Since we launched extensions for Google Chrome on the beta channel for Windows and Linux a few weeks ago, we've seen over 1,000 extensions submitted to the gallery. Several of them have already become browser staples for me. But since I've been spending most all of my free time online doing holiday shopping this December, I found myself relying on a few extensions to find the perfect gifts and great deals.
If you're doing some last-minute holiday shopping in the coming days, one extension to try out is InvisibleHand. This extension discreetly notifies you if a product you are looking at on a particular online store is available for less from another retailer.
Also, the Google Checkout team recently released Promotion Notifier, an extension that alerts you if the online store you're browsing is offering special deals for purchases made through Google Checkout. If so, a notification banner pops up with details such as the discount amount and the minimum purchase required.
Another extension you might find useful is the one created by Woot.com. With just one click to the extension's icon, you can find some really memorable items that are on sale on a particular day at Woot.com (like night vision goggles!).
If you're on the beta channel for Windows or Linux versions of Google Chrome, visit the gallery to browse many more extensions (including extensions from eBay and Kaboodle) that might make last-minute online shopping faster, easier, and maybe a little less stressful. Happy Holidays!
We're always happy to hear that you're enjoying Google Chrome's speed, and we've often been asked what makes Google Chrome so fast -- from its snappy start-up time, and fast page-loading, to the ability to run complex web applications quickly.
For those of you who'd like to dive into the full technical intricacies on what makes Google Chrome a fast and responsive browser, we've put together video interviews to walk through some of the engineering involved. In particular, we take a look at the inner workings of DNS pre-resolution, the V8 JavaScript engine, and DOM bindings. In a future post, we'll also cover other important aspects of Google Chrome's speed, such as WebKit and UI responsiveness.
You can watch these interviews below - or for more details, check out the Chromium blog and the Google Chrome YouTube channel.
If you've ever wanted to search or navigate without disrupting the page you're currently reading, you've probably opened a new tab to do so. This means either clicking the "new tab" button at the end of the tabstrip, or using the "new tab" menu item or keyboard shortcut (ctrl-t).
A little-known shortcut can help you do this even faster.
If you type something in to the omnibox and hold down the Alt key while you press enter, the resulting page will open as a new tab at the end of your tabstrip, leaving your previous page untouched.
Fresh from a Halloween weekend, we're excited to introduce a brand new beta for Google Chrome, which includes a few new treats and cool tricks for our users.
For those of you who use several computers -- for example, a laptop at work and a desktop at home -- you've asked for a way to keep your Google Chrome bookmarks in sync across multiple computers. Today's new beta release allows you to do just that! You can keep your Google Chrome bookmarks synchronized and up-to-date across the multiple computers you use, without needing to manually recreate your bookmarks every time you use a different computer.
For more on how to use bookmark sync, check out the video below from one of our team members, Anthony LaForge:
Once you've activated Google Chrome bookmark sync on each of your computers, any changes you make to your bookmarks will appear on all synced computers in just a few seconds. (For those of you who are curious, this bit of magic is made possible by the same XMPP-based servers that power Google Talk).
As with every release, this new beta comes with many speed improvements. In particular, as web applications we use every day become increasingly dynamic, browsers like Google Chrome need to be able to construct and change elements on web pages as fast as possible. We've improved performance scores on Google Chrome by 30% since our current stable release, as measured by Mozilla's Dromeao DOM Core Tests, and by 400% since our first stable release.
The beta channel provides a sneak preview of things to come with occasional rough edges and before most users see them, but it's a great way for us to quickly churn out new features and get your feedback. To try out bookmark sync and other beta features, download the beta version of Google Chrome.
Google Sidewiki was introduced a month ago as a new way of contributing helpful information to any webpage. Google Sidewiki appears as a browser sidebar, where you can read and write entries along the side of the page. A lot of great Sidewiki entries have since been written throughout the web -- a few of my favorite examples include a doctor's entry about flu vaccinations and these tips for tuning bass guitars.
Until now, Sidewiki was available only through Google Toolbar for Firefox and Internet Explorer. Today, we're excited to release the official bookmarklet for Sidewiki, which lets you easily read and write Sidewiki entries in Google Chrome, Safari and others browsers. The bookmarklet is a shortcut you can add to your bookmarks bar: When you click on the shortcut, it opens a window showing Sidewiki entries for the page you're currently viewing.
