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Application: Google Chrome
Category: Internet
Description: "Google Chrome runs web pages and applications with lightning speed." - Google
Download Google Chrome Portable 4.0 Development Test 1 [1.4MB download / 11MB installed]
(MD5: db402dd73759b975759b156dd6a28797)
(Beta build is the same as Stable at the moment, so grab that one if you wanted Beta.)
For the adventurous...
Download Google Chrome Portable Dev Branch 4.0.302.3 Development Test 1 [1.4MB download / 11MB installed]
(MD5: 0d2539186cd9752711bbec8808961ddb)
Release Notes:
2.1.1.1:
- Ummm... updated builds.
- Nothin.'
I've been busy with life and job! >_>
Anyways 4.0 came out so I decided to push out a release. Thankfully I don't see any reported bugs on the forum from last build so that's always good. 
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4.0 is out? Awesome. I experimented with going back to Firefox and I will say that 3.6 is nice, but Chrome is still so much faster. Also I noticed since I started using Firefox on my netbook instead of Chrome, my battery doesn't last nearly as long...
They don't let me use Chrome at work, even though we're developing a web app that targets Chrome. That's messed up.
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Well, it does have major privacy issues compared to Firefox. ( No, saying 'you can turn them off' isn't an excuse
)
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Also on their unapproved list: IE8. Guess which outdated version of IE most of the company uses, then.
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5?
That makes exactly zero amount of sense. They let you use IE 6 but ban IE 8? Great security there. I mean, at that point you're just ASKING to be exploited.
-_- 7 not 6
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Ah, sorry. The seemingly sarcastic way you said "Guess which version" and the razzing smiley seemed to imply you were suggesting they were using 6. Probably mainly because it's the version that comes with XP (yes, even SP3 comes with IE6 by default! Grr...)
Quick question regarding the About box: Why is the version listed as "4.0.249.78 unknown"? Is the "unknown" supposed to be something meaningful? It doesn't affect usability at all obviously, I was just curious.
I think that's because the updater is disabled.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Can we get a few more testers on this so we can get it live?
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
It works great in my tests. My two extensions (AniWeather and AdBlock) work flawlessly, and I can actually run 4.0 directly off my drive (no more RunLocally, yay!) without it slowing itself and everything else to a crawl, unlike with 3.0 and earlier.
Chrome 4.0 has officially won me back from Firefox.
The current release is sucessful with registry
Not sure about AppData though.
I just want to point out that the dev build for 5.0 has been released!
Aside from that, for the new portable build 4.0; it has been working well and I have not encountered any problems regarding its overall use. It should be ready for public distribution on the main site!
Thanks again for releasing a newer build, I can't wait to test out future builds (5.0/etc.) in the coming weeks/months!
~Trevlin
FYI 5.0 isn't much to look at yet, the two new features I've seen aren't working yet.
So you aren't missing out on much yet.
Life etc is keeping me busy plus I have other projects which need work too (my Chrome extension, some apps that I made that I have just discovered don't work right on 64-bit, etc). But I will do my best to keep GCP relatively up to date.
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Nice
Been using the 4.0 test for about a week now, and the only things I've noticed are some of my thumbnail page icons are broken, for iGoogle and Google Wave which I hit constantly, and it doesn't seem to be recognizing that I want iGoogle to keep me logged in. Otherwise it's working great, it's fast, and I can use extensions now!
should have created new comment instead of replying, sorry
I created applications shortcuts for pandora but they don't work when created.
Had to right click on the file and edit target from:
"C:\Documents and Settings\XXX\Applications\PortableApps\PortableApps\GoogleChromePortable\App\Chrome-bin\chrome.exe" --user-data-dir="C:\Documents and Settings\XXX\Applications\PortableApps\PortableApps\GoogleChromePortable\Data\profile" --app="http:
to:
"C:\Documents and Settings\XXX\Applications\PortableApps\PortableApps\GoogleChromePortable\GoogleChromePortable.exe" --app="http://www.pandora.com"
Other than that it seems to work fine.
Can't be helped, admin rights are needed to monitor apps for IO operations. Some versions of Windows might need a driver too. Not very portable.
FYI Windows shortcut files are not portable either, so there's really no point. I suggest you use a "portable" app such as ASuite or a batch file to store a command that uses relative paths, that will be portable.
