Google Cast Is Now Baked Into Chrome, No Extension Needed (trustedreviews.com) 93
An anonymous reader writes: The Google Chrome 51 browser now includes a built-in 'Cast' option within the drop-down settings menu, which can also be accessed from right clicking in a tab. This will then cast the current tab to the appropriate TV or monitor. Previously, if you wanted to cast content from your computer to your Chromecast-equipped display, you needed to download a Chrome extension. Along with the new changes, Google has removed the ability to tweak settings for resolution, bitrate, and quality when casting a tab, so Chrome itself will now control such parameters automatically. Chrome 51 is now available as a stable version, and the Cast option should be rolling out to users now. This casting ability will also be baked into Chrome OS. The report points out several new related features coming in Chrome 52, such as the ability to cast to Hangouts. You will be able to push Chrome tabs to your contacts within an open video Hangout, which may be useful for remote meetings. In addition, the Cast to Hangouts feature will also retrieve your calendar information to find such scheduled Hangout meetings to make quick sharing easier.
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As long as it is "opt in" everything should be cool.
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Opting in won't matter if the service is down.
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Why? They provide a good service at the right price.
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Because you don't even know *what* they are providing to *whom*, all included in that good price.
Of course, if you don't care... I do.
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Why? They provide a good service at the right price.
Yes, the price, in dollars and cents, is zero. However, the cost to the user, in things such as privacy, lock-in, targeted advertising, etc, is more than zero. Some people seem to have 'privacy to burn', so to speak; to them, the cost is trivial. Others prefer to buy products and services for specified sums of money, rather than for unspecified quantities of personal data. Me? I like to know how much I'm paying, in what currency, and how long the payments will last, before I 'purchase' something.
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What in the world are you "locked in" to? And aren't you using an ad blocker? And "privacy"? Please, you all have to get over that. There is no privacy on the internet. *The whole world's watching*. Don't use your real name anywhere then. Use prepaid cards for purchases and throwaway email accounts to avoid spam in your personal or real business email. Use a proxy server. That's the beauty, you can create a whole person out of thin air and nobody's the wiser, least of all Google. Let them think you're in ou
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I'm going to point and laugh at you now
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You win the intertubes...
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Ideally, every service which is totally or in part paid with advertisements or my data should have an option to be paid with money.
Sadly we seem to be going the opposite direction where more and more services can only be paid with your privacy. See for instance Windows 10: There's no way to completely remove the data gathering features even if you pay Microsoft.
Would have preferred an extension (Score:2)
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No, it means nobody read the link. What are you going to retrieve when the service is down? I am totally confused by the reaction the post has received so far. Simply telling me the joke sucked would be more understandable.
It is better to not be all things (Score:1)
A browser doesn't need to be a calculator, a word processor, a typing instructor, a device manager, etc.
It also doesn't need spyware or curb feelers.
Re:It is better to not be all things (Score:4, Insightful)
A browser doesn't need to be a calculator, a word processor, a typing instructor, a device manager, etc.
It also doesn't need spyware or curb feelers.
Tell that to Microsoft Windows 10.
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Why bother include it in Edge when the OS already does all that and so much more? Redundancy has never been a problem of Microsoft.
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Microsoft only moved the spyware to the OS level to make Edge faster in testing.
Re:It is better to not be all things (Score:4, Insightful)
A browser needs to be able to render web pages.
Why should it only be able to render it to the physically attached screen?
Re:It is better to not be all things (Score:5, Insightful)
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system bloat like this makes for stability and security nightmares
So Chrome is now chase Firefox...
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Why should I have any interest in improving someone's experience with me?
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A browser cell phone doesn't need to be a calculator, a word processor, a typing instructor, a device manager, etc.
A browser/cell phone/Desktop Environment/etc doesn't need to be anything but what people want it to be. I want my cell phone to be a calculator, word processor, typing instructor, etc. And I'm perfectly happy with my browser extensions that share screens and do other stuff that is useful.
People don't buy minimalism, they buy features.
Junk Included (Score:3, Informative)
More reasons for people to stop and think: move back to FF, or to a third-party (probably FF fork) alternative. More code = less secure. Chrome is already the slowest and most painful of the bunch and only growing. This reminds one of the time FF wanted to include a security suite for CCTV cameras.
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More reasons for people to stop and think: move back to FF
One piece of proprietary junk was not the reason we left FF. A continued trend of ignoring users with every new release was.
But I do like you suggestion. The alternatives are looking quite good, and I'm happy with how Pale Moon performs on my system.
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BWAHAHAHA! You want to move TO Firefox to REDUCE bloat and junk? Are you crazy?
Cast To What? (Score:2)
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Will it cast to a miracast supported device like a Roku or only to a chromecast supported device? My Nexus 6P will only cast to the latter when it comes out of the box. You have to root the phone to restore the miracast functionality.
I'm having the same experience with Nexus 5x - very ChromeCastCentric, disappointing, really - it only took them 10 years to turn openly evil.
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Chromecast is just a second screen (or set of speakers, if it's the audio version). It's like complaining your monitor doesn't have storage or a remote - you are missing the point entirely.
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That's odd, because I cast from my wired PC to my wireless Chromecast all the time. They just need to be on the same network.
Oh boy....imagine if Mozilla did this in Firefox.. (Score:2)
They would get a right kicking on slashdot for implementing another non-relevant feature for the masses!
On another note, people here don't seem to realise that browsers are super hard and uber complex, and approaching the territory of operating systems. And mozilla in this battle is a tiny non-profit charity working for the good of the masses (first with getting everyone to care about standards and w3c against IE, and now fighting for privacy and developing the latest HTML5 / CSS4/ ES6 standards) and trying
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Erm, so tell me genius, where do they get the money from?
