Crenk » google chrome

Google Chrome 4.1 Beta with Auto Translate

Augusto Alvarez — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:30:11 +0000

Google Chrome team is preparing a new release of their browser, 4.1. And you can access to the beta where you can try on some of the new features, including the auto translate option.

The auto translate option works in a very simple way, when you are browsing your sites, Chrome will detect which is the language that is displaying and pop the question to you: Would you like for me to translate this? Here’s a short video about the feature.

Some of the other features that this beta includes:

NoScript: The possibility to configure some sites where you can exclude them to run any type of script.
New privacy features: You’ll get the chance to use incognito mode, where you won’t leave any track of the websites you are visiting (one of the most wanted features).
New control panel: Better control of cookies, images, plug-ins and pop-ups.

To download the latest beta, visit http://www.google.com/intl/en/landing/chrome/beta/

Microsoft’s Web Browser Ballot Starting in March

Augusto Alvarez — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 21:21:50 +0000

Microsoft’s answering the European Commission after a lot of struggling and starting tomorrow, March 1^st, Windows users will have the chance to decide which browser will be your default in your machine.

Web Browser Ballot will be available in Windows XP, Vista and 7 operating systems as a Windows update. Soon as you download the update, a window will appear where the browsers will be listed randomly from which you’ll select your default browser.

I found very interesting the feature available for randomly listing the browsers, which avoids any suggestion that could induce a user to make a pick according to the location in your screen of the browsers. Here’s evidence of the random is actually working:

Internet Explorer 8 showing third in browser’s list.

Internet Explorer 8 showing first in browser’s list.

From what we know, the ballot will only appear to users that have Internet Explorer as the default browser; if you have any other as default, the list won’t appear to you.

For more information, here’s the official document with Microsoft’s commitment.

Facebook Integrating with Google Chrome

Augusto Alvarez — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 17:11:26 +0000

Google Chrome extensions continue in showing us some interesting ways to interact everything in our world with Google’s browser. That’s why now we can easily check friend’s status in Facebook and even update our own with the Facebook’s Google Chrome Extension.

The usability is really simple since integrates directly with your Gmail account, placing the Facebook logo right under the Google Buzz icon. The interaction with Facebook is the same as any other API, using Facebook connect; you just need to log in and you’ll instantly get access to the updates.

Here’s an important note made by the creator, if you want to update your status you must click on the image.

Some of the previous versions of this extension seemed that had a lot of problems, now the latest build 0.0.2.1 is more stable but according to some users still is a little buggy.

Download Google Chrome for Mac OS X and Linux

Steven Finch — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 22:55:00 +0000

Google Chrome has fast become one of the worlds most popular internet browsers. Most people dont know that you can now get Google Chrome for Mac OS X and Linux.

You can offically download Mac OS X Chrome here and Linux Chrome here.

Google Chrome OS To Launch Within a Week

Steven Finch — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:01:04 +0000

Google’s Chrome OS project, first announced in July, will become available for download within a week.

Google has previously said they are working with Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba on the project. It is expected that Google will be very careful are launch and will only endorse a small set of devices for installation.

There has been a lot of news around the Google Chrome OS, including Linux OS and reports that it was going to launch back in October.

Google Chrome for Mac is Coming in December

Steven Finch — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:30:30 +0000

PC users have been able to use the Google Chrome browser for some time now, however for everyone using Macs they have been waiting patiently for their own non-developer version. Chrome day for the Mac is coming very soon.

CNET is reporting that recent discussion in a Chrome mailing list points to an early December launch. We could be just weeks away from a beta version of Chrome for Mac.

The Google group update in question is light on details, but by requesting that developers update to support Browser Actions, it also suggests that a December launch date for a Mac version is fast approaching.

Google Chrome’s product manager, Nick Baum, writes:

“The extensions team has been working hard to get BrowserActions ready, and
they’re already working great on Windows and Linux. We’ve noticed that many
of you have updated your extensions to take advantage of the new UI. We’d
like to encourage the rest of you to do so as well!

You can find the latest docs here:

http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/browserAction.html

Why make the switch now? The earlier you switch, the more time you will have
to polish your experience for our Beta launch in early December. We realize
this means dropping Mac support for a couple of weeks, but we already have
people working on that. If you prioritize the Windows and Linux versions,
we’ll bring you cross-platform parity as soon as we can!”

The post provides an interesting clue to the future of Google Chrome for Mac. We can only hope the early December beta launch date is accurate.

Google Chrome 4 Beta Released on Windows

Steven Finch — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:06:18 +0000

It has been amazing that Google have been able to pump out 4 releases of a browser that has only been in the market for a little over a year. Compare that to Firefox, which took over six years to reach 3.6.

