When I was looking over my news feeds yesterday morning, I though I had spied some exciting news. A few sites were reporting about a new Delicious extension for Chrome. Some of them trumpeted its arrival as proof that Chrome extensions were real.

I found that statement a little odd, because AdSweep has been around since early April. Didn't that pretty much prove the "reality" of Chrome extensions?

To make things even less exciting, the Delicious extension is about as un-noteworthy as they come. If you've got the 'Bookmark on Delicious' bookmarklet in Chrome already, guess what? The extension does the exact same thing. All it does is create a Delicious icon at the end of your address bar instead of on your bookmark toolbar.

I don't know about you, but that's nothing to get worked up about. Google's three example extensions? Equally yawn-worthy.

Heck, I'm still waiting for integration with Google services. Anyone else wondering where the support for things like Google Bookmarks is? It is their browser, after all.

Don't get me wrong - I love Chrome's speed and minimal UI, but after this long I thought we'd see some much more interesting extensions. If you know one, please share it in the comments. I'd love to see it!

While it's not active in Chrome yet, Google is playing with a new concept for the browser's new tab page in the latest builds of Chromium.

The number of thumbnails on the page has been reduced to eight and two optional elements have been added. They are the recent activities list, which displays your last three visited pages and downloaded files and suggestions. While it currently reads "What Will We Put Here?" it's safe to assume that this would include recommendations Google makes based on your browsing history.

What's missing? The column that contained recent bookmarks, history search, and recently closed tabs/windows.

Rearranging your thumbnails has also been simplified. You no longer have to enter editing mode, just drag, pin, and remove items to your heart's content. Accidentally delete something? You'll be prompted to undo removals just in case. You can also switch from thumbnail to a two-column list / favicon view.

To try the new page out, you'll need to download the buildbot's latest version of Chromium. Once you've got it installed, add --new-new-tab-page to the target in your shortcut properties. The same switch in the Chrome dev channel build yields a different (and much less pleasant) result: two rows of four thumbnails and a lengthy history list below.

Video after the break!

[via Google OS]

Just because GMail has been stuck in beta since last century doesn't mean Google isn't capable of rolling out new versions of their apps in a timely fashion. With Chrome 2 officially less than a week old, big G has made the jump to version 3 on the Chrome Dev channel.

Don't get too excited just yet, however. The changelog is still fairly short and isn't all that interesting - unless you have hundreds of thousands of bookmarks, in which case you'll be glad to know that some UI lag has been addressed. Tab, window, and Bookmark Extension APIs also received updates and some interface components have been retouched. As now noted elsewhere on the 'net, v3 also supports the HTML5 video tag - something that is probably worth mentioning in release notes, Google...

In terms of the browsing experience, nothing has changed yet. No, there's hasn't been another 30% speed boost to javascript performance.

To download Chrome v3, visit the install page via this link. The latest Chromium nightly builds have made the version jump as well.

At this rate, Chrome should be up to v8 or 9 before GMail hits RTM.

Google has released version 2.0 of Google Chrome, with a handful of new features and a improved support for JavaScript. In fact, Google says that Chrome 2.0 loads JavaScript-heavy web pages 30% faster than older versions of the browser.

Google Chrome 2.0 also includes the ability to remove thumbnails from the new tab page, as well as a bunch of features which have long been common in other browsers, such as:

• Full page zoom (previously you could only zoom the text, not images and other page elements)
• Full screen mode when you press F11
• Form autofill

If you're using Google Chrome, the browser will automatically update to the latest version next time you load it, so there's no need to download and install anything to get these new features.

At last, Google's web browser has support for actual extensions, not just userscripts wrapped in a container. The current developer build of Chrome (and the nightly builds of Chromium) can now install extensions that modify parts of the browser interface.

One great feature that you'll notice immediately: unlike Firefox addons, Chrome doesn't require a restart to activate extensions. Managing them after the fact? That must be done in Explorer for now - there's no manager in Chrome yet. To get started, you'll need to launch Chrome/Chromium with the --enable-extensions switch.

