporting bugs like this was how you made money these days.... Damnit!!!!!

    1. Test Man

      Re: Google Chrome 64 bit stable isn't stable...

      You didn't need to close down all those 32-bit chrome.exe processes - just exiting Chrome via the system tray icon would have done.

  11. Syntax Error

    Uninteresting times in IT these days. 64 bit chrome browser from the worlds favorite surveillance company Google. yawn....

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Windows fans

    Do they even exist?

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge
      Joke

      Re: Windows fans

      Yes, in the bathroom.

  13. Smartypantz

    Spyware

    Why the hell are you using that piece of creepy spyware??? A bit of convenience? loads a bit faster does it?

    A few years ago there was this concept called "spyware". Google chrome fits that description perfectly, but OK maybe it does'nt matter when its big benevolent mother google ?

  14. Smartypantz

    Why?

    Can someone please explain how anybody, KNOWING FOR A FACT, that the ulterior motive and every effort put in to their communication device (browser in this case) is designed to extract exploitable, personnel information in as great quantaties as possible, is able to trust same? In this case its the Chrome browser. Not only does a lot of people trust it, they actually defend it against alternatives. What kind of half-wit ONLY cares about the convinience, and speed of their browser in this day and age?

    Maybe im just paranoid and stupid but I reaaallye do not understand people figthing FOR their privacy beeing exploited????

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