I must admit to loving using Google’s Chrome internet browser release, though admittedly I always keep Internet Explorer at hand because there is still a lot of websites that Chrome can’t seem to render correctly.
I’m enjoying the fact that you can follow a lot of the development decisions made on the Chronium blog and even more the fact that on release they even produced an ‘all about’ comic created by none other than Scott McCloud, one of those annoyingly famous know-it-alls of the comic book industry.
However, one thing I don’t like about the release is that to get hold of Chrome, you need to download their bootstrap installer first, which then in turn connects to the web to download the latest version of the browser. This is annoying when you want to install it on a non-networked computer (which sounds counter-intuitive I know), but certainly not the end of the world.
To download the standalone installer (which is basically what the bootstrap installer downloads), simply find out which build of the browser it is that you want to install. So for example if I wanted to install version 2.149.27 I would shape my download URL like this:
[http://dl.google.com/chrome/install/149.27/chrome_installer.exe]
http://dl.google.com/chrome/install/149 … taller.exe
As of this post, the latest version of Chrome is in fact 3.154.9, which means that the download URL for the latest standalone installer would be:
[http://dl.google.com/chrome/install/154.9/chrome_installer.exe]
http://dl.google.com/chrome/install/154 … taller.exe
So now it is a simple matter of plugging your shaped URL into a browser or download manager and taking it from there.
Oh, and just in case you were interested as to where exactly this silent installer puts all its stuff, the installation location is as follows:
In Windows XP, Google Chrome installs under Documents and Settings