To add the Sidewiki bookmarklet, all you need to do is click and drag the bookmarklet embedded in the Google Sidewiki Help Center page to your bookmarks bar.
So what's the next step? We're working on a Google Chrome extension for Sidewiki. For more updates on Sidewiki, follow us on Twitter and stay tuned.
Earlier this week, I read an interesting article in the New York Times about shokunin kishitsu, or the 'craftsman's spirit.' The craftsman's spirit in Japanese culture basically appeals to all of us, regardless of vocation, to aspire to beauty in everything we do and create.
As we collaborated with artists around the globe to create themes for Google Chrome, we hope that bringing art from different cultures into the modern browser expresses some of that spirit. We've enjoyed hearing your thoughts on these designs and how you've used them to personalize your browser. For a friend who emailed me recently, the Hedgehog in the Fog theme brought back fond memories of his Russian childhood and the intrepid Yozhik (as the hedgehog is affectionately known in Russia). This Google Chrome theme is based on the 1975 animated film, which incidentally won "No.1 Animated film of all time" at the 2003 Laputa Animation Festival.
Beauty can be based on a heart-warming 34-year-old animation that makes us nostalgic, or cultural references that makes us who we are today. Our friends working on Google Chrome in Tokyo pointed us to a few Google Chrome themes that resonate with our users in Japan. These themes are based on a modern-day, participatory culture of remixing ideas. Take for example, the Google Chrome theme from global virtual pop star Hatsune Miku. Hatsune Miku began as a character in a vocal synthesis software package from Sapporo-based Crypton Future Media. But as musicians and artists created a body of work, including songs, drawings and animation for Hatsune Miku, she became a best-selling recording artist in Japan!
If you're curious for more, you can get a taste of Google Chrome themes from Japan, including TENORI-ON, Yamaha's nifty 16x16 visual musical instrument; the classic game Super Monkey Ball from Sega, and tea-loving ninjas Nintea from designer Panson Works and anime company Toei Animation (of Dragon Ball and Sailor Moon fame):
For the craftsmen -- the engineers -- working on Google Chrome around the globe, shokunin kishitsu provides lots of food for thought, as we continue to build on a browser designed to be fast, simple, and beautiful for users.
In the spirit of what our Japanese colleagues call "速い + ART" (or, speed + art), we'd like to leave you with a new video (with a surprise ending). Check it out at youtube.com/googlechromethemes, or by clicking on the image below.
In the most recent stable release of Google Chrome, we looked at ways to make a snappy, simple browser even more customizable, and we're happy to hear that you've enjoyed personalizing Google Chrome's look and feel with a few of our early themes for the browser.
Today, we are introducing Artist Themes for Google Chrome. We invited leading artists, architects, musicians, illustrators, filmmakers and fashion and interior designers from across the globe to create artwork for an unusual canvas: the modern web browser. The result is a vibrant fusion of art and technology, with a hundred Artist Themes that we hope will add a touch of inspiration and delight to your web browsing experience with Google Chrome.
One of our favorite themes comes from Yulia Brodskaya, whose innovative paper art techniques and passion for typography and illustration have brought her into the international spotlight. We were particularly intrigued by Yulia's approach to the design challenge at hand, explained in her own words:
I was really curious to see how the traditional paper craft, which I use for creating my work, can be applied to the Google Chrome browser. I made a quick pencil sketch first, choosing the two main elements for my theme: green jungle leaves for the top and a very colourful parrot to accompany it. Then I followed my usual working pattern and created a physical artwork out of edge glued paper stripes. I used the photographs of the paper leaves and parrot to design my theme layout, and sent the resulting mock-up to Google designers who brought the whole thing to life.
We're honored to have the opportunity to work with a hundred artists around the world, including Jeff Koons, Jenny Holzer, Karim Rashid, Jonathan Adler, Oscar de la Renta, Anita Kunz, Tom Sachs, Kate Spade, Donna Karan, Kid Robot, Dolce & Gabbana, Michael Graves, Todd Oldham, Yann Arthus-Bertrand, Mariah Carey, and Wes Craven (and that's just to name a few!). Many, many thanks to all the artists for lending their vision, imagination, and hard work to this collaboration.
If you haven't tried Google Chrome recently, download the latest version and give the Artist Themes a whirl. If you're already using Google Chrome, you can check out the themes gallery and try on your favorite Artist Themes.
