chrome browser

Google is among the browser makers rushing to accelerate their software by tapping into the power of a computer's graphics hardware, but it appears that ability will have to wait for Chrome 9.

Just as Google branched off the code that will become Chrome 8 work early this morning, indicating that it's time to iron out the bugs to release a stable version of Chrome 7, programmers also pushed back a lot of hardware acceleration features until Chrome 9.

Among the items on the hardware acceleration to-do list pushed back from Chrome 8 to 9 yesterday are support for large layers, opacity fixes, a variety of Canvas issues for 2D graphics, and support for CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) abilities to create reflections, drop shadows, and cutouts called masks. Hardware-based video decoding was pushed back to Chrome 9 a few days earlier.

Hardware acceleration, a flagship feature of Microsoft's IE9, is a top item for browser makers eager to stay competitive, speed up their products, enable new features impossible without it, and tackle mobile computing performance challenges. It's not an easy matter, though, with complications from the wide range of graphics hardware computers come with and the inconsistent software support they come with. … Read more

Fulfilling a pledge to hasten the pace of Chrome releases, Google has issued its first beta edition of Chrome 7, but the big new changes in the browser come with a new developer-oriented release.

The new beta, Chrome 7.0.517.24, matches that of Tuesday's developer-channel release. That doesn't include too much directly visible to users--the about:labs feature for experimental options is one item--but it paves the way for major changes.

For a preview of those coming attractions, browser users should check the new developer version that's been cooking for weeks, version 7.0.536.2. … Read more

It's been two years since the first public version of Chrome appeared, but in some ways, Google's browser remains a novelty.

On Thursday, Google released the sixth stable version of Chrome (Windows | Mac | Linux), though only the second for Mac OS and Linux users.

In others' hands, it would be called Chrome 6, but Google sees things differently.

To the company, a version number is a passing milestone on an indefinitely long road to improvement. By default, the browser is updated behind the scenes and automatically, downloading new versions and installing them after a browser restart. It sees the practice as similar to how Web applications are updated constantly, usually without the user being involved and often without even being told.

This update philosophy is one of several differences that has set Chrome apart since Google inadvertently scooped its own announcement by prematurely issuing comic books describing Chrome just before its launch.

Google has attracted millions of allies. It's grown steadily to account for 7.5 percent of global browser usage, according to Net Applications' most recent statistics.

Besides numberless versions, another departure from prevailing custom was Google's idea that the browser should be as minimal a frame as possible around the content or application it's delivering. Chrome's minimal menu buttons--shrunk from two to one by the new version--its top-mounted tabs, and its lack of real estate for a status bar or search box reflect that philosophy. Programmers working on Mozilla's Firefox 4 and Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9, the new versions of the world's most-used browsers, have adopted similar goals.

Another departure was Chrome's focus on performance in processing Web-based JavaScript programs, loading pages, and other matters. Performance was important to other browsers, but Chrome's initial near-instant launch and notable JavaScript speed that concept at the top of every browser's agenda and raised Web developers' expectations of what they could tackle. … Read more

Chrome to Phone requires two installations and a Google account, but once installed it's a nearly effortless tool for quickly sending links and snippets of text from your desktop to your Android-powered smartphone. (There's also a version for Firefox: Fox to Phone).

Getting started isn't complicated, but can be a bit tedious. Once you've installed this browser extension, you'll have to install the Android app on your phone. Frustratingly, Google doesn't provide a quick link or QR code to the app, and instead only encourages you to search for it in the Android Marketplace. (… Read more

Want the ability to print preview in Chrome? Me, too. But we'll have to wait, because it's one of the features that didn't make the Chrome 6 cut.

Typically in software development, there comes a point when programmers have to turn their attention from adding the fun new technology to making sure what's going to ship actually works. This point, called the code freeze, just happened for Chrome's sixth "milestone."

Google believes in continuously updating its browser, and given its steady encroachment on the turf of Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Mozilla's … Read more

Opera, ever scrappy in its effort to promote its browser over larger rivals, is poking fun at Google's recent video boasting about the speed of its Chrome browser.

"The Opera browser is much faster than a potato," concludes Opera's low-budget video, which features herring-obsessed caricatured Scandinavians rolling the tubers into a pot of water at the same time Opera loads a Web page.

The video is a not-so-subtle dig at Google, which promoted Chrome's speed using elaborately staged stunts recorded with high-speed videography. The first example: involved shooting a potato through a grid to make … Read more

A few days ago, Chrome turned 6. Version 6, that is, though only on the developer preview channel for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

The move doesn't mean a radical new version of Google's browser is available to test--the changes over the 5.0 series are pretty minor, chiefly reflecting the fact that a new branch has sprouted from Chrome's source-code tree. But the change is important for a couple reasons.

First and foremost, it means the work of buttoning down geolocation support and other new features in Chrome 5 can begin in earnest since experimental work is … Read more

In a feature I'll likely find useless, Google has added the ability to drag images directly into e-mails written in Gmail in the Chrome browswer rather than rely on a dialog box to select them as an attachment.

It's a nice idea and I'm all for it, but here's why it's not for me: screen real estate. For most programs I use, they're set to fill the entire screen, so to drag an image into Chrome, I'd have to resize the browser, position it to one side, position the image elsewhere, and then … Read more

Google's Chrome browser draws heavily on the WebKit browser engine project led chiefly by Apple, but now WebKit is adopting one Chrome idea: separation between some computing processes.

Apple programmer Anders Carlsson announced the move, an interface called WebKit2, in a WebKit mailing list posting Thursday. "WebKit2 is designed from the ground up to support a split process model, where the web content (JavaScript, HTML, layout, etc) lives in a separate process. This model is similar to what Google Chrome offers, with the major difference being that we have built the process split model directly into the framework, … Read more