Posts tagged Google Chrome
Silverlight 4 features
Nov 18th
Day 2 of Microsoft’s Professional Developer Conference (PDC) is going on in full flow. Just finished watching an exciting presentation from Scott Gutherie. Guess what was the talk about. It was all Silverlight 4. And boy was it full of new and exciting features. Just to give you a hint, Silverlight 4 will bring multi-touch and gestures support, will play YouTube videos and more. To put icing on the cake, Silverlight 4 Beta has just gone live and is now available for download (Download link provided below)
Google Mail, Docs and News getting Wave interface
Nov 9th
Engadget has just released a set of screenshots from a source giving a hint at what appears to be Google‘s new interface to its web applications, of course it is Gmail nothing else or may be it is Docs and News.
The authenticity of the images is not confirmed yet. Having said that, the pictures demonstrate a more unified applications interface based on Google’s Wave and accessible from any browser.
The main goal is to provide a consistent experience throughout all Google Apps and fill in the gap between the browser and the website. Something that certainly makes sense, based on what it is already known about Google’s traditional approach to its Chrome browser and its future Chrome OS. If true then this is what we can say the work in progress, and it also hints at the importance of Wave to the future of Google.
Google Chrome updated to 4.0.237.0
Nov 8th
Google’s Chrome team has been really active, may be had too much coffee for a week. The dedicated Chrome team has updated its Dev channel taking the the Google Chrome Dev channel version to 4.0.237.0. Google Chrome version 4.0.237.0 brings stability fixes, polishes a few features, and stabilizes various Chrome extensions. The latest update comes out as an update for all platforms namely Linux, Windows and Mac.
Google Chrome Stable channel gets updated to version 3.0.195.32
Nov 6th
Google Chrome team has really been active this week. First it was the release of Google Chrome 4.0 Beta. Yesterday it updated its Dev Channel and brought UI improvements for Mac users. Now the stable channel gets an update. This update takes the Google Chrome stable channel version to 3.0.195.32.
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Opera 10 released: brings better performance
Sep 1st
Opera Software has been true to its word and has released version 10 of its browser (probably today), it is a new version of software that has certain number of fans but has not been subject to a wider adoption in comparison to few of its rivals.
The company says Opera 10 brings better performance, a Turbo mode for slow Internet connections, support for a variety of Web standards such as Web fonts, and improvements to the Opera Mail feature. Company issued two Opera 10 RC (Release Candidates) for the free software in the last week, and spokeswoman Falguni Bhuta announced Monday as the day on which the final version will arrive (i.e 1st September)
Opera has been available for years, it is an alternative to Microsoft Internet Explorer, the second-ranked Firefox, and Apple’s Safari. It was pushed into fifth place with the arrival of Google Chrome.
Speed Dial feature, which presents an array of Web site thumbnails when a person opens a new browser tab, was first introduced in 2007. A similar feature can now be found in Chrome and Safari, and Firefox may add something comparable.
The new JavaScript engine, which is used to run Web-based applications such as Google Docs, isn’t done yet, and the Unite feature is slated for a version 10 update.
Firefox, Safari, and Chrome also all are working on better JavaScript performance too, in an effort to make the Web a better foundation for applications.
Google Chrome to suggest popular web pages
Jul 13th
Many of you will surely be available of the browser offered by Google: Google Chrome. This post is related to Google Chrome. The news is that the developer version of Chrome has enabled the updated new tab page. This recently updated tab page is more customizable and allows you to remove, reorder and pin thumbnails and has got interesting things within it.
One of the new sections of new tab page is Tips and Suggestions. Currently it is empty. However a recent Chromium build brought to light the functionality that this empty container might provide:
Google shows popular web pages from the iGoogle gadget “What’s popular”. The gadget uses algorithms to find interesting content from a combination of your submissions and trends in aggregated user activity across a variety of Google services, like YouTube and Google Reader.
No one will discourage the suggestions part of this new tab page, but one thing which many will expect is that it should be related to the user’s browsing history. Microsoft‘s Internet Explorer 8 provides a feature called suggested sites which monitors the browsing activities of a user and based on that shows related web pages. Google itself has a Web History service which uses Google Toolbar to track the visited web pages, and at the same time offers searchable browsing history, stats and recommended web pages.
Is Google Chrome OS free? Yes indeed..
