HitChrome

After the recent updates from Firefox and Opera in the form of Firefox 3.1 Beta and Opera 9.6, its Chrome’s turn to go under the knife. Most users might have noticed how Mozilla has concentrated on speed with the latest Firefox update. Opera, on the other hand, now has even more features under its belt, retaining its position as one of the most feature packed browsers available now - off the shelf. And yes, support for three Indian languages in Opera too has been a welcome addition.

Chrome, in the meantime, whose market share dipped to 0.78 percent after reaching a peak of 1.7 just after its launch, seems to be concentrating on security and the occasional performance tweaks. The latest version of Chrome is 03.154.9, a beta release that claims to fix many security holes and offers zippier performance. The update will be automatically applied - however you can choose to “force” update to this version by selecting the update option from the “About” dialog. Note that not all users will see this option as Google seems to be releasing the update in patches. Patience, as they say, is a virtue!

As for the changes, here are some examples. On the security front, the security vulnerability that allowed malicious websites to spoof the addresses in pop-ups has been patched. The download manager has been “enhanced” to be more secure. Read the rest of this entry »

The Internet pundits had begun writing off Chrome, Google’s new browser,before it was barely out of its wrapping. As the first wave of early-adopter enthusiasts lost interest in their experiments and returned to their original browsers, so analysts began to declare Chrome dead. But there is a far more interesting set of dynamics at work. Google is not after Microsoft’s share of the browser market: it’s after something much bigger.

To understand what’s truly and enduringly interesting about Google Chrome, one needs to understand what is special about V8, its new Javascript engine.

Ten years ago, Java was so slow it was inconceivable that anybody could use it to build serious systems; its garbage collection process brought entire applications to a shuddering halt.  Then a new virtual machine for Java that enabled code to be compiled on the fly, improving Java’s performance 20 times or more was developed.

Hotspot changed everything: suddenly Java became a language to take very seriously indeed.

Without V8, Javascript suffers from the same problem Java had ten years ago: it’s painfully, unbelievably slow, tens or even hundreds of thousands of times slower than other languages. So despite its flexibility, it’s never been used for any kind of serious development; in fact, it’s been the single biggest hurdle to the development of more interesting applications that can run inside a browser. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve managed to crash Google’s new supposedly super-stable browser, Chrome.

That in itself isn’t terribly noteworthy, but I did appreciate the humorous message Chrome gave me (while trying to preview an upcoming review), so I screengrabbed it for your viewing pleasure.

Your turn to talk, come on lets talk………..

Eric Schmidt the chief executive of Google said the new Web browser “represents some of the best Google can do,” and encouraged everyone to try it. But now not many people are. Shortly after Google, unveiled Chrome, it was a big hit initially. Chrome shot up to 1 percent of the market but then dipped to 0.8 percent.

Chrome gained a percentage of the market share within the first 24 hours of its release Sept. 2, but since then, it has given back much of those small gains to the leaders, Microsoft Corp.’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox.

Apple Inc.’s Safari was not affected, because Google has yet to release a version to run on the Mac operating system. Chrome is currently ducking it out with Opera for fourth place. Net Applications tracks the browsers of unique visitors to 2 million Web sites.

Chrome started off pretty fast and furious, within 24 hours, they surpassed 1 percent of usage market share, which was shocking and impressive. Since then, they have been slowly fading.”

Microsoft declined to comment, other than to pump up its latest version of Internet Explorer as “faster, easier, more safe and reliable than ever before.”

John Lilly from Mozilla said it was premature to draw any conclusions. “It’s only been three weeks,” he said. “We don’t know anything about anything yet.” But he added that Firefox was “seeing lots and lots of users come back.” Read the rest of this entry »

Great news - we decided to give Google Chrome comic books to the top two bidders (with their permission) in our auction for charity. Those bids, for $1,600 and $1,575, respectively, will be donated to Donors Choose, an innovative not-for-profit corporation that raises money for schools.

And that’s not all. Google arranged to have both comic books autographed by creator Scott McCloud and many members of the Google Chrome team as a thank you for the donations. A picture of one of them is above.

Thank you to David Hauser from GotVMail and Lincoln Patz from Success Wallpapers for their generous bids. Donors Choose does a lot with a little, and this money will help fund at least a few different much needed school projects. Read the rest of this entry »

It is the first step in Google’s plan to convince consumers and businesses to replace Windows-based software with hosted web applications. Google is expected to launch an online storage offering.

Google’s new Web browser, has grabbed a lot of attention and already holds about one per cent market share.

That’s actually a pretty good number, considering Chrome is still very new, is lacking some important features (such as plug-in support) and is only available for Windows.

The downloads have been driven by the new-car smell and the hype that big Google projects always draw, but most of this attention has been paid to Chrome as a browser, when it isn’t really a browser at all, or at least not primarily. Because while it sports some serious browser  improvements (notably, the creation of a new process to handle each browser window), Chrome is really a platform for Web applications. This is evident in an often-overlooked feature called Create Application Shortcuts. Enabling this gives you links on your desktop or Quick Launch Bar to Gmail, Google Docs and Google Calendar. Clicking the shortcut launches the Web app in a streamlined window that gives you more room to work by eliminating the standard browser controls.

Essentially, this makes Web apps look and act like desktop apps. And because is built in, you can work in Google Docs even when you’re not online, and offline support for Calendar is coming. This makes a PC with Chrome into a go-anywhere, work-anywhere office productivity kit.

In researching this piece, I came across the following from blogger Joe Wilcox of Microsoft Watch: “Let me be absolutely clear: Chrome is not a Web browser, it’s an application runtime. Chrome is really Google Gears with a browser facade. Sure, Chrome is based on Webkit and has browser legacy, but the product’s core capabilities  - and Google’s objectives for them - is running Web applications. Chrome is a development platform, but in the cloud instead of on the PC.” Read the rest of this entry »