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The developer preview version of Chrome now promotes an as-yet unworking link to an extensions gallery.

(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Google is on the verge of launching a Web site to showcase its extensions to customize what its browser can do.

The company's latest developer preview edition, Chrome 4.0.249.0, promotes the feature on its opening screen and its new-tab page. "New! Google Chrome now has extensions and bookmark sync," the page reads, offering a link to a site that's not public yet, https://chrome.google.com/extensions. (Bookmark sync is already available.)

Extensions and support for Mac OS X and Linux are the headline features of Chrome 4.0. It's available as a beta for Windows, with Mac OS X and Linux beta availability expected in early December. According to the Chromium development calendar, the beta is planned for December 8 release and the stable release of Chrome 4.0 is due January 12.

A number of third-party galleries for Chrome extensions already are available, but programmers for the project have said on mailing lists that a Google site is planned. Earlier this year, Google shipped a version of Chrome that pointed to a collection of visual themes before the Chrome themes gallery was actually live to the public.

Extensions are a key asset of one Chrome competitor, Mozilla's Firefox; extensions permit people to customize the browser and add new features without burdening the overall project. Firefox is getting a new extensions framework, Jetpack, starting with version 3.7 due in the first half of 2010, and Mozilla has just launched its own Jetpack gallery.

Google plans to release a Mac beta of Chrome in early December, judging by some chatter on a mailing list for the browser.

Chrome 4.0 is available today as a beta version for Windows but only as a rougher developer-preview version on Linux and Mac OS X. The standout feature of the new version is customization through extensions, a technology that long has been a core asset of another open-source browser, Firefox.

Google has been moving to a new extensions presentation technology called Browser Actions that let people interact with extensions through a small button toward the upper right of the browser window. "We've noticed that many of you have updated your extensions to take advantage of the new UI. We'd like to encourage the rest of you to do so as well," said Nick Baum, a Google Chrome product manager, in a mailing list posting.

But here's the hitch: Browser Actions only work on Windows and Linux right now. That means those building extensions will leave Mac Chrome users behind for a time. But in telling those developers they won't have long to wait, Baum mentioned the deadline for the beta version.

"The earlier you switch, the more time you will have to polish your experience for our Beta launch in early December," he said.

And Google is on the case for adding Browser Actions to the Mac version of Chrome.

"We realize this means dropping Mac support for a couple of weeks, but we already have people working on that," Baum said. "If you prioritize the Windows and Linux versions, we'll bring you cross-platform parity as soon as we can!"

Mozilla, racing to release Firefox 3.6 before the end of the year, has released a second beta of the open-source browser for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Firefox 3.6 beta 1 introduced most of the new features, most visibly the ability to customize Firefox's look through Personas, less than two weeks ago. But among the 190 patches in the new beta is what Mike Beltzner, Mozilla's director of Firefox, described in a blog post as "a mechanism to prevent incompatible software from crashing Firefox."

There also are a number of deeper changes in Firefox 3.6 that Web developers likely will be more interested in. Note that one of them, the ability to use color gradients with formatting technology called Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), has changed syntax in between Firefox 3.6 beta 1 and beta 2.

Mozilla is trying to accelerate the pace of Firefox releases; Firefox 3.7 is set for release in the first half of 2010 and 4.0 some time later that year. The project faces new competition from Google's Chrome browser.

Mozilla may have released the first beta of Firefox 3.6 nearly two months late, but the organization believes the final version still will arrive on schedule before the end of the year.

The Mozilla wiki page on version 3.6, code-named Namoroka, listed early September for the scheduled release of the first beta, but it actually arrived October 30. Despite that, Mike Shaver, vice president of engineering, said Mozilla wants to release the browser before the holidays and is sticking by the overall schedule for the open-source Web browser.

"We're still looking at a release candidate in November and (final) release in December at this point," Shaver said in a Tuesday interview.

That means Mozilla has a compressed schedule for producing the final version, but Shaver said coders are working hard. "We're not going to coast into it," he said. "We're going to continue shipping beta updates aggressively."

Those involved in open-source projects, with different motivations and pressures than those in the traditional proprietary software industry, sometimes have an attitude of "we'll ship it when it's done." Mozilla, though, recognizes that time matters even for an open-source project.

"We've always been more quality-driven than time-driven," Shaver said. "But we understand timing in the market matters to our users and our competitiveness."

More people will get a chance to try out bookmark synchronization with Monday's release of a beta version of Google Chrome for Windows.

Google introduced the bookmark sync feature for the developer-preview version in August, but now it's also in the better-tested beta version, Chrome 4.0.223.16. However, there's still no Chrome beta for Mac OS X or Linux.

In a video explanation, Google's Anthony LaForge somewhat breathlessly describes how the sync feature can keep bookmarks the same on multiple machines. That's a fair point, but let's be realistic here--bookmark sync in Chrome is more catch-up than paradigm shift. Indeed, with the popular Xmarks extension--in the works for Chrome, people can synchronize bookmarks among multiple browsers, not merely multiple computers.

