How can Google Chrome isolate tabs into separate processes while looking like a single application?

Question

We have been told that Google Chrome runs each tab in a separate process. Therefore a crash in one tab would not cause problems in the other tabs.

AFAIK, multi-proce

Answer 1

I just gave the first answer (the one explaining 'browser' vs 'renderers' vs 'plugins' an uptick...that seems the most complete and makes good sense to me.

The only thing I'll add are just a few comments more about WHY Google's design is the way it is, and give an opinion about why it's always been my first choice for an overall/every-day browser. (Tho I realize that HOW (and not WHY) was the question being asked.)

Designing so that individual components have their code in separate processes allows the OS to'memory-protect' processes from accidently (or on purpose) modifying each other in ways not explicitly designed-in.

The only parts in such a design that can both read and write shared data are those parts that are designed to NEED to access that data, and allows control on whether that access is just 'read' access or 'read' and 'write' access, etc. And, since those access controls are implemented in the hardware, they are firm guarantees that the access rules cannot be violated. Thus, plugins and extensions from other authors and companies, running in separate tabs/processes, cannot break each other.

Such a design has the effect that it minimises the chances of changing some code or data that wasn't designed to be changed. This is for security reasons and makes for more reliable, less buggy code.

The mere fact Google has such an intricate design is, to me, good testimony to fact that Google seems to have an excellent grasp of these concepts and has built a superior product. (That said, as a web-developer, we still must test our web code with multiple browsers. And, browsers such as Firefox, having been around for a long time and having an excellent group of web-developer related 'add-ons' still has some advantages for some tasks.)

But, for everyday overall browser use, for almost all tasks, the Chrome browser has become my first choice. (Just my opinion, and of course, YMMV.)