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Google’s support to Chrome Add-ons and web standards

admin — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 08:38:31 +0000

At the Web 2.0 Expo in New York last friday, Google engineer Ojan Vafai told that Chrome will support add-ons and user scripts à la Firefox Add-ons and Greasemonkey. However unlike the case in many times for add-ons for Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer, Google wants to make sure that add-ons will keep Chrome allways stable.

“There’s two different kinds of add-ons,” Vafai said. “The Firefox things extend your browser, so to speak, and then there are user scripts. We intend to do both of those in Google Chrome.”

Chrome and web standards

Google supports the continued development of web standards like HTML 5 and CSS 2.1.

Read more about this at InformationWeek : Web 2.0: Google Chrome To Support Add-Ons

Chrome Beta release: 0.2.149.30

Jack — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 17:35:50 +0000

An automatic patch updates Chrome to version 0.2.149.30. It was released on 17 september 2008. It contains updates on security and some changes and bug fixes.

From the release notes :

Fix a potential denial of service with very long title attributes on tags.
Stop adding content from HTTPS sites to the searchable index.
Don’t send sensitive URLs to search suggest services.
Fixes to the Google Chrome updater to make updates more reliable.
Fix problems with Flash not playing video if too many connections are opened.
Allow JavaScript to communicate with Java applets.
JavaScript: Dispatch contextmenu events after mouseup events.
Fix crashes with some plugins –3dvia was the most widely reported– when they return an error for NPN_GetValue.

Read here the full description of the release notes

Why is Chrome so fast?

Jack — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 08:32:30 +0000

To enhance experience for webbrowser users Google Chrome has set as one of it goals to speed up browsing. To accomplish this, two interesting things can be mentioned : the DNS prefetching and the new Javascript engine, V8.

DNS prefetching

about:dns

Chrome does this by scanning links, domain names and allready translating them into IP-addresses.

According to the Chromium Blog visiting a site is “on average about 250ms faster than traditional browsing, and the occasional but painful 1-second-plus delays are almost never experienced.”

DNS prefetching just resolves domain names before a user tries to navigate, so that there will be no effective user delay due to DNS resolution.

The most obvious example where prefetching can help is when a user is looking at a page with many links to various unexplored domains, such as a search results page. Google Chrome automatically scans the content of each rendered page looking for links, extracting the domain name from each link, and resolving each domain to an IP address.

You can see what time is saved by typing “about:dns” in the address bar.

And “about:histograms/DNS.PrefetchFoundName” gives details of the DNS resolution times.

about:histograms/DNS.PrefetchFoundName

V8 JavaScript Engine

The Javascript engine is a very important part of each browser. Very much websites have web applications and the responsiveness depends on the Javascript engine. Chrome has in it a new Javascript engine, called V8 and it’s fast and reliable. For those tech nerds who want to dive into this, read all about it on the Google Code pages and watch this video from Google engineer Lars Bak.

Click here to view the embedded video.

More info :
Google Code’s page on the V8 Javascript Engine
DNS Prefetching (or Pre-Resolving)

Chromium versus Chrome

Jack — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 10:26:19 +0000

What is the difference between Chromium and Chrome?

Chromium definition

Quoted from the Chromium developer site :

Chromium is an open-source browser project that aims to build a safer, faster, and more stable way for all Internet users to experience the web. This site contains design documents, architecture overviews, testing information, and more to help you learn to build and work with the Chromium source code.

Chrome and Chromium

Google Chrome is a webbrowser built upon the open source code of Chromium. Chromium compared to Chrome is also full of the same feautures but the user interface is less polished, the logo is different and Chrome for example imports automatically Firefox bookmarks on installation. With the Chromium source code you could build and compile your own browser.

Learn more ate Chromium pages on Google code

Chrome (Chromium) on Mac and Linux

Jack — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 09:50:12 +0000

Chromium on Apple

Codeweavers, the producers of CrossOver - which allows to run Windows applications on Mac an Linux on the Wine engine - has succesfully ported Chromium to run on Mac and Linux.

Codeweavers only took 11 days to succesfully port it. “We were looking for a way to show off Wine’s new maturity, particularly for porting applications. “ It comes as a free download on Codeweavers. Chromium is the open source code behind Google Chrome, the latter officialy only released as a Windows beta version at the moment.

Google Chrome latest version?

Jack — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 09:31:01 +0000

If you like to check out the latest developers version of Chrome check out the Dev Channel of Chromium developer. There you can download the Google Chrome Channel Chooser. The Dev Channel is meant for :

Web developers who want to test their sites or scripts with pre-release versions of Google Chrome

Testers who need to make sure they’re working with the latest bug fixes

Anyone who wants to help make Google Chrome better — your feedback helps us turn good new features into great features, and using the Dev channel is a simple way for anyone to help.

In the release notes the extra features and bug fixes including :

new network layer
new tab and window manager code, which for example help for example on multi monitor extensions
some Vista bug fixes
Javascript, Flash and Silverlight big fixes
Changes and fixes in the user interface / behavior

The latest version at this moment is 0.2.152.1, while the official beta currently is 0.2.149.29

Read more at :
The Chromium Developer Dev channel
Chrome beta versions release notes

Google Chrome Add-ons

Jack — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 12:28:58 +0000

There are not many Google Chrome Addons yet. However a small guide how to create them can be found on ChromeAddons. More can be found on Mychomeaddons, including an much needed adblock, Chromium Theme Creator, XChrome - a theme manager and an article on Greasemetal - a userscript runtime for Google Chrome.

How to create Google Chrome Addons

Articles on add ons on MyChromeaddons.com : Chrome Addons

Google Chrome Backup

Jack — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 12:15:59 +0000

Google Chrome (web browser) has just hit the world. Google Chrome backup is a small tool to create, backup, restore and manage Google Chrome profiles. The profile holds personal data like history, bookmarks, etc. Everything is done with one click. Latest version also supports Chromium, which modified version of Google Chrome, for portable use.

Download the Chrome backup tool on Parhelia Tools

Read and download the Google Chrome Backup tool

Chrome Plugins

Jack — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 12:12:00 +0000

A nice informative site about Chrome plugins, Chrome extensions and Chrome themes can be found on Chromeplugins. Allready there are articles like about the Google Toolbar, Command Line Switches, a backup and profile tool, shortcuts and there is a nice forum.

Check the site on chromeplugins.org

Does Chrome offer enough to switch from Internet Explorer or Firefox?

Jack — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 11:52:03 +0000

Mike Schaffner on Forbes.com wonders if Chrome offers enough for people to make them switch from other browsers, such as Internet Explorer and Firefox. This from a corporate point of view. He discusses the speed, security, stability, features, website support for Chrome, Outlook Web Access and company IT support requirements.

Read the article on Forbes : Chrome’s Corporate Review