Tag: browser

Chromium Browser Download for Windows

Update: finally over 2 years after I wrote this, there is a better way of doing this. Use the Chocolatey Chromium package.

The folks at Chromium make it unnecessarily hard to install the Chromium browser.  This post from ghacks.net does a good job of explaining the basics.

Here’s what I’ve done to install it for Windows.

Windows

  1. download chrome-win32.zip (http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-continuous/Win/221974/chrome-win32.zip) [updated 9 Sep 2013]
  2. unzip it
  3. move it to your Program Files directory
  4. run C:\Program Files\chrome-win32\chrome.exe

N.B. the link should be updated based on the current release number.

To make sure you have the latest release read on…

Note: I am using the Continuous builds which have gone through more tests than the snapshot builds as used in the ghacks.net post – at least that’s the impression the Chromium Snapshot Monitor extension gives once you install it (Further note: that extension is broken – I’ve made an attempt at fixing it in a separate post).

The first thing you need is the current release number. This can be found at: http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-continuous/Win/LAST_CHANGE. This changes on a daily basis.

Then use this release number to get to the latest download page. Currently [13 Sep 2013] it is http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-continuous/index.html?path=Win/221974/.

Alternatively (but the page is slow to load) you can find the same folder by scrolling to the bottom of this page (http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-continuous/index.html?path=Win/) and click on the bottom folder.

You want the chrome-win32.zip file from the download page, which contains the following files:

  • chrome-win32.test – IGNORE
  • REVISIONS – IGNORE
  • changelog.xml – IGNORE
  • chrome-win32-syms.zip – IGNORE
  • chrome-win32.zip
  • devtools_frontend.zip – IGNORE
  • mini_installer.exe

I find the mini_installer.exe to be second rate – it doesn’t install it in the Program Files directory. I’m not sure why they can’t create a proper nullsoft installer for it.

So as per the start of this section, your best choice is to:

  1. download chrome-win32.zip [updated 9 Sep 2013]
  2. unzip it
  3. move it to your Program Files directory
  4. run C:\Program Files\chrome-win32\chrome.exe

Upgrading

As Chromium gets updated quite a lot you may want to upgrade it. As any extensions that you install get stored outside the main Chromium installation directory you can delete all the files in the installation directory and replace them with the contents of the latest zip file.

  1. download chrome-win32.zip [updated 9 Sep 2013]
  2. unzip it
  3. delete all the files from your installation directory (e.g. C:\Program Files\chrome-win32\ as above)
  4. move the files from the unzipped chrome-win32 directory to your installation directory