Posts tagged Chrome
Search In Pics: Google Sugar Cube, Yahoo Valentines & Chrome M&M’s
Feb 10th
In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more. Valentines Day At Yahoo: Source: Flickr A Google Bike: Source Google+…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
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New Chrome Beta Improves 2D & 3D Graphics for Older Systems
Feb 10th
The next version of Chrome will help older computers catch up with rapidly accelerating Web-based graphics. The upcoming Chrome release will improve the performance of hardware-accelerated 2D animations using Canvas, which include many Web-based games and other graphically-intensive sites.
It will also let systems with older GPUs use SwiftShader for 3D graphics instead of WebGL, which older GPUs can’t handle. It won’t look quite as good, but users with older systems will still get more 3D content than they currently can. The new Chrome beta with these features is available today.
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Many of Google’s recent browser-based updates have pushed the envelope on hardware performance. For example, in October, Google released 3D views in Google Maps that use WebGL, so lower-end GPUs can’t display them. Even some relatively new laptops can’t handle WebGL. The new SwiftShader capabilities in Chrome will bring some these 3D graphics to less capable systems.
Other recent Chrome releases contained advanced audio APIs and the ability to run native code inside the browser. Others focused on speeding up page loads by pre-caching pages. Chrome engineers are even building new image formats to push the Web forward. These uncompromising updates were moving pretty quickly for a while, so the next version of Chrome will let older computers catch up.
If you feel like testing Google’s browser capabilities as soon as they come out of the shop, jump in the Chrome beta channel.
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Google Screenwise Pays People to Search the Web With Chrome
Feb 9th
A new Google project called Screenwise is offering web surfers the chance to get paid to surf the web and help “make Google better.” You have to search the web using the Chrome browser and share your data with Google, according to the signup page.
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
Google Debuts Chrome for Android
Feb 8th
The mobile version of Chrome runs on smartphones or tablets with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich or above. Although Chrome for Android was designed from the ground up for mobile devices, it has many of the same features of the desktop version.
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Google Screenwise: New Program Pays You To Give Up Privacy & Surf The Web With Chrome
Feb 7th
Google is quietly taking requests from web users who want to get paid to surf the web using the Chrome browser while sharing data with Google. The program is called Screenwise and, though we’re not aware of any official announcement, Google has a signup page at…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
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Building a Better Mouse Lock for Chrome and Firefox
Feb 7th
Build a better mouse trap, and the world will beat a path to your door. Build a better mouse lock for Web browsers, and you might make browser-based gaming a lot more attractive. Vincent Scheib has been working on a W3C specification and feature for Chrome that will put browsers another step closer to competitive with native games.
This might sound like a little thing, but the lack of the mouse lock feature holds back browser-based games. Here’s the problem: Unless you’re using a plugin, the way that browser-based games handle the mouse is clunky. Let’s say you’re trying to play a shooter like Quake III in the browser. Because the game can’t “grab” the pointer, when you scroll too far outside the game screen it sends your cursor outside the browser window and disrupts game flow. (And probably gets you fragged.)
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But it’s not just for games. This would also be useful for apps like Google Maps, so that the map doesn’t stop scrolling when users hit the corner of the screen. That’s the physical screen. If you try Google Maps you can hold down the mouse button and keep scrolling even when the cursor leaves the window, but it stops when you hit the edge of the screen.
Note that mouse lock is different than mouse capture, because mouse capture ends when the mouse button is released. The mouse lock holds the pointer until a special key binding or gesture is used, and sends input “regardless of mouse button state.” It also hides the cursor, whereas mouse capture does not.
So Scheib and others are working on providing a mouse lock that will enable all sorts of applications to be on par with their native client counterparts. David Humphrey is all over an implementation for Firefox, and Scheib says that developers can test it out in the Chrome Canary builds right now.
It will be a few more releases (Scheib says no sooner than Chrome 19) before it’s shipped without a developer flag. Actually, it’s available in Chrome 16 or later for Native Client apps, but not for other applications. Right now, the feature only works in full screen, and Scheib says that it will also need a security review before it’s ready to go. (Grabbing the mouse would give spammers a pretty annoying tool to work with if left unchecked.) Since Firefox folks are also on this, it might not be too much longer before we can seen cross-browser apps that make the most of mouse lock.
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Chrome Beta for Android Will Be Good for Mobile HTML5 Development
Feb 7th
When Google announced that the Chrome browser would become its own operating system and run on netbooks, the thought around the tech community was that eventually Google would have to merge Chrome with Android. After all, what is the point of supporting two disparate mobile operating systems? The convergence has not yet occurred but may have taken a step further today as Google announced Chrome for Android available on devices running version 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.
Chrome for Android is a win for everybody. Except, of course, most users. As of Google’s latest Android platform numbers, only 1% of devices are running Ice Cream Sandwich. That will change as 2012 moves along with adoption accelerating from new device purchases and updates. Chrome for Android immediately becomes on of the go-to browsers on the platform, will be good for HTML5 development, reliability and security.
