I don't know that this really rises to the level of a "killer" app. Serious ssh users are, of course, already quite happy with their terminal emulators and use platforms that support them natively. I find it very hard to believe (though I'm willing to be surprised) a chrome extension is going to present me with the performance, platform integration, or keyboard navigability I get and demand from gnome-terminal. I'd probably be happy using it from friends machines, etc...

What this will do, however, is hopefully end for good the mess of "How do I expose a command line application to my windows-using friends such that they aren't confused and won't hate me.". And there's a whole lot of value to that.

this is insanely awesome. as it stands right now, yes its "just ssh". But open up the developer toolbar and you'll notice this thing is rendering HTML inside of webkit. It doesn't take a genius to see this is a few baby steps from making it possible to render arbitrary graphics in the shell. edit: I might go out on a limb here and say this project is something that is going to be looked at as a real inflection point a few years from now.

I opened chrome to check this out, but it wants me to "sign in" to install the extension. For me this is a bridge too far: I don't care to tell google about every single extension/application (extensplication?) I'm using.

Like many people, I'm trying to step back from google/facebook snooping, and this would be a solid step toward such big brothering. I suppose next they'll see what email providers I use and whom I correspond with with mutt or whom I chat with on other services with finch etc.. Why expand google's data-gathering "attack surface"? And all this for... (?) what does this offer that sets it above my current terminal client?

Someone please tell me if there is any technical reason I should need to sign in to add an extension (in particular this, or some game).

Can someone please explain to me why I would possibly want to run a terminal emulator inside of my web browser, instead of just using the terminal emulator app that my system ships with?

Has anyone code reviewed this to make sure it's not stealing credentials, etc. ?

To all those who question the value of this, it's that we now have a new ssh client that runs everywhere Chrome runs. Additionally and non-trivially, the innards of the terminal UI is now exquisitely accessible to the legions of developers who know HTML and CSS. Presumably it's a small step to embedding cross-domain SSH into a webapp.

That said, there are minuses. The big minus is that Chrome, like literally every piece of software that handles the download and installation of other software, provides an entirely new way to discover, download, and install software. The instructions for downloading putty for windows is simple and stable over time. The instructions for installing this plugin are Chrome specific and unstable over time.

Overall, I'd say this plugin has marginal positive value.

As someone who occasionally ends up on Windows having to do Terminal work, thank you. A proper terminal emulator on every platform (well, every platform I care about) is a huge win.

I might even move to this entirely if it adds support for key auth; having a consistent environment across all devices on which you work is a big win, even if the native terminal emulator might be integrated better with the OS.

On a related note, I used to cringe whenever I had to do anything on Windows; such a foreign environment. Nowadays so much has moved to the browser that I hardly notice, modulo some text editing shortcuts. The browser is really about to become the operating system.

I'm not very impressed... although it's partly implemented in HTML (only partly - even though modern JavaScript engines should be more than capable of handling SSH, the implementation is just OpenSSH in Native Client), this is no citizen of the web, and never can be, as trusting an app to connect directly to arbitrary ports and handle all your SSH connections fundamentally subverts the web's security model. Benefits over a native app:

- It's sandboxed - big deal, if sandboxing SSH were a real concern then it's a call to sandbox-exec(1) away.

- It could theoretically be extended to support HTML-based console interfaces - but sticking a web view in a regular terminal would solve this just as well with less overhead.

(Note the lack of benefits that usually apply to webapps: multiple browser implementations; written in a high-level language, which increases hackability [you might be able to get some of that]; don't need to trust the app; page-based paradigm allows deep linking.)

Drawbacks:

- Slow. The FAQ says it's intended to compete performance-wise, and it's reasonably fast, but comparing the behavior of 'ls' or, more dramatically, 'cat /usr/share/dict/words' or 'yes' (try interrupting it) demonstrates that it doesn't quite hold up. *

- You have to trust a silently updating, non-downgradeable app with your data. I guess people already do this with Chrome, but terminal emulators don't exactly benefit from constant updates in the way browsers do.