You can see extensions in action with Google's samples. While the arrival of more complete support is exciting, the demos provided are anything but. One is a gmail unread message display, one is a "subscribe in reader" button - neither of which you need if you have a GMail tab open and a Reader bookmarklet. The third example is a bt more interesting, displaying the status of the Chrome Buildbot.

Lack of excitement aside, it's a good sign for users that have been waiting for developers to begin porting their favorite Firefox extensions to Chrome. We will, no doubt, start seeing more .crx in the wild now.

On the one hand, a browser is just a portal to the web, and so you'd think the last thing you would really need are a bunch of bells and whistles to make a browser look cool. And Google Chrome, with it stripped down interface doesn't really seem like it would have very much to highlight.

But you know what? A car is really just a vehicle for traversing the road. But most car commercials make the car itself look like the sexy thing, not the road. And the video above really does make Chrome look more exciting than the web pages you'll use it to visit in real life.

You can find the rest of the videos at the Google Chrome page on YouTube.

[via TechCrunch]

Since I wrote a post about ten great Firefox userscripts, I've been excited to see how user scripting is progressing for other browsers. Apparently, in the case of Chrome, it's come along far enough that Lifehacker's insanely popular Better Gmail script collection now has a Chrome version. Many Gmail addicts swear by these, so this could make the difference in choosing a browser for some.

So, what's better about Better Gmail? You can hide the stuff you're not using, including chat and the unread spam message count. You get handy visual touches like highlighting a row when you hover over it, and showing icons for attachment types without having to open a message. You can also use labels as folders, sub-folders included. These sound like small improvements, but you'd miss them if you didn't have them. Now users of one more popular browser don't have to worry about that.

Google Chrome may be one of the fastest web browsers around in terms of launch speeds and page loading. But there's one thing that Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, and other browsers have that Google hasn't had - until now: support for plugins, add-ons, extensions, or whatever else you want to call them.

But now the folks behind Chrome have created a way to wrap JavaScript files that alter the way you interact with web sites into extensions for Chrome.

Right now, extension support is still pretty clunky. You'll need to have Google Chrome 2.0 beta or a recent developer build installed to use extensions. Then you'll have to download and unzip the file to a directory like "c:\myextension" and append the following line to the target properties of your Google Chrome shortcut:

--enable-extensions --load-extension="c:\myextension"

Once that's done, you can use the extension. There's a sample extension available at the bottom of the Google tutorial. Once you've installed it, visit www.google.com to see what it does. You'll probably be quite undewhelmed.

Hopefully we'll see more impressive extensions soon - and an easier way to install and run them,

[via Google Operating System]

On the official Google Chrome blog a few hours ago, Google announced the release of a new beta version that falls somewhere in between the stable and developer branches.

Apart from the speed improvements in Google's V8 javascript engine, several new features have been added. In addition to the drag-to-split side-by-side browsing feature demoed in the clip above, the new Webkit core includes autoscrolling, full page zoom, and form filling.

If you're trying to get your hands on it, you may need to be patient. A number of Twitterers are having the same problem I encountered: The downloader application looks like it's working, but the actual setup process never begins. The announcement only came a few hours ago and Chrome devotees are likely hammering the download servers, which may be partly responsible.

Ubuntu users (or users of a Ubuntu-based distro) who have been waiting patiently for the chance to play with Google Chrome, there's now a dead simple way for you to do it. Thanks to the PPA (personal package archive) for Chromium daily builds team, getting the pre-alpha Chromium browser running on your system is about as painless as it can be at this stage.

You'll need to add repositories, of course. They are (substitute jaunty or hardy if needed):

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main

Once they've been added, running sudo apt-get install chromium-browser in a terminal window will take care of the rest. After the package has finished installing, just type chromium-browser [enter] to fire it up.