And Chrome's clever message-based sync technology notwithstanding, Chrome bookmarks would be a lot more magical if they synchronized with the Google bookmarks service, which is linked with iGoogle and the Google Toolbar.

Speaking of extensions, one of the 4.x series' biggest features is the ability to accommodate extensions, but because Google is shifting the extensions interface, the feature isn't enabled in the beta version. Chrome is released in three versions: the roughest, fastest moving developer preview, the more stable beta, and the stable edition for the broadest audience.

The 4.x series has other significant features, too, though it's not clear whether they'll arrive in the beta or stable versions. One is Google's Native Client, which lets JavaScript applications take more direct advantage of a PC processor's horsepower through a careful security mechanism. Another is WebGL, a 3D interface that does the same with hardware-accelerated graphics.

Together, the features have the potential to dramatically improve the power and sophistication of Web-based applications. That's particularly interesting given that Google is building Chrome OS, a browser-based operating system.

The Mac version isn't in beta yet, but it's a priority.

"Our goal for this Friday is to be able to count our Mac P1 M4 release blocker bugs on one hand (we're in the 20s now)," said Chrome programmer Mike Pinkerton in a mailing list announcement on Monday. P1 bugs are priority-one; M4 refers to milestone 4, or version 4.0.

And Google is willing to put more manpower onto the Mac version, he added. "Everyone should have their P1 list practically at zero by the end of this week. If you are not going to be able to reach this, let me (or other triage folk) know ASAP so that we can get you some help.

Chrome edged up to 3.6 percent of browser usage for October, its highest showing so far in Net Applications' statistics since the browser's first public release 14 months ago. That's within striking distance of third-place Safari at 4.2 percent, but still well short of second-place Firefox at 24.1 percent and dominant Internet Explorer at 64.6 percent.

Chrome has helped fan the browser war flames even without becoming dominant, though. In particular, it's helped increase the emphasis on performance such as the speed to load the software, load Web pages, and run Web-based JavaScript applications. Here, more than with bookmark sync, Google's chest-thumping has some merit:

"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," said programmers Idan Avraham and Anton Muhin in a blog post. "We've improved performance scores on Google Chrome by 30 percent since our current stable release, as measured by Mozilla's Dromeao DOM Core Tests, and by 400 percent since our first stable release."

There has been some slowdown with the arrival of Chrome extensions, though, so Google will have some more optimization work to do to keep the browser in fighting trim.

Updated 9:57 p.m. PST with further details on the Mac OS X beta priority.

Those keen to try out Mozilla's latest browser--and its new process to update the software more frequently--now can try Firefox 3.6 beta 1 for Windows, Mac, or Linux.

Among the features in the new version, according to Mike Beltzner, Mozilla's director of Firefox, and Mozilla evangelist Chris Blizzard:

• Personas, which lets people customize the browser appearance. Personas has been available as an add-on, so there are plenty of Personas skins to choose from.

• Faster execution of Web-based JavaScript programs, better browser responsiveness, and faster startup time. Mozilla has been working on JavaScript performance for many months, but the urgency of that and other performance improvements increased with the arrival of Google's Chrome browser.

• The ability to drag and drop files from the computer to the browser. This is useful for uploading files to Web sites, as will a feature not in the beta but planned for the final version, support for the multiple-file input tag so more than one file can be added in Web forms.

• Expanded support for geolocation technology so it can provide a Web site with an approximate physical address of the user, not just latitude-longitude coordinates.

• The ability to detect the computer's orientation for machines that offer accelerometer support.

• Video built into Web pages with the HTML5 "video" tag now can be viewed full-screen.

Mozilla also released a full list of Firefox changes developers should know about with more details.

Firefox is at the vanguard of the second generation of browser wars. Although it competes with Google's Chrome, Apple's Safari, and Opera, all those browsers are also allied in a way against Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which though dominant is relatively slow at some tasks and only now complying more fully with Web page standards of yesteryear. The rivals, meanwhile, are pushing ahead with new features in HTML5 in development right now.

Mozilla released the alpha version of Firefox 3.6, code-named Namoroka, in August.

The organization plans to release the final version by the end of the year, with Firefox 3.7 in the first half of 2010 and Firefox 4.0 in about a year.

One complication of the upgrade is compatibility of add-ons that extend Firefox's features; the new browser version makes some changes. Mozilla is debating whether to release Firefox 3.6 as a minor update automatically distributed to 3.5 users or as a major update that requires those users to actively retrieve it.

One major element of Firefox 4.0 is a new add-on technology called Jetpack that eases this compatibility problem.

Updated at 6:25 p.m. PDT with comments from Hewlett-Packard.

Longstanding latent demand for PCs packing a new version of Windows is set to be unleashed, following Microsoft's nod Monday for a holiday release of Windows 7.

Laptop shipments should get a boost from Windows 7.

(Credit: Hewlett-Packard)

"There's a lot of pent up demand for Windows, particularly in corporate, which by and large passed on Vista," said Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies, a market research firm. "Dell and Lenovo should be relieved."

PC sales ground to a halt in the fourth quarter of 2008, after several years of consistent 15 percent quarterly growth, according to an IDC report issued earlier this year.

