Google has built its Native Client technology into its newest version of Chrome, endowing the browser with new processing power for running Web applications.
Native Client, or NaCl for short, is an ambitious Google project that, if successful, will help close one gap that separates Web applications from those that run natively on a computer's operating system. That would improve the competitive position of Web applications such as Google Docs compared to Microsoft Office--and thereby boost Google's Chrome OS project in comparison with Windows.
Most Web browsers run programs written in JavaScript or perhaps Flash, both of them running on a programming foundation that makes those programs slower than native software. But Native Client lets programmers write software that directly taps into x86 chip models such as AMD's Athlon or Intel's Core. Secial programming tools and a screening mechanism in the Native Client software itself are designed to provide security for what has historically been the risky process of downloading executable programs from the Net
Chrome Version: 4.0.220.1, released Friday, "introduces the Native Client as a built-in feature for the first time on Windows," said Jonathan Conradt, a Google engineering program manager, in a blog post about the release. Previously the software was available only as a browser plug-in.
Google also offers a variety of basic tests and more elaborate examples of what Native Client can do, though it takes a bit of technical configuration to get them working. Among them are spinning ray-traced globes, the Game of Life, and the Quake first-person shooter video game.
Native Client shows how Google is using Chrome as a vehicle to advance its Web programming agenda. While some competitors such as Microsoft have a strong business of software that runs natively on a computer, Google wants software to run on central servers on the Internet.
This cloud computing approach has some advantages--being able to more easily collaborate and share documents for example, or to see and edit documents using any PC or smartphone. Google was born on the Web and has an incumbent's advantage there over rivals, but as an applications foundation, the Web remains slow and primitive compared to native applications in many regards.
Native Client isn't the only effort to change that situation. Google also has a plug-in called O3D--also a project it's building into Chrome--designed to let programs tap into hardware-accelerated 3D graphics. It works at a higher programming level than a related effort from Mozilla and Firefox called WebGL.
Google first released Native Client in December 2008. In June 2009, declaring confidence in NaCl's security model, Google it announced it was bringing Native Client out of research and into production.
Though Native Client is built into the new Chrome version, there are plenty of qualifiers for the release. First, it's only in the developer preview version of Chrome, and only for Windows right now. Second, it's disabled by default; adding "--internal-nacl" as a command-line switch at Chrome launch will activate it, according to an explanatory page.
The new version of Chrome offers a variety of other features too, notably a number updates for extensions to let people customize the browser.
For example, extensions now appear as an option on the wrench menu for browser settings. More obviously from a user-interface perspective, the browser actions interface (see illustration below) is now available to place extensions in the form of a button to Chrome's main toolbar.
Browser Actions is a new extensions interface that let browser customizations take the form of small icons in the browser's main toolbar. This illustration shows what Google believes to be an overabundance of such extension buttons.
(Credit: Google)
Even at the cutting edge of cloud computing, Web-based applications can be frustrating to write and to use.
Spreadsheets can't sort data well, there are lags between mouse clicks and the program's response, graphics look Mickey Mouse rather than lavish. But Google, among the most aggressive cloud computing advocates, is trying to address some of those shortcomings.
The company has released experimental but still very much real software that brings in some of the power of the PC, where people often use Web applications. Google Native Client--first released in 2008 but updated with a new version Thursday--is a browser plug-in for securely running computationally intense software downloaded from a Web site. And on Tuesday, Google released O3D, a plug-in that lets Web-based applications tap into a computer's graphics chip, too.
The projects are rough around the edges, to say the least. Native Client--NaCl for short--is more security research project than usable programming foundation right now, and O3D exists in part to try to accelerate the arrival of some future, not necessarily compatible, standard for building 3D abilities into Web applications.
Google Native Client is shown here running a fractal landscape explorer.
(Credit: Google)But both fundamentally challenge the idea that Web apps necessarily are stripped-down, feeble counterparts to the software that runs natively on a personal computer, and they come from a company that has engineering skill, a yen for moving activity to the Internet, and search-ad profits that can fund projects that don't immediately or directly make money.
"There are things you can do in desktop apps that you can't do in Web apps. We're working very hard to close that gap, so anything you can do in a desktop application you can do safely and securely from a Web application," said Linus Upson, a Google engineering director.
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