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Haven't seen any bug reports lately... looks like this might be ready for primetime.
I have downloaded and installed 4.0.249.78 from the link here.
I wanted to use the portable passwords feature so I created GoogleChromePortable.ini in the \PortableApps\GoogleChromePortable directory, based on the sample file in \PortableApps\GoogleChromePortable\Other\Source. It contains the following:
[GoogleChromePortable]
PortablePasswords=true
EncryptPortablePasswords=true
On restarting Google Chrome, I was prompted for a master password as expected, and I was able to save passwords in the usual way.
However, when I transferred my USB stick to a different machine, and started Google Chrome, I was again prompted for the master password but all of my saved passwords have gone. It looks as though the "Portable Passwords" file has been overwritten.
Am I misunderstanding how this is meant to work?
Regards
Nick
If I set:
EncryptPortablePasswords=false
then the "Portable Passwords" file does remain and the passwords are still there when I swap between machines (though the file is obviously in plain text which is not great).
So it looks like the password hash is still derived in some way from the user account on the host machine. Perhaps I'm misreading the instructions in the sample .ini file but I thought that the purpose of this feature was to work round that.
Regards
Nick
IIRC, Chrome encrypts passwords using a Windows API which, in turn, gets its information from the host PC. The only way to change that would involve changing Chrome itself, which isn't that feasible (although you could probably change its OSS clone, Iron).
"The question I would like to know, is the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. All we know about it is that the Answer is Forty-two, which is a little aggravating."
That's what MAZZTer's Portable Passwords is supposed to do--when you close the browser, the launcher decrypts the Passwords file and then re-encrypts it with a machine-independent key (based on a user-supplied master password). Then when you run it again, the launcher asks for your master password and reverses the process. The problem here is that it doesn't seem to be working as designed.
When the feature is first used, the Portable Passwords file, and associated hash, are created and updated as expected. The problem is (AIUI) that when the stick is moved to a different machine and Google Chrome launched, a new hash is created and the existing Portable Passwords file overwritten with one containing no passwords.
Would it be possible, when Google Chrome is started, to run automatically a utility which:
1. Decrypts the existing Portable Passwords file using the previously stored hash.
2. Renames the Portable Passwords file.
3. Allows Google Chrome to do its normal stuff - creating the new hash and Portable Passwords file.
4. Reads the contents of the renamed Portable Passwords file into the newly-created one (perhaps using Google Chrome's inbuilt import facilities).
Regards
Nick
There seem to be a lot of misconceptions here.
Chrome doesn't touch the Portable Passwords file at all, it stores saved passwords in a file called simply "Passwords". Portable Passwords is managed by the launcher. What the launcher is supposed to do is decrypt the Passwords file, reencrypt it in a machine-independent fashion, and store the result in Portable Passwords. When you run GCP again, it reverses the process with the new machine's key, thus achieving portability. That's how it's supposed to work, but there seems to be a bug somewhere because it's not working.
Actually Chrome stores passwords in "Web Data". The launcher takes the Portable Passwords and encrypts them into the format Chrome understands and seeds Web Data, then does the reverse when Chrome quits.
FYI the key used by Chrome for password encryption is for the local user, not per-machine.
It's actually quite clever when the browser is anchored to the account, like Chrome was designed to be. Passwords are safe since the user's account password (and possibly other stuff used as salting for the key) is needed to decrypt Chrome passwords.
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So is the bottom line that there's actually no way to keep the passwords encrypted and make them portable between machines?
Regards
Nick
Okay, this is getting just a bit annoying. I've explained twice now that the purpose of GCP's Portable Passwords is to facilitate this very feature. It just doesn't appear to be working for some people right now and needs to be fixed. So MAZZTer needs more information to troubleshoot it (see the post immediately below).
Eesh.
no, they are supposed to work portably. I haven't tested them lately, but they seemed to work last time I tried.
Too many lonely hearts in the real world
Too many bridges you can burn
Too many tables you can't turn
Don't wanna live my life in the real world
No, there's a problem somewhere maybe.
Can you reproduce this consistently?
If so I need some observations so I can try and reproduce this myself. I have taken GCP across multiple computers in my testing without problems...
First, the OS versions of the two computers, and 32 or 64 bit (could be important, I've never tested on 64-bit).