Windows 7 could change that. "The holiday timing will, of course, benefit consumer-oriented (PC makers) like HP and Acer," Kay said.

Windows 7 may also slow the migration to Apple's operating system. "Defections to Mac may slow. So, Apple won't be entirely happy," Kay said.

And how big is Windows 7 for hardware makers? "Win7 will have the fastest adoption curve of any new rev since Windows 95...I think you'll see adoption earlier than usual in commercial because the code is so stable. The old adage about waiting for SP1 (Service Pack 1) may not be as relevant this time around," he said.

Intel--whose processors will power the lion's share of Windows 7 PCs--is upbeat. "Our early testing is showing improved battery life for consumer notebooks, so Windows 7 should continue to improve the consumer experience," said Jeff McCrea, vice president of Intel's Consumer PC group, in response to an e-mail query. McCrea added that Intel's processors and chipsets work well with the initial beta version of Windows 7.

Hewlett-Packard is working closely with Microsoft, looking toward Windows 7 upcoming release. "We are working closely with (Microsoft) as they develop Windows 7 to make sure our customers can take full advantage of the latest features," HP spokeswoman Anne Finnie said Monday.

And PC graphics chip suppliers like Nvidia have been finessing their Windows 7 drivers in anticipation of a release of the operating system. "Windows 7 users now have the absolute latest in performance and support," said Dwight Diercks, vice president of software engineering at Nvidia, in a statement, referring to various technologies Nvidia is now supporting in Windows 7.

Select processors from Advanced Micro Devices do not support Windows 7 "XP mode" though, like Intel, the vast majority of shipping processors do support XP mode.

Microsoft describes XP mode on its Web site as follows: "As part of the upcoming Windows 7 Release Candidate milestone, Microsoft will release a beta version of Windows XP Mode, which allows users of Windows 7 Professional and above to launch many older Windows XP productivity applications directly from their Windows 7 desktop. The Windows XP Mode stand-alone feature is specifically designed to help small businesses that are using Windows XP applications move to Windows 7. For larger businesses, Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V) MED-V 2.0 builds on top of Windows Virtual PC and provides centralized management of Windows XP Mode. MED-V 2.0 will be available in beta within 90 days of general availability of Windows 7."

"All CPUs AMD is currently shipping, except Sempron, include AMD-V and therefore support XP mode," an AMD spokeswoman said Wednesday.

AMD also cited processors that are not necessarily shipping currently. "With the exceptions of Sempron-branded processors and Turion K8 Rev E processors, all notebook processors shipped by AMD include AMD-V and therefore support Windows 7 XP mode," AMD said. "With the exceptions of Sempron-branded processors and pre-Rev F Athlon branded processors, all of the desktop processors shipped by AMD include AMD-V and therefore support Windows 7 in XP mode."

And Opteron processors: "Also, all AMD Opteron processors shipped by AMD from Rev F forward include AMD-V," according to AMD.

A quick search on Best Buy's Web site turned up very-low-end systems that use the Sempron processor. For example, a $329.99 Acer desktop is currently being sold with a Sempron processor. And on Hewlett-Packard's Web site, an HP Compaq dx2450 Microtower (starting at $329), for example, can be configured with a number of different Sempron processors.

Dell has sold laptops, such as the Latitude D531, with AMD Mobile Sempron processors.

An earlier Nanotech: The Circuits Blog post cited Intel processors that do not support XP mode. Intel spokesman Nick Knupffer asserts this won't be a big issue. "Having VT (Virtualization Technology) on these consumer laptops is not going to be an issue--because the consumer versions of Windows 7 (Starter, Home Basic, and Home Premium) do not include Windows XP Mode," he writes.

Microsoft has failed to remove a long-recognized Windows Explorer security risk from Windows 7, according to security company F-Secure.

The "hide extensions" feature, which was present in Windows NT, 2000, XP, and Vista, is also included in the Windows 7 release candidate, Mikko Hypponen, F-Secure's chief research officer, said Tuesday in a blog. The feature could allow virus writers to trick users into opening and running malicious files, he added.

Images: A peek at Windows 7 release candidate

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"In Windows NT, 2000, XP and Vista, Explorer used to hide extensions for known file types," Hypponen said. "And virus writers used this 'feature' to make people mistake executables for stuff such as document files."

For example, malicious code writers could name a "virus.exe" file as "virus.txt.exe" or "virus.jpg.exe," he said. Windows Explorer would then hide the .exe part of the filename, meaning that the user would only see "virus.txt" or "virus.jpg." Additionally, virus writers could change the icon displayed with the file in Windows Explorer so it looks like the icon of a text file or an image. Users might then click on the disguised file.

The blog post appeared on the same day that Microsoft had been scheduled to make the Windows 7 RC1 available for download to the public, although the OS release did in fact arrive early. Microsoft made its Windows 7 release candidate available to MSDN and TechNet subscribers Thursday. Microsoft hasn't yet given a release date for the final product.

Microsoft had not responded to a request for comment at the time of writing.

Tom Espiner of ZDNet UKreported from London.