Tag Archives: sandboxing
Problems With Chrome’s Flash Sandboxing?
Posted on 15. Mar, 2011 by Daniel Cawrey. 
7 Comments
The Chrome Team spent a lot of time with the developer builds to perfect Flash sandboxing. It’s possible that now they have added the feature to a larger set of users that they are experiencing problems with it. A bug filed in the Chromium database was opened a few days ago that reports problems with the error message, “The following plug-in has crashed: Shockwave Flash” in the Stable Chrome 10.
If you have ever used the Chrome Channels Dev or Canary, you’ve probably seen this before. Recently these channels have become more stable, but when Flash sandboxing was being tested you might recall that there was a high degree of crashing and the Chrome Team had to take Flash sandboxing in and out of the browser until they could get it working successfully.
Video: Chrome Sandboxing
Posted on 16. Dec, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments
If you don’t know what sandboxing is, you soon will. Google wants to make sure that everyone understands that each tab in Chrome is its own process. Now, the Flash plugin is being sandboxed too. That’s a good idea, because I don’t know if anyone else has noticed this but it seems like Flash causes the most problems with my browsing experience.
Video: Chrome OS Notebook Security
Posted on 09. Dec, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 1 Comments
Google’s Chrome team is very confident that Chrome OS will be the most secure consumer operating system on the market. That may be true, since the platform offers security features that you simply don’t see on other operating systems. According to Google’s own update on Chrome OS, their sense is that “even at this early stage, we feel there is no consumer or business operating system that is more secure.”
They’re feeling pretty confident, I take it.
Flash Sandboxing, Coming to a Chrome Near You
Posted on 15. Nov, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 6 Comments
Some of the code revisions at the Chromium site are pointing to the fact that Abode Flash is now going to be sandboxed. This will arrive in the Canary and Dev Channels soon.
When the integrated PDF reader was released for Chrome and was sandboxed, I was already under the impression that Flash was too. It appears that wasn’t the case until now.
Just as a quick review, sandboxing is a security method for running separate programs. It is a big part of Chrome and a feature that has been rolled out in other browsers since Google first introduced it.
thechromesource Daily: Links for 7/2/10
Posted on 02. Jul, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 1 Comments
Google is looking to close a $3 billion credit deal very soon, more acquisitions on the way?
One has to be convinced that Microsoft is afraid of Google’s App strategy.
Maybe this is already common knowledge, but has Chrome’s growth come at Firefox’s expense?
Eric Schmidt on entrepreneurs: “They’re drop-outs, crazy smart people”.
The Chrome stable channel has been updated – improvements to WebGL, sandboxing and CSS style rendering.
From Zero to Almost Ten Percent: How Chrome Surpassed Safari
Posted on 30. Jun, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments
It has been big news recently that Chrome has overtaken Safari as the third most used browser in the U.S. While this statistic is one that’s skewed towards the United States since Chrome and Safari have been neck and neck, the reality is that Chrome took third place worldwide over Safari back in September.
The main reason that America has lagged in this regard is probably the fact that Apple sells so many computers in the United States, coming with the well regarded WebKit-based Safari.
But the point of this post is to understand how Chrome got this far in a period of two years. When I first tried Chrome as an early adopter-type in the beginning of 2009, I liked the design interface and the idea of “sandboxing” where every tab was its own process. The problem with Chrome at that time was one of compatibility: there were sites that did not function correctly with Chrome, a surprise to me because of its WebKit roots.
Over time, which really isn’t long by Google’s measurement, Chrome evolved. Many sites needed to adapt some functionality to Chrome, but for the most part it was the folks at Google working fervently to make the best browser available. Perhaps they knew that they were making the foundations of an operating system at the time, who knows?
Extensions
In December 2009, Google launched the Chrome Extensions web site, an opportunity for the company to better compete with Firefox’s vaunted library of add-ins. Not only did they take an existing idea, they improved on it by putting security limits around extensions at their site, making sure that proper measures are taken to make sure that personal data and important computer processes cannot be compromised through the browser. Clicking around at the Extensions site the other day it appears that there are over five thousand now available.
Translate
In the beginning, Google offered an extension that you could install into Chrome and translate different languages of the web. Then they started adding it into the development Chromium builds, and finally it was released with the launch Chrome 5 to users a few months ago embedded in the browser itself. This feature is so easy to use, and it unlocks the web for everyone to read no matter their language. Google took an existing service they had and put it right into the browser where it’s the most useful.
No Messing With Flash
Maybe Google sees something in Flash that Apple doesn’t, but they decided to take a very different approach to handling Adobe Flash than Cupertino. Instead of eschewing it completely, Google has embraced the technology. Flash is used in YouTube videos, for some streaming music sites and I’ve recently noticed it needs to be installed to use Google Analytics. So, unlike other browsers that require you to install it and then update to newer revisions manually, Google preempts any inconvienence and risk by making it a part of Chrome.
In the End
Relentless innovation has gotten Chrome browser this far. This is due to Chromium as an open source resource as well as the amount of manpower that Google has thrown towards it in anticipation of Chrome OS. I didn’t even get to talk here about interesting features like the omnibox, bookmark sync and geolocation, but they are an aside to these three major developments that are propelling this browser’s growth. How much market share can this browser take from Internet Explorer and Firefox in the months and years to come?
Adobe PDF Files Now Integrated into Chromium
Posted on 17. Jun, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments
How will Apple combat the PDF on the web? They have already said that they won’t support Flash, and Adobe has since slowly backed away from support for anything related to Apple. It’s a smart move on Adobe’s part, and gives Google a chance to move in on the vacant space.
The Chromium Blog has just posted a bit about PDF files now being integrated into the browser. This is something I had expected to happen with the advent of Adobe’s Flash player being baked into Chrome, and this is a logical step forward since these files are ubiquitous on the web. At the forefront of this move are issues with security. There have been problems (and McAfee has pointed them out) with suspect PDF files causing havoc on machines.
In the Computerworld article linked above, a McAfee security specialist recommended sandboxing Adobe Reader files, something that is now being done by the Chromium team to further enhance Chrome’s overall security in the future.
With Google supporting Adobe’s formats (OK, two of them) they legitimize them on the web. There’s nothing wrong with that, other than the fact that they are tacking a stance that further differentiates them from Apple. It seems only logical to think that with Flash already being in the fold that supporting Adobe Reader’s PDF file format to be complementary to what has already been done with integration. Despite Apple’s concern everyone uses Flash and Reader so instead of chucking it out, why not find ways to solve the problem at hand?
At the same time, what is wrong with simply integrating PDF files into the web the way it’s done with Srcibd? This may just be another move for Google to pre-empt that company, just like purchasing YouTube gave them the defacto platform for video. Integrating PDF files gives Google the platform for enabling documentation that may have all sorts of importance to people that want to publish on the web yet still retain some degree of control.
This is starting in Chromium with the dev build, and surely will soon move to the beta and stable releases of Chrome.