We’ve improved performance scores on Google Chrome by 30% since our current stable release, as measured by Mozilla’s Dromeao DOM Core Tests, and by 400% since our first stable release.” – Idan Avraham and Anton Muhin

Expectedly, Google Chome 4 is currently only available for the Windows platform. Reports have come in that it works just fine with the latest release of Windows, despite the fact that it only specifies XP/Vista as being currently supported.

Download Google Chrome 4 Beta

Google Chrome OS Arriving this Month?

Augusto Alvarez — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 15:40:47 +0000

I guess when there’s a lot of anticipation on something, sometimes things might get faster. We’ve talked before about Google Chrome OS announcement, and we’ve also said that users might get hands on it in the second half of 2010. But now, a Chinese netbooks manufacturer seems that is planning to release netbooks with a previous version of Chrome later this month.

Shanzai is announcing that the devices with the Loongson-CPU will have Google Chrome OS installed, and released by Lemote hardware manufacturer. And even though these are only rumors, there have been some snapshots available in the web of what seems to be Google’s OS:

The anticipation is increasing significantly, since we don’t have much data around this operating system. We know that it will be focused on netbooks, open source with a Linux kernel and user interface based mainly in a web experience.

Sounds good to me if an Asian hardware manufacturer is taking a chance with this new OS. We are all waiting for the moment to install and use Chrome OS.

Google Chrome – Heading for Success

Dean — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 16:46:40 +0000

Does anyone remember during the .com boom when everyone was rushing onto the net and the ‘browser wars’ started. This was when loads of companies began making browsers for a share of the growing market. Many perished with IE having much of the spoils given its advantage of being pre-installed on every Windows PC and Mozilla being the browser of choice for the more ‘power user-ish’ people. Well when Google introduced Chrome late last year fuel was pored over the smouldering remains of the browser war and now its back again in all it raging fury.

Chrome now controls 2% of the market which is pretty good for a new comer. However, they’re looking for more as the Chrome team target a more specific section of people – the entertainment junkies. They are creating a new accelerator add-on for the browser that will enhance graphics for things like watching movies, playing games and using applications. I think this is actually a good tactic as browser games, web applications and streaming videos are becoming very popular. Just look at Quake Live.

“The O3D team is working on getting O3D integrated into the Chromium build, and we’re close to being able to complete our first step towards integration,” said programmer Greg Spencer. “I’ll be making the Windows build of Chromium be dependent upon building O3D as part of the build process.”

The upcoming Chrome OS will indeed be much of Linux under the skin however it will also have much of its workload centred on online applications. An improvement in graphics and the power of the Google Chrome Browser can only mean a bright future for the daring Chrome team.

Google Chrome: Getting 30% Faster

Augusto Alvarez — Fri, 22 May 2009 12:27:35 +0000

Are you a Chrome user? I bet you are; because since last september, when the browser was released, the response from the users was fenomenal according to Google. This light weight browser easly slide away inside the market, bringing a high performance option for not only the “anti-IE” users, but for all users (including those who said that there was no match for Mozilla Firefox or Safari).

Well now Google hits again, they are planning to release a new Chrome version that will increase the browser performance up to 30%. How? New version for WebKit and a JavaScript engine (V8) update. They even have a benchmark report that was executed comparing the new and old Chrome version:

But that’s not all. This new beta build will also include:

Removing Thumbnails from New Page: A very requested feature (specially Safari users) that will let you to select the pages you want to see every time you open a new tab. I bet you were expecting this one, to remove “those” sites that you don’t want other people to know you visit a lot.
Includes a Full-screen mode.
Form Autofill.
Fixed around 300 bugs from previous versions.

The only thing I wonder if this build will be more stable on Windows 7; that would definitely place Chrome as my preferred browser.

One thing is for sure, this is not a good news for IE8 that just started struggling for user’s acceptance, and with the bonus that IE8 appears as a “selectable” feature on Windows 7, no longer a mandatory installation for Windows operating systems. Looks like it’s going to be a long and a painful trip for IE to continue at the top.

Google Chrome gets first update and more confusing

Mike Panic — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 17:35:12 +0000

The new web browser that everyone is talking about and not using, Chrome, just got an update to it. This update is kind of unusual though in the fact that you now have a choice of how beta and unstable you want it to be. If you are into trying out new things, reporting bugs and getting fresh updates daily or every few days, this is for you. If you use Chrome on a regular basis though, the update is kind of mandatory as it

fixes bugs with areas including Microsoft’s Silverlight software, tab behavior, video playback with YouTube and other Flash players, and scalable vector graphics, and it suppresses full-text indexing of sites accessed with encrypted Web connections

Cnet News has all the information on how to do the update, to me the killer is you can’t even update from the software itself, you need to go to another website. Then you have to choose which updates you want to receive, Beta or Dev, and then watch as it updates. I have no problem with software being released and not being finished, it happens all the time, but with Google’s track record of keeping apps in beta for years and years, why put so many users through the growing pains of both Dev and Beta versions? Me thinks Chrome should have been a private invite only release like Gmail was originally to get most of the issues flushed out in the first place.