While it's still in its early stages, Chromium on Linux runs as it does on Windows - fast and smooth. Some important features aren't working yet, like the tab and bookmarks bars and options menu, but nearly everything else is. Incognito, history, download manager, and the new tab view are all functional, and every web page I tested rendered beautifully - and fast.

Check the gallery after the break for screenshots from my CrunchBang install.

There have been portable versions of web browsers including Firefox, Google Chrome, and Opera that you can run from a USB flash drive for a while. Basically these apps let you store your data to the flash drive allowing you to run these apps on Windows without installing anything or writing any data to the Windows registry.

Xenocode takes a different approach. And it works with other applications including Safari, Internet Explorer, and other desktop and web-based apps like Google Talk, Gimp, and Adobe Reader. That's because Xenocode employs virtualization techniques that detache an app from the operating system it normally runs on. Xenocode apps can be run from a web browser if they're deployed online. Or you can download a single executable file for some apps and run them from your hard drive or a USB flash drive.

Some of the web browsers are a bit on the old side. The version of Google Chrome available for download is out of date, and Xencode offers an executable version of Safari 3.2.1, not the newer and much cooler Safari 4 beta. But if you're looking for a way to try out a browser or another app without installing it first, Xenocode is worth checking out.

[via Digital Inspiration]

The Google Chrome browser is designed so that the toolbars take up as little space as possible, letting the web pages you're looking at take up most of your screen real estate. The bookmarks toolbar is easily collapsible, and the tab bar is all the way at the top of the browser window, where you'd normally have a program title bar.

But while the default Google Chrome view takes up less screen space than Firefox or Internet Explorere, there's one thing that each of those browsers can do that Google Chrome can't: Allow you to make the toolbars disappear altogether and browse in full screen mode. All you have to do is hit F11 and Firefox or IE will expand to the size of your display. Hit it again, and your toolbars and menus reappear. If you try the same thing in Chrome, nothing happens.

But it looks like future builds of Google Chrome will gain this feature. The latest developer build of Chrome adds a full screen view, which you can access by hitting the same F11 key you would use in other browsers. In order to try the developer version, you'd have to build the program from source, so you might want to wait until Google adds this feature to official build of Chrome before giving it a try. But it's nice to know it's on the way.

Update: As Nick points out in the comments, you can download the latest developer updates to Chrome by using the Google Chrome Channel Changer. But you should be aware that these updates may be less stable than the official updates that Google sends out on a less frequent basis.

[via WebWare]

Apple's download page declares Safari 4 "the world's fastest web browser." Pretty strong words. That is, of course, if they had any actual meaning.

Perhaps they're referring to a different world. On the planet Earth, however, Safari 4 still can't surpass Google Chrome on the Sunspider, V8, or Dromaeo browser benchmarks.

If you'd like to see how it stacks up, take a look at my comparatives from Dromaeo - Safari 4 is the column labeled Webkit 528.16. Other browsers used were Chrome 2.0.160.0 (labeled Webkit 530), Chrome 1.0.154.48 (labeled Webkit 525), Firefox 3.0.6, Firefox 3.1 (labeled 60780) with Tracemonkey enabled, Opera 9.63, and Opera 10. It's no longer news how slow Internet Explorer (both 7 and 8) are at processing Javascript, so I haven't included its results here. Tests were run on an AMD quad 9550 with 4gb of memory running Windows Vista Ultimate x64.s?

Ugly graphs after the break...

Mac users who have been waiting patiently for the arrival of Google Chrome, there's a light at the end of the tunnel. A member of the development team has posted a screenshot of the browser in the Chrome Group.

Though the rendering engine isn't actually doing anything yet, Chrome does correctly open new instances of the renderer with new tabs and close it when the tab closes. Chrome Developer Docs called for a "working browser window using the real multi-process infrastructure (not TestShell) by mid-February."

Time is rapidly running out on that goal, but you can bet the team will continue to forge ahead.

Linux users, you're next on the list - though likely you won't see much progress until after the Mac version is working.

[ via Google Operating System ]