Jul 9th
I just went through the Google Chrome OS FAQ, Google has released this FAQ because everyone was keen to know about it. So here are limited number of your most frequently asked Qs.
And of course we know that this Chrome Web OS will be very attractive (and just in time) for the always-on Netbooks explosion that is coming.
First question… is Google Chrome OS free?
Yes – Google Chrome OS is an open source project and will be available to use at no cost. To me it seems that Google Chrome will beat Microsoft but not Linux. The simplest thing is that when people can get the same thing for no cost, so why the hell waste money for Microsoft.
The Google Chrome OS team is currently working with a number of technology companies to design and build devices that deliver an extraordinary end user experience. These companies include: Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments.
Later this year, the Google Chrome OS code will be open sourced. Google is looking forward to work with the open source community and making its own small contributions to the great work being done out there.
If you are interested in a full time position as a software engineer please visit the jobs pages and indicate that you are interested in Chrome.
But my simplest question is what will be the security concerns? Where is the performance bar? But The biggest thing Chrome OS will do, is keep competitors on their toes.
First screenshots of Google Chrome OS.. [Updated]
Jul 9th
Ask me about the Google Chrome OS, well I am so excited bout it, as I was for Chrome browser, even though I use Firefox but still excitement is always there. I just saw the very first screenshot of Google Chrome OS.
To me It’s hard to agree that are these the first Chrome OS shots, there are plenty of reasons to be suspicious one of the reasons is from where the screenshots emerged? Anyways we have to believe whatever it is.
Acer is one of the Google partners for Chrome OS, an employee there has claimed the screenshots of Google Chrome OS. Full installation is shown there, which took about 10 minutes. After installation was done, desktop to desktop reboot took about 25 seconds.
As for the desktop, it is minimalist: at the bottom of the screen is the Chrome Bar, which is the system’s dock, start menu. The glowing blue icon, which looks like the center of the Chrome logo, opens the main menu, and hides when not in use.
But the reasons why I am suspicious are that, from where these screenshots came up because just one day after the announcement; the shots could easily be mocked up in an existing Linux desktop environment; the shots don’t necessarily look like they were taken in an Acer conference room; and, most interesting thing is that the colors in the word “Google” are ordered incorrectly.
As this demo was carried out on a Acer Extensa 4620Z, which would accord with Google’s stated first target for the OS. Anyways according to me we have to wait what is the reality..
Update: As expected, there has been confirmation over the fact that these screenshots were fake and not real.
Google Update is not running in background anymore
Jul 3rd
Google Update is a software used by Google products, like Chrome and others, for automatic updates.
It is reported by Google Open Source Blog that this feature no longer runs in the background.
Until now, Google Update would always run in the background, functioning primarily as a reliable scheduler performing update checks at periodic time intervals. With today’s release, Google Update now uses the Windows Task Scheduler to only run at periodic intervals.
Google Chrome is regularly updated, disabling the updater will require manual installation for the new versions.
Google explains:
If this task is disabled or stopped, your Google software will not be kept up to date, meaning security vulnerabilities that may arise cannot be fixed and features may not work. This task uninstalls itself when there is no Google software using it,
It is also reported that the googleupdate.exe is no longer in the list of processes in Task Manager. The Google Update’s team is continusoly improving the software by listening to the users. Google Update is now open source and it could be disabled using the Local Group Policy Editor.
Firefox 3.5 will get first bug fix later this month
Jul 2nd
Firefox 3.5 is out now you can easily download it. On 30th June we just reviewed Firefox 3.5.
Mozilla will patch the newly released Firefox 3.5 in the next few weeks to sort out some bugs that were not fixed in the final version of the browser.
Mozilla said in notes published after a weekly status meeting:
[The] goal of this release should be a quick turnaround that fixes topcrashes and bugs we almost held ship for,
The only major security-related change in version 3.5 is private browsing, a special mode in which, according to Firefox:
it won’t keep any browser history, search history, download history, web form history, cookies, or temporary internet files. However, files you download and bookmarks you make will be kept.
All the other major browsers have similar modes. Firefox 3.5 has Private Browsing, Internet Explorer 8 comes up the InPrivate mode, Chrome 2 with Incognito, and Safari 4′s Private Browsing. It is very very clear that Firefox’s Private Browsing is less convenient to use than the privacy modes in the other browsers. You can easily invoke private browsing from the Tools menu or with Ctrl-Shift-P.