Chrome is nice, it has a lot of cool features and has everyone who uses the internet interested, but as reported earlier, no one is really using it and no one on a Mac can even start to use it. It pains me when major companies rely on the free labor of their own users to finish building and fixing software that shouldn’t be released yet, much less make them jump through hoops to get the update.

Anyone here a die-hard Chrome user yet?

Google Chrome browser 1 week later

Mike Panic — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 19:00:19 +0000

Last week I gave a first 5-minute impression of Google Chrome, the new browser that is supposed to be faster and better than anything else out there. A week later and what seems to be a hundred thousand reviews in the blogsphere later, everyone seems to like it, and no one seems to be using it. Less than 1% of Crenk readers are using it, more people are using Opera belive it or not.

What’s so great about it? Well it’s new and shiny, has a minimalist look and feel to it and consumes about 75% less memory than Firefox does, at least for me on my Windows XP box. Google really seems to have done their homework with regards to chewing up your CPU cycles and there appears to never be a memory leak. Additionally, you just need to type something in what used to be known as the address bar, as it now functions as a search bar and many other things. It’s also fast, but how fast? My seat dyno says slightly faster than Firefox, but to a normal user, it might only feel faster because it’s new.

What’s not so great about it? Well first and foremost, Windows only. As a Mac user, I once again feel like someone put me out in the cold. Lack of any add-ons that I’ve come to love with Firefox is also missing, but if you were coming from Internet Explorer you wouldn’t know what I’m talking about anyway. Dedicated search box is something I miss. Why you ask, since Google answers all questions on it’s own? Because it simply doesn’t. I’ve been using a Firefox add-on called OpenSearchFox for more than a year now; it allows you to add a drop down in Firefox to search any site that has search enabled on it. That means, rather than going to say Netflix and then searching, I can select Netflix from my drop down menu in the search bar and type in my query there. My other gripe is the lack of a status bar. I understand how important screen real estate is, but I like it, I’ve been using the status bar for more than 10 years in browsers, I’m used to it. Lastly, Chrome doesn’t work with all websites yet. One site that I order digital photos from requires a Java plugin, to upload the photos. I have the plugin installed in Windows but the browser doesn’t pick it up. I’m sure small kinks like this will iron themselves out but it’s still an inconvenience.

One of the most interesting Easter eggs is kind of a joke in Chrome. In the address bar type about:internets – then sit back and chuckle, at least someone around the Google camp has a sense of humor. Chrome is interesting, but it’s not a killer app for me yet, nor do I plan on switching. For now, I will use it to beta test website design and other various things on the Internet but Firefox will continue to be my primary browser.

First 5-minute Impressions With Google Chrome

Mike Panic — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 16:04:49 +0000

Yesterday Google’s new browser, Chrome was announced so today I downloaded and installed it onto my work Windows XP box to see what all the fuss is about and check for cross compatibility on sites we work on. I spent about 5 minutes poking around, if I can’t figure out how to use a browser in 5 minutes, it’s too complicated for anyone but the most 733t 1337.

Download was very small; it then opens an applet and downloads the rest of the software. Installation requires Firefox to be shut down so Chrome can import all your bookmarks, favorites, history and passwords; this goes quickly and rather painlessly. Next you get a TOS about reporting options for crashes, I denied their request and the install was complete.

Upon launching Chrome for the first time an unusual question is asked, “Do you wish to keep Google as your default search engine?” It’s unusual in that, it’s a Google product and the first thing about this new killer app is to strip out Search, the one thing Google does very, very well. I selected to keep it.

All my bookmarks and history imported, what didn’t was my homepage. I’m a long time iGoogle user and rely on the RSS feeds to get me caught up quickly at a glance to what is going on with the sites I follow. Not there. Instead six white boxes stare at me. A little note tells you that these are your most visited sites. Nice idea, but not for me. I easily look at 50+ sites in six different tabs of iGoogle. There is no apparent way to set a traditional “homepage” only what Google wants you to see.

The other thing lacking is an option to show the status bar. I rely on the status bar while at work and home to see where any link will take my, by hovering over it. There are also several add-ons for Firefox that sit in my status bar that I’ve come to love, from what I can tell in Chrome, there is no status bar option.

On the plus side, it is fast. How fast? I don’t have scientific numbers or pretty pie charts, but it really feels fast. One site that I know uses a fairly common Java plugin to run an app wouldn’t work and there was no option to install it but everything else on the dozen or so sites I quickly browsed seem to work.

Is Chrome the next killer app? Hard to say now, Firefox has such a loyal, loving fan base to it, but I think this could compliment it very well.