Varun’s Blog on Technology

Shantanu tells us about Firefox’s Incognito mode and asks us to stop drooling over Google Chrome’s privacy mode labeled Incognito. Does Firefox have an Incognito mode? - Yes. Is it better than Google Chrome’s Incognito mode? - Hell no.

When it comes to the masses security is 80% usability and just 20% technology.

Picture the following 2 scenarios involving an imaginary but very plausible conversation with my very real and reasonably tech-savvy Dad (2 email accounts, has an Orkut profile, uses Linux once in a while, online banking, composes videos of family photos with narration etc… is he cool or what!)

Scenario 1 (Google Chrome)

[ Varun ]

1. Dad open up Google Chrome.
2. Click on the page icon at the end of the address bar.
3. Select “New Incognito Window” from the menu options.

Whenever you do serious stuff such as online banking use this mode, OK?

[ Dad ] - Sure son! That’s easy. You are the bestest son ever!

Scenario 2 (Mozilla Firefox)

[ Varun ]

1. Dad open up the Windows Run dialog.
2. Type firefox -ProfileManager.
3. Click on “Create profile”.
4. Enter “Incognito” as the profile name.
5. Hit Finish.
6. Select “Incognito” from the list of profiles.
7. Click on”Start Firefox”.
8. Go to  Edit >> Preferences >> Privacy.
9. Select “Always clear my private data when I close Firefox”.
10. Unselect “Ask me before clearing private data” and you are done.

[ Dad ] - My dear Varun, let me tell you about something called Google Chrome and something called the Incognito mode… Step 1 - Open Google Chrome….

Browsing is an everyday affair for a large chunk of the computer user population. Privacy mode should be an equally “everyday” affair and should not involve them having to change settings, create new profiles, shortcuts etc.

Another reason why I prefer Google Chrome over Mozilla Firefox is the safer process model. Even if one were to use the Firefox Incognito mode the individual tabs are not protected from each other and bad stuff like CSRF (cross-site request forgery) and XSS (Cross-site scripting) can still happen. In Chrome, by design, individual applications/websites are cordoned off from each other. I am sure it is not fool-proof but it is way better than all current browsers.

Lastly the Google Chrome Incognito mode is a read-only mode. It does not write anything to disk. No cache, no cookies, nothing. It’s default behaviour is secure and there is nothing you can do to change it. The Incognito mode will remain what it is on every Google Chrome browser, whether it is my home PC or work PC.

The Firefox Incognito mode outlined in Shantanu’s post still writes to the hard disk. The cleaning up is post-event and not by design. Also if you do exactly what is mentioned in that post you are still NOT cleaning up persistent cookies, offline website data (created by extensions) and saved passwords. You have to check a few more boxes to clean these up. If a hardcore geek like Shantanu (the dude writes well, hacks stuff and has a bunch of interesting-looking downloads on his blog!) can oversee these options imagine what it imagines for people who want their browser to just work.

Am I drooling over Chrome’s Incognito feature? - Not exactly but I _am_ impressed. When designing software especially end-user software think secure by design, think secure out of the box, think usability and think of my Dad-equivalent whoever it might be in your case.

P.S. - Dad if you are reading this do you agree with me?

EDITS - 2008-09-12 Chrome not resilient to XSS, just CSRF (Thanks Shantanu!)

…because I found it annoying and never found myself using it. Of course not to mention that it is insecure too because all words typed in the address bar were being sent to Google (or whatever suggestion service is being used) effectively acting as a keystroke logger.

Here is how you switch it off:

1. Right click on the address bar (omnibox as Google calls it) and select “Edit search engines”.
2. Uncheck the check box at the bottom labelled “Use a suggestion service…URLs. typed in the address bar”.

Google Chrome - It is not the much-hyped Google OS but pretty close. And if it becomes popular the Google OS might not even be worth it. The browser WILL be the OS.

Read the long but interesting comic announcing what it is or go ahead and download it and try it out.

Google has a finger in every online service pie - it has a nearly complete suite of online services - check out Google Labs. From just controlling the server end of things Google Chrome is a very smart foray into controlling the browser side too. It is all about controlling the experience. If you are the browser maker you decide how it behaves, what elements are shown, how it behaves and what components are optimized. You drive essential standards and the ecosystem of web applications.

Google Chrome is full of new features, both user-visible and purely internal.

A faster and leaner new JavaScript engine called V8 compiles JavaScript and has tighter memory management than the current JavaScript engines. This ensures that JavaScript-heavy (AJAX) applications such Gmail and Google Reader run faster.

Chrome implements a one-process-per-application model. This means application behaviour (unintended or malicious) is localized, crashes are easier to deal with, debugging is easier and memory management is more efficient. This also makes the browser design more flexible and extensible.

The UI is minimalistic and stylish, a signature Google UI. Tabs are the central element in the user interface and therefore are at the very top of the browser. Less important elements of the UI such as the status bar and bookmarks are hidden by default. The default home page shows the 9 most visited sites plus most searched sites, a pretty sensible default and something I know I will get used to in a few days. The best part about the UI is that everything is better but in a subtle, non-distracting manner. All the (Firefox) shortcuts work as expected and everything is where I expect it to be. Google Gears is in-built and provides the interface to the user’s file-system and allows applications to behave more like native applications.

Security is built-in by design. Applications and plug-ins are sandboxed from each other and from the rest of the user’s system. Processes cannot write to the filesystem (no persistent cookies!) and cannot read from sensitive filesystem folders or files. Conventional browser anti-phishing mechanisms are also in place checking sites visited against a list of known malicious sites.

The browser itself and the V8 JavaScript engine are open-source allowing others to use these in their projects. And good features developed by others can be introduced in the core codebase by the Google team effectively allowing a larger team to contribute to these projects albeit indirectly. Open sourcing is also a smart defense against monopoly allegations I guess.

This is a major shakeup of the browser market. Chrome was announced around the same time as the IE8 announcement, this is probably a deliberate move intended to invoke comparisons and garner more publicity. Users shifting to IE8 from IE7 or to IE7 from IE6 might decide to give Chrome a try and stick with it. Users of the various Google services are also a primary audience, the browser has the Google brand and that says something for the users of those services. But most disruptive of all Google Chrome will probably take away a significant chunk of the Mozilla Firefox userbase.

IE is the OS’s browser. It is the default browser, the “e” icon that most users associate with the Web and the browser that renders almost everything nicely. Firefox was the “alternate” browser. It is the browser with a rich ecosystem of extensions and thus more flexible. It is the preferred browser for tech-savvy surfers, slightly more secure and of course available on non-Windows systems.

Google Chrome is all set to displace Mozilla Firefox and become the preferred “alternate” browser. Today it does most things that Firefox can do, eventually it will do ALL things that firefox can do and I am not sure what Firefox’s differentiator will be to make me choose Firefox over Chrome. Today Chrome lacks the plug-ins/extensions that Firefox has but that is just a matter of time before Firefox extensions are ported to Chrome.I am going to hazard a guess and say that Chrome will have a third of the browser market a year frmo now.

All in all very interesting times in the browser world