You know, cash that people (devs) need to live and buy food and have a house to live in?
Certain sponsored content is necessary for the mozilla project to live, otherwise they would have died many years ago, since no one ever donates to the project!
You can't continue adding the latest browser standard in every revision if all your devs are working on other projects, and after their full-time job, come home to their family while still having time and en
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They would get a right kicking on slashdot for implementing another non-relevant feature for the masses!
What makes you think Chrome won't? The only two upmodded comments right now is a comment on how to disable it, and one titled BLOAT.
Slashdot is an equal opportunity hater on useless crap. Your pet project is not being treated any differently.
On another note, people here don't seem to realise that browsers are super hard and uber complex, and approaching the territory of operating systems.
Indeed. Complexity is driven by the standard requirements. .... So which standard requires that I be able to "cast" my tab to a proprietary device hooked to a TV? Which standard requires my browser save my tabs via a proprietary service run by a 3rd party which has no b
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On another note, people here don't seem to realise that browsers are super hard and uber complex, and approaching the territory of operating systems
There is more code in Chrome than in the entire FreeBSD base system. Slightly less than in the FreeBSD base system plus X.org. They long since passed the complexity of operating systems.
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Interesting, thanks for sharing your insightful comment! :)
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And if you're still of those complaining about the australis UI and using that as excuse for people to switch to Pale Moon - please, go and install "Classic Theme Restorer [mozilla.org]" like the rest of us.
Been there, done that, turned my nose up at the T-shirt. Classic Theme Restorer may give back access to old themes, but the post-Australis browser configuration experience sucks balls. THAT is why I switched to Pale Moon. Plus, I wanted to be part of the message to Mozilla that they need to stop ignoring the desires of the majority of their user base if they want to maintain relevance and grow their market share. Australis was just the last 'Fuck You' that came my way from Mozilla before I sent back one of
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The 'fuck you' was removal of the checkbox to disable javascript, and the one to disable pictures.
*That* sucks donkey balls, even if it's something you'd very rarely use ; maybe you're referring in part to that?
If I want to "break" the web it's my call and I also know about Firefox profiles, even running two of them concurrently.
Australis is rather benign, since you can have a title bar, a menu bar and remove unwanted icons.
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"mozilla...is a tiny non-profit charity"
Mozilla is not tiny AT ALL, and it is an absolute wonder how development of a web browser and a maintenance-mode email client cost $317 million per year, or require a $261 million (and growing) endowment. From the Mozilla Foundation's 2014 Annual Report:
$261 million - Net Unrestricted Assets at the end of year
$329 million - Net Unrestricted Revenue over the year
$317 million - Total Expenses over the year
Expense include:
$212 million - Software Development
$
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Thanks for the informative comment.
It may seem like a lot, but it pales in comparison with the likes of Google, Microsoft, and Apple.
As I said, they have virtually limitless amount of resource and money to develop their browsers, Mozilla don't.
And as I and others have pointed out, browsers are probably far more complicated than operating systems these days, and likely the most complex software ever created!
To be honest, considering how much Mozilla and Opera have done for the web and developing the latest s
Chrome 52? (Score:2)
I don't use Hangouts, but 51.0.2704 has an option "Enable casting to cloud based services like Google Hangouts"
BLOAT (Score:2)
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Yes, More bloat on the Browser and LESS functionality. From the summary:
Along with the new changes, Google has removed the ability to tweak settings for resolution, bitrate, and quality when casting a tab
I used to use the GoogleCast beta add-on, so I had even more finegrained control over parameters, including acceptable delay/jitter.
Not that is gone.
Kraptastic!
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Use a different browser then. Beggers don't call the shots.
how to disable (Score:5, Informative)
you can disable it. it's listed as "Media Router" on the flags page: chrome://flags#media-router
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You shouldn't have to disable it. It shouldn't even be here to begin with.
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you act as if i'm the one who had the ability to decide that.
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If it has to exist at all, you should have to ENable it if you at all care for it.
Having to disable something always feels like a waiter asking me why I complain about a fly in the soup since I could simply remove it if I don't like it.
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That's odd, because I've used all three versions of the Chromecast dongles (v1, v2 and audio), and they all pop up in my browser and the Chromecast app within a couple of seconds of fully booting up. If you're turning yours on and off regularly, you do realize that it needs a bit of time to boot up, right?
No Adblock on Android (Score:2)
Chrome on Android does not support Adblock so I use Firefox on Android.
If I use Firefox on Android I might as well use it on Windows and Linux.
So I stopped using Chrome.
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If you want and ad blocking Chrome you have the option of using #NoChromo or, if you have a Snapdragon SoC, a CAF Chromium build like RSBrowser.
CAF Chromium has the added bonus of being significantly faster than vanilla Chrome.
nice (Score:1)
Are there slimmed down versions of Chrome? (Score:2)
Huh? But, Chromium may be what you're looking for. (Score:2)
Err, well as far as I've checked my version of Chrome doesn't "include Facebook" and in fact I needed to install an extension to include Hangouts, but if you're looking for a version of Chrome without the proprietary bits and blobs (which presumably includes this, although I could be wrong), you should just use Chromium.
Failing that, as others ha
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I'll have to evaluate the difference between Chromium and Chrome as I'd just assumed one was an eventual stepping stone to the other with all these unwanted bits included. Thanks for the suggestion!
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Stop using an OS that hasn't received any security updates for over 2 years, you idiot.