Tasty Google Chrome Bug - So Much For Isolated Tabs/Processes

Update: it seems this bug was already reported, but the amusement value seemed to escape most of the web.

The web’s abuzz with talk of Google’s new venture - Chrome. My workplace is no exception; in fact we’ve had numerous discussions about it, spanning from “should we support it” to adoption paths.

One of Chrome’s highlights is its isolated tabs. The idea is that tabs run as separate processes, so if one lags, the rest still operate correctly. Therefore, it was quite a surprise when a colleague emailed me with this nifty trick to crash Chrome:

 Type this into a Chrome tab’s address bar
:%

No need to press enter, it happens as soon as you hit %. Here’s a screenshot:

Google Chrome Crash

Again: so much for isolated tabs.

Note: I’ve submitted a bug report here

- atc

This entry was written by atc and posted on September 4, 2008 at 8:01 am and filed under Technology, Windows. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

11 Comments

  1. Tyler
    Posted September 4, 2008 at 12:23 pm | Permalink

    so much for fuzz testing as well…

  2. boa13
    Posted September 4, 2008 at 12:57 pm | Permalink

    I don’t get the same crash as you.

    I get an “Oops I just crashed” dialog box, Chrome automatically restarts, and offers to restore the tabs that were open before the crash.

  3. Jiff Woods
    Posted September 4, 2008 at 1:18 pm | Permalink

    Chrome rocks but FireFox3 kicks it to the curb!

    Jiff
    http://www.anonymize.us.tc

  4. glastohead
    Posted September 4, 2008 at 1:19 pm | Permalink

    Do you notice the little word under the Chrome logo? It says ‘Beta’. This special word means that Google software never actually has to work properly - they’re still calling GMail beta FFS.

  5. john
    Posted September 4, 2008 at 2:13 pm | Permalink

    Its an internal breakpoint, which means a chunk of code is missing from it. Remember, the app is still in beta.

  6. Kenray
    Posted September 4, 2008 at 2:41 pm | Permalink

    yeah, it don’t like it when you load multiple pages and one of them is flash video either, crash

  7. Me Again
    Posted September 4, 2008 at 3:11 pm | Permalink

    I don’t think this has anything to do with tab isolation. I don’t think it’s the tab process that reads the input in the address bar. When you go from site A to site B another process is spawned (remember the comic) so probably another master process takes care of this.

  8. Tim
    Posted September 4, 2008 at 3:18 pm | Permalink

    This is a way to force a crash for testing purposes. Can’t actually call it a bug and it doesn’t test the isolated tab process claim as it crashes the Chrome process itself and not one of the tab processes. Still, thanks for posting it, it is an interesting find.

  9. jack
    Posted September 4, 2008 at 3:22 pm | Permalink

    What exactly does this have to do with running each tab as a seperate process?

    If an application crashes it’s going to take all it’s processes with it…

  10. dant
    Posted September 5, 2008 at 1:58 am | Permalink

    well i just downloaded it and tried the % bug several times, it sends me to google search page with “no results found with %”

  11. ZoRRo
    Posted September 5, 2008 at 12:05 pm | Permalink

    Same here… doesn’t crash, just sends me to google search page.

One Trackback/Pingback

  1. By atc » Server Benchmarking Tips - Debian on 05 Sep 2008 at 8:32 pm

    […] atc Musings of technology, sport, life et al « Tasty Google Chrome Bug - So Much For Isolated Tabs/Processes […]

Post a Comment

Your email is never published nor shared. Required fields are marked *
*
*