- Non-native - if you're on Chrome OS, this is a benefit, because Web is native, but on other operating systems, you lose the look and feel of the OS (from Terminal.app: useful cmd-tab, transparent window backgrounds, Lion fullscreen mode, Lion auto reopen, other applications can launch the terminal, native keyboard shortcuts, ctrl-w...) for no reason.

- The current version requires an account(!!)

- The current version is buggy - when I try it, just typing "ls" messes up the terminal so that it's not fully scrolled down. I guess this will be ironed out soon, but existing terminal emulators are highly stable.

*edit: or 'bb', heh - Terminal doesn't exactly handle it well (it's a good demonstration of the superior performance of xterm), but at least it doesn't hang like this terminal

I can't believe how great it looks and how responsive it is. I've been running an emacs client in it for a while and other than C-n opening a new window it's practically perfect. Huge props to the team who wrote this.

Public/private key authentication seems a bit spotty. From the FAQ,

    > Can I connect using a public key pair or certificate?
    Sorry, not yet.

    debug1: read PEM private key done: type DSA
    debug1: Authentication succeeded (publickey).

    Permission denied (publickey).

This is cool hack but a terrible idea. Why do I want some bloated web browser wrapping a lightweight terminal?

Very cool, but I fired up an emacs session and hit Ctrl+N to start scrolling through a file.... doh!

This is freaking awesome. I have been waiting for this for so long. I look forward to using this all day to see how it holds up.

On Ubuntu 12.04, I get this, and then it seems to hang. Anyone have this working on Linux?

  Welcome to Secure Shell version 0.7.9.
  The list of Frequently Asked Questions is available here: http://goo.gl/m6Nj8
  Connecting to wellsj@greensboro.timco.aero, port 22...
  Loading NaCl plugin...

This already exists for Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firessh/

Yay NaCl chrome only app! Yay for standards!

Oh wait a minute...

I believe this is the same terminal that replaces urxvt as the non-VT terminal in the newest version of ChromeOS (IE the one you access with Ctrl-Alt-T). I was worried when I switched to the dev channel on my Cr-48 and crosh opened in a new tab instead of a chromeless window.

Edit: I take back my comments about the keyboard shortcuts: http://git.chromium.org/gitweb/?p=chromiumos/platform/assets...

As killer as it is, it says it's a beta and it has known bugs on the page. Use with caution.

Neat, but it's be very nice if it automatically used the configured HTTPS proxy.

If you just want a terminal emulator in a web browser, Paddy Mullen ported urxvt to JavaScript a few years ago: https://github.com/paddymul/rxvt-js

Works really well, nice and quick. Call me stupid, but I'm not actually sure how to launch it (clicking on "Launch App" from within the webstore works but that's surely not the only way).

Tmux seems to work wonderfully. I bet Chrome Book users are stoked.

Works pretty well considering its status, though it doesn't like to play along with the hard status bar on my screen sessions.

This is an amazing killer app. Never before could I SSH into a remote machine from a desktop computer. </sarcasm>

Very cool and so close to being useful. Until you can use certs and use them safely it isn't very useful though.

Really interesting, would be even better if it parsed my SSH config file. Interested to see how this progresses.

I like this because it allows me to ssh into a machine and then run lynx to browse the web. Meta-browser, baby!

I used to spend 99% of my time in Terminal and Chrome. Now I can start spending 99% of my time in Chrome.

Honestly, I don't like the browser for everything. Neat, but not something that would shake my world.

I think this is the same shell as the one included with the latest release of Chrome OS (Aura UI).

Can someone explain how this is possible within the web's standard security model?

Does not work with local area network. I've tried to ssh on my VM.

Tabbing and zoom support did it for me. Very. Awesomee.

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GREAT! Now Google can mine my shell for AdWords. I look forward to seeing what Ads I get on android after a good fsck

I thought NaCl couldn't open raw (tcp) sockets? I thought it was limited to WebSockets.

Is there a way to install this plugin without signing in to Google?

Does it work in the latest (hexxeh) ChromeOS release?