Chromium posts

On a recent Google Chrome post one of our commenters -- MoneyMike -- lamented the apparent passing of one of Chrome's popular UI features in recent nightly builds: pinned tabs.

I, too, noticed the change recently and wondered what was going on. There's been plenty of discussion amongst Chrome developers, and it boils down to an evolutionary step for Chrome and the introduction of app tabs. The arrival of phantom tabs recently is also part of the change.

To clear the air, I pinged Google's Eitan Bencuya to see if he could shed any light on the situation. Here's his response:

"As you know, all of these features are still pretty experimental (they're not even in the dev channel yet) and we're trying out different approaches to see what works. In this case this is part of a larger set of tweaks we are making related to extensions but we haven't yet fleshed out all the details of app tabs specifically."

Right now, changes to the tab strip are a moving target. Developers are also working hard at tweaks for the almost-certainly-coming tablet version of Google Chrome, and the extension API is still evolving as well.

Ultimately, while this kind of change might be frustrating to us it's all part of the thrill of using experimental software. Yes, it comes at the expense of perhaps watching a feature you like fall by the wayside, but you still get to play around with all functionality users of the stable version may never see.

Google's user interface mockups and YouTube video were a hot topic the other day, and that buzz will likely continue until we finally see a tablet device emerge from Mountain View to accompany the Nexus One.

If the images and video weren't enough proof for you, changes are under way in the Chromium source code which certainly make it look like Google is getting serious about a new interface for Chrome OS on touchscreen tablets.

Coming soon to the Chromium nightly builds is an --enable-vertical-tabs command line switch. While the source note clearly states that this does nothing other than toggle a preference right now, there's every reason to believe that it will move the Chrome tabstrip from the top of your browser window to the side -- as shown in one of Google's tablet user experience slides.

It's a starting point -- though I'm more interested to see how the tab switching interface shapes up.

While it didn't land in time for the release of Chrome OS Zero, Hexxeh has now made a script available which bolts on an automatic update feature.

The updater is currently in open beta, and installing it requires a little bit of tinkering via terminal (ctrl + alt + t starts a terminal session on Chromium OS). Follow Hexxeh's instructions, reboot your system or VM, and watch the magic! If you're not totally up-to-date, you'll see a window like the one above.

One of the most welcome fixes is listed at update 2: no more Broadcom delay. If you've been testing Chromium OS on a netbook or laptop running one of their wireless adapters, this is fantastic news!

One note: for the final step of the process, Hexxeh's instructions say to type reboot [enter] in terminal. That didn't work for me -- but sudo reboot did.

Hexxeh's Chromium OS build is one of my favorite independent projects so far this year, and it just keeps getting better. If you've used it, share your thoughts in the comments!

Gentlemen, start your userscripts! The insanely powerful Greasemonkey extension is now natively supported by Google Chrome, and it's bringing a library of over 40,000 scripts with it.

Scripts can modify your favorite webpages in all kinds of useful ways, whether it's cheating at Mob Wars, adding nested replies to Twitter, or "unf**king Facebook." If you think a website needs a cosmetic alteration or a user experience facelift, you can probably make it happen with scripts.

Greasemonkey started out on Firefox, and has been added to Safari as Greasekit, but Chrome has a secret weapon. His name is Aaron Boodman, and he created Greasemonkey. He now works on the Chrome Extensions team at Google. Even though Greasemonkey on Chrome isn't yet as mature as the Firefox version -- 15-25% of scripts might not work on Chrome yet -- it will definitely get there with Boodman's help.

If you need some scripts to get you started, you can scope out Download Squad's 10 Greasemonkey Scripts You Shouldn't Browse Without, or peruse the large selection at userscripts.org.

[via ReadWriteWeb]

Welcome to February 2010, and welcome to another installment of Chrome Corner! There's plenty of action to cover this week, so let's not waste any time!

Chrome OS to feature touch capabilities?

Of course it is.

I mean, can you imagine anyone developing a sexy, new OS for any electronic device at this point and not including some touch elements?

What the blogosphere (TechRadar had the scoop, and Mashable et al went giddy) is in a twitter about is the deer-in-headlights routine by Google's search lead Anders Sandholm -- who didn't know how to tactfully respond to a reporter's question without giving something away.

Instead, he looked to a PR teammate for help and sputtered, "I can't... I mean... right now we are targeting netbooks, that's what we're focused on, but I expect it to work well... we expect it to target everything up to desktop computers." TechRadar refers to Sandholm's response as the "strongest hint yet" regarding touch.

My vote for strongest hint: Google isn't run by complete idiots.

Oh, and there's also this documentation over at the Chromium Developer site which details UI possibilities for a touch tablet. A Google tablet device is coming -- probably from HTC (the same folks who built the Nexus One) -- and that thing would look pretty silly running a touch-stupid OS.

Plenty of noise has been made in the past about Google Chrome and version jumping, but a little grumbling isn't going to slow Google down. Today, Chrome's dev channel reached a new milestone, hitting version 5.0.