Thanks to a full year of great feedback from our users, we're kicking off our second year of Google Chrome with a brand new stable release. This stable release incorporates many of the improvements and features that we tested out in our most recent beta release, including a 150% increase in Javascript performance since our very first beta, a freshly redesigned New Tab page, an improved Omnibox, Themes capability, as well as HTML5 features. You can get the full, play-by-play details on the Official Google Blog.
If you haven't tried Google Chrome recently, we invite you to give it a whirl. Many of the improvements in this release were inspired by the responses from users, so we're all ears if you have any feedback. If you're already using Google Chrome, you'll be automatically updated to this new version soon, but if you're itching to try this right away, download the latest version at google.com/chrome.
A lot has happened for Google Chrome since the day we prematurely shipped our comic book, announced Google Chrome just a day before we initially intended, and pushed our browser out of the nest and into Beta. To take stock of this past year, we thought we'd celebrate with a birthday cake, birthday balloons, and a few interesting factoids. Since September 2, 2008, there have been:
More importantly, we've improved by over 150% on Javascript performance since our initial beta:
We've also added some of the most commonly requested features -- including form autofill, side-by-side view, the ability to remove items from the New Tab page, and full screen mode (just hit F11!) -- and even a bit of magic to make the entire web three-dimensional (okay, that was just a joke).
There's still plenty for us to do. Extensions for Google Chrome are well underway. We're also hard at work on Google Chrome for Mac and Linux, which are making rapid progress on the developer channel. Our Mac and Linux versions are missing a few key features (such as printing), so we're keeping them in the developer channel a little while longer to make sure that they provide a satisfying native experience on these platforms and meet our standards for stability and performance. If you like living on the cutting edge and don't mind the work in progress, you can download Google Chrome for Mac and Linux today through the developer channel.
Before we blow out the candles on Google Chrome's first birthday, we'd like to send a huge thank you to all our users who browse the web with Google Chrome, provide great feedback, and shared your all-round awesomeness with us. The second year of Google Chrome's life is shaping up to be a pretty exciting one, and we look forward to an action-packed year for the browser and the web. Stay tuned.
When we launched Chrome Experiments in March, we wanted to create a showcase for innovative uses of web browsers and JavaScript. It was also our hope that artists and programmers from around the world would be inspired to submit their own experiments. Today, we're excited to announce that Chrome Experiments -- which started out as nineteen experiments at launch -- now points to fifty very impressive JavaScript experiments.
We'd like to send a huge thank you to the community for submitting such great work over the last five months. And we're thrilled to see many new submissions by developers from around the world, from Lithuania to Brazil to Australia. As the new generation of JavaScript engines make the web faster, we hope that you're enjoying the creative possibilities as much as we are. Some of our favorite new experiments include Depth of Field, Wavy Scrollbars, JavaScript Canvas Raytracer, and Bomomo.
The 50th Chrome Experiment, Sebastian Deutsch's 100 Tweets, shows a hint of the future by using the HTML5 canvas and audio tags. The audio tag, which is supported in Google Chrome Beta, allows audio playback without a plug-in.
We're very excited about HTML5 becoming standard in modern browsers. If you're thinking about submitting an experiment to Chrome Experiments, we'd love to see some innovative uses of this new standard. We're especially psyched about the video and audio tags.
If you haven't checked out Chrome Experiments recently, we hope that you take some time and explore all the latest experiments. Please keep the experiments coming, and, hopefully, we'll see you again at 100.
Improved New Tab Page: The most requested feature from users was the ability to remove thumbnails from the New Tab page. Now you can finally hide that embarrassing gossip blog from the Most Visited section. Full Screen Mode: If you've ever given a presentation or watched a large video using Google Chrome, you might have wished you could use every last pixel on your screen for the content. Now you can hide the title bar and the rest of the browser window by hitting F11 or selecting the option in the Tools menu. Form Autofill: Filling out your information in forms over and over again can be tedious. Form autofill helps by showing information you've previously entered into the same form fields automatically. If at any point you want to clear out your information, that's easy to do from the Tools menu.
Increased Stability: Google Chrome is more stable than ever--we have fixed over 300 bugs that caused crashes since launch. Increased Speed: Making the web faster continues to be our main area of focus. Thanks to a new version of WebKit and an update to our JavaScript engine, V8, interactive web pages will run even faster. We've also made sure that JavaScript keeps running fast even when you have lots of tabs open. Try opening a bunch of web applications and then running your favorite benchmark. You can read more about V8 in our JavaScript scalability post on the Chromium blog.
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