Second, after starting up GCP once and entering a password, quit and start up again. Enter a DIFFERENT password. It should be rejected since Portable Passwords was already created, let me know if it isn't.
Third, download SQLiteSpy and open your profile's Portable Passwords file with it (when GCP isn't running) after a GCP session. The single table should have entries in it, one for each password you've entered.
Try entering the wrong password again the first time you run it on the second computer, after giving Portable Passwords some passwords on the first, to make sure it is still rejected properly instead of making a new Portable Passwords file.
If you could tell me where it is messing up it would help me a lot in tracking down the problem.
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> First, the OS versions of the two computers
Computer 1 is running Windows XP SP3 32-bit
Computer 2 is running Windows 7 64-bit
The usernames on the two computers are different
> Second, after starting up GCP once and entering a password, quit
> and start up again. Enter a DIFFERENT password. It should be
> rejected since Portable Passwords was already created, let me
> know if it isn't.
Done on computer 1 and, yes, the different password is rejected as expected. If I then try again with the correct password then my saved passwords are intact (again as expected).
> Third, download SQLiteSpy and open your profile's Portable Passwords
> file with it (when GCP isn't running) after a GCP session. The single
> table should have entries in it, one for each password you've entered.
I have saved one password. If I open the file in WordPad I can see an entry for that site (though of course the password itself is encrypted).
> Try entering the wrong password again the first time you run it
> on the second computer, after giving Portable Passwords some
> passwords on the first, to make sure it is still rejected
> properly instead of making a new Portable Passwords file.
Will do this later today with computer 2 and report back.
Regards
Nick
> Try entering the wrong password again the first time you run
> it on the second computer, after giving Portable Passwords
> some passwords on the first, to make sure it is still rejected
> properly instead of making a new Portable Passwords file.
OK, now I got the computer numbers round the wrong way in my earlier posting, so to clarify:
Earlier I had the USB stick on computer 2 - the one running Windows 7 64-bit. All worked as expected.
I have just transferred it to computer 1 - the one running Windows XP SP3 32-bit. All is again working as expected: the wrong password at startup is rejected; after entering the correct one the username and password previously saved are still there - in the Portable Passwords file and viewable via Spanner -> Options -> Personal Stuff -> Show saved passwords.
The last time I lost the passwords when going from computer 1 (XP 32-bit) to computer 2 (7 64-bit). So I've now saved another password on computer 1 and will later transfer the stick BACK to computer 2 to see if the passwords are lost.
Hope that makes sense.
Regards
Nick
I have now put the stick back in the Windows 7 machine, fired up Google Chrome and everything works as expected: the incorrect password is rejected at startup; entering the correct password works and the saved usernames and passwords (both the one I originally saved on the Windows 7 machine and the one I subsequently saved on the XP machine) are intact.
I wonder if this could be something that only happens the FIRST time Google Chrome is run on a particular machine. I don't currently have access to a third machine to test this.
Regards
Nick
GCP strives not to leave traces on any machine so the "first" time should not matter.
BTW try not to open random files in Wordpad in the future--if you are not careful you could easily corrupt them. To peek at SQLite database files you should use a specialized tool such as SQLiteSpy (my tool of choice). Just make sure not to modify the database.
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I tried downloading this and installing it, and it unpacks all the local files perfectly well, but then after it downloads Chrome (in the installer) it pops up the following error:
"The downloaded copy of Google Chrome (4.0.249.78 Stable) is not valid and can not be installed."
I'm using XP SP2. It's a restricted user account, so that might possible have something to do with it, and I'm trying to install it on an external memory stick.
I'll try from my home computer with administrator permissions when I get home.
Robin.
Yep this was a permissions problem. I tried installing Chrome 4 on my home PC (with administrator privileges) and it worked fine.
This issue (that it doesn't install without admin permissions) is the same with the current Google Chrome Portable (3) installer, so don't worry about it.
This error occurs if the downloaded file is not the same as the file it expects (it uses hashing to verify the file).
It was probably a corrupted download.
It should not have been a permissions problem, I think that was just a coincidence.
It installed fine for me earlier tonight without administrative privileges, but to be fair it wasn't the exact same version as John's, though I doubt he made any tweaks big enough to cause permissions issues.
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