For those of you counting, it's been a little over 16 months since version 1 first appeared.

The list of changes so far is fairly small. Mac users will notice a bit more of a difference, with fixes addressing plugin stability and crashing while dragging tabs, a slightly improved cookies manager, and minor tweaks to Chrome's task manager.

On Windows, there are two key updates. First, Chrome will now use your default downloads folder (i.e. Username\Downloads on Vista and Windows 7) instead of creating a new Documents\Downloads folder.

So every Google Chrome channel now supports bookmark sync, but suppose you'd like to open up the same set of tabs at home that you were running when you left work? You can't do that without help -- fortunately, there's a solution over at the Extensions Gallery.

Grab the FreshStart extension for Chrome.

Once it's installed, just click the button in your browse actions area to save a set of tabs for retrieval later. FreshStart provides checkboxes (all selected by default) so that you can exclude any pages you wish.

Save as many sets as you like, and FreshStart uses Chrome's built-in bookmark sync ability to store your sessions in the cloud. Hop on another computer, click the extension, and load up your desired tab set!

The latest version has also added a crash recovery feature -- a must-have if you're running unstable builds like the dev channel or Chromium nightly. When enabled, FreshStart saves your tabs every five minutes so that you can quickly and easily pick up where you left off after a crash.

It seems natural that we'll see the addition of click-and-drag to reorganize buttons as well. That would allow us to keep the extensions we use frequently within single-click reach. I'd also like to be able to double-click to fully expand and contract the browser actions area.

Hopefully those features will be added soon -- until I can choose which extensions are visible and which aren't, this isn't very useful. The Chromium dev team will sort it out, so I'll just have to be patient and keep checking the new snapshot builds..

[via Techie Buzz]

Pinned tabs are a great way to save room on your tab strip in Google Chrome. But suppose you want to free up the resources something you've pinned is using -- say the 50+ MB of memory used by Seesmic Web or another similar web apps?

In the latest Chromium nightly builds, a new feature has been added called phantom tabs. When enabled, you can right-click and close a pinned tab and its favicon will stay behind -- Chromium simply unloads the renderer process for that tab, freeing up the processor and memory resources it was using.

Click on the phantom tab's icon, and Chromium fires up a new instance your pinned page. Right-click and close a phantom tab, and it disappears from the tab strip completely.

And what if the only tab in your current window is pinned and you close it? Chromium stay open -- instead of closing the browser down completely as it normally would. Clicking the pinned icon won't rejuvenate it, at least not right now. You'll have to create a new tab first and then click back to it.

Like many other additions, you have to enable phantom tabs via a command line switch: --enable-phantom-tabs. Not sure how to add switches to Chrome or Chromium? Check out our brief how-to post!

If you've never downloaded one before, here's a link to the Chromium buildbot snapshots.

We've published a lot of posts about features in Google Chrome and Chromium which require you to add command line switches to activate them.

So how exactly do you do that? Watch the video above, and refer to the notes below -- it's a simple process!

1. Locate your Chrome or Chromium shortcut. There should be one on your desktop and one in your start menu - either one will work!
2. Click the shortcut with your right mouse button and choose properties.
3. Find the target box (it will be highlighted when the properties screen appears).
4. Left click at the end of the line (after chrome.exe).
5. Press space.
6. Add your command line switch. The result looks like this:
   C:\Users\LeeM\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe --bookmark-menu
   
   
7. If you want to add more than one, separate each switch with a space. The result looks like this:
   C:\Users\LeeM\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe --bookmark-menu --enable-phantom-tabs

Freescale just demonstrated a tablet at CES running Chrome OS, and there will no doubt be plenty of other manufacturers joining them later this year when Google finally releases their finished code. But why wait - and why shell out cash for a new device you probably don't need anyway?

Grab Hexxeh's latest build and take it for a spin right now!

The new update is called Chromium OS Zero and it boasts serious speed improvements, automatic delivery of system updates, a reduction in the startup delay on Broadcom wifi adapters, and a slick, customized bootsplash graphic. The browser now has full extension support and bookmark sync, which makes it easy to experiment.

After enabling sync and a quick trip to the Extensions Gallery to install LastPass, Zero is pretty much all I need for 90% of my daily browsing.

I haven't yet been able to boot the new version in VirtualBox, however, so you may want to stick to Cherry for now if you're planning to test drive Chromium OS in a virtual machine. You can still download Cherry via bittorrent.

In amongst a chorus of "what took them so long", the Google folks working on the Chromium project -- the open source project behind the Chrome browser -- have at last added basic support for bookmark management in Mac OS X builds. Now, before you run over to the nightly builds page for Chromium, it's worth noting that the feature is still incomplete - you're not able to remove items from the bookmark manager -- you can only move them around. So there's still some way to go!

If you're using the Chrome for OS X releases, there's also going to be a little wait for the changes to move from Chromium to Chrome -- however if you feel adventurous, the Chromium snapshot builds will give you a taste of the feature (scroll to the bottom of the list for the most recent build).