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A Big Day For HTML5
The best thing that Chrome for Android brings to the table is robust HTML5 integration. The native Android browser is known to have mediocre HTML5 performance (pre-Ice Cream Sandwich) but Chrome for Android promises to make up what has been lacking.
That will include a hardware-accelerated canvas, overflow scroll support, HTML5 video specs support along with Indexed DB (for offline caching, presumably), WebWorkers and WebSockets.
The biggest advantage for mobile HTML5 though will be the ability to bring Chrome tools to the Android platform. If a developer knows how to work in Chromium, working in Chrome for Android will be a seamless transition. This is where the possible convergence of the Chrome and Android platforms will take place.
“Much of the code for Chrome for Android is already shared with Chromium and over the coming weeks, the Chromium team will be upstreaming many new components developed for Chrome for Android to Chromium, WebKit and other projects,” Arnaud Weber, Google’s engineering manager for Chrome, wrote in a blog post.
Chrome for Android has already been put through its initial HTML5 tests with a score of 343 (+10 bonus) on HTML5Test.com. The native ICS browser scored 256 (+3 bonus) which put it in the middle of the pack in terms of mobile browsers.
Enhancements For Users
Chrome for Android promises to be fast, simple and reliable. It pre-loads pages with the Chrome Omnibox (only when Wi-Fi is enabled) and predicts where and what you want to navigate to. It also brings a simple user interface to the Android browser environment, something that many users will be very grateful for after dealing with some of the more complicated UIs from third-party options like Opera, Dolphin HD and Skyfire.
The best aspect of Chrome for Android though will be the ability to sign in to your Chrome browser and have access to all of your bookmarks, tabs and browsing history from anywhere. If you leave your computer with open tabs, Chrome for Android will recognize those and open them for you. Chrome will also be able to track your browsing history to better provide search suggestions. Like many other mobile browsers with desktop presences, Chrome for Android will also be able to sync your bookmarks to your mobile device.
This 1% Problem
We are going to be perfectly honest. No writer at ReadWriteWeb has a device running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. So, we could not put the Chrome Beta through the paces (most RWWers use iPhones as well).
And there is the rub. Next to no one has Ice Cream Sandwich yet, outside a couple Galaxy Nexus users. This poses a problem, if a temporary one. Many existing Android devices are never going to get the ICS upgrade and the devices that have it pre-installed are still in early adopter/Android geek territory.
For many, the Chrome for Android is just an exciting announcement to shrug at since most will never see it on their current devices. Chrome for Android developers have plenty of time to roll out dynamic Web apps before the mass of Android users actually gets the browser. So, perhaps there is a positive side.
Excited for Chrome for Android? Will you develop for it? What about signing in to Chrome across all your devices? Let us know your reactions in the comments.
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7 Must Have Search Related Chrome Extensions for 2012
Feb 7th
This post is for Google Chrome users only. Apologies if you’re using another browser! A man who dares to waste one hour of life has not discovered the value of life. -Charles Darwin Search marketers have a ton of processes to go through each day. From curating content, engaging in social media, tagging and sending [...]
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Zendesk Announces Availability in Google Chrome Web Store
Jan 31st
Zendesk, the cloud-based help desk technology behind Groupon and Zappos, announced today its availability in the Google Chrome Web Store. Zendesk has two offerings on the Google Chrome Web Store. The first is the Zendesk Activity Stream that displays recent customer service activity on the computer desktop when new inquiries come in. Agents never have [...]
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Trying to Keep Up With Chrome, Mozilla Preps Firefox 10
Jan 30th
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The latest stable release of the Firefox Web browser is on its way. Firefox 10 will emerge from beta with a few new features, most of which are geared toward developers. As is often the case, the new version pushes forward with a few of the latest features in emerging Web standards like CSS3, HTML5 and related technologies. In Firefox 10, it’s more about the under-the-hood stuff than the on-the-surface user experience.
Some of the more significant enhancements include a full-screen API for Web apps, support for CSS 3D transforms and an improved handling of plugins and how they’re updated.
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Mozilla is working to keep up with Chrome, the three-year-old browser that recently knocked Firefox out of second place. To this end, it has sped up its release cycle and even nabbed Pete Scanlon, a former Google marketing manager who had a hand in creating major promotional campaigns for Chrome.
This release also marks the start of Firefox’s new Extended Support Release version, which it announced in response to longstanding concerns within the IT community about the browser’s rapid release cycle, which can be a challenge for IT managers to keep up with.
This update also includes some enhancements to the mobile version of Firefox, which includes many of the same upgrades as the desktop version, plus improvements to Firefox Sync, which lets users sync their browser across devices. So far, Firefox’s mobile footprint isn’t anything close to the market share it commands on the desktop. It currently has a browser for Android, but has yet to make a serious foray into iOS, which has tighter restrictions on third party browsers.
As frequent and aggressive as Firefox’s updates have become, the open source browser still has some catching up to do with Google Chrome and even less popular browsers like Safari and Opera when it comes to implementing certain features.
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