Webware

The beta version of Chrome for Mac OS X is available. Google released its browser beta for Linux too.

(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Two key pieces of Google's effort to make Chrome a more competitive browser fell into place on Tuesday as Google released beta versions of the browser for Mac OS X and Linux.

Tuesday's software release is a version of Chrome that had previously been available only as developer preview software for Mac and Linux machines. "It took longer than we expected, but we hope the wait was worth it," product manager Brian Rakowski said in a blog post.

Macs are widely used, if not as common as Windows machines, and there's been some demand in tech circles for the Mac version of Chrome. Linux, while less widely used among ordinary computer users, has importance of its own: it's the foundation for Chrome OS. That's the browser-based operating system Google hopes will be popular on Netbooks starting next year.

According to the Chromium development calendar, the beta versions are scheduled to graduate to the next level of maturity, "stable," on January 12. Chrome for Windows graduated out of beta almost exactly a year ago.

Google doesn't emphasize product version numbers in the project, instead automatically delivering updates behind the scenes to the browser that take effect when it's restarted. But it does use version milestones to keep track of development internally.

The biggest new feature of Chrome 4.0 is support for extensions, which let people customize the browser. In the Mozilla world, they're called add-ons, and they've been a big part of Firefox's success.

Mac OS X has a mandatory menu bar, so unlike the Windows version, Chrome on the Mac has traditional menus.

(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Extensions aren't useful, though, unless people can find them. Google on Tuesday also launched a Chrome extensions gallery page.

There are more than 300 extensions available for Chrome, extensions programmers Aaron Boodman and Erik Kay said in a blog post.

However, extensions on the Mac aren't yet available, though they had been for a time in the developer-preview version. "Extensions aren't quite beta-quality on Mac yet, but you will be able to preview them on a developer channel soon," Rakowski said.

Also on the Chrome for Mac to-do list: a bookmark manager, PDF viewing in the browser, bookmark synchronization, 64-bit support, and my personal favorite differentiator of Firefox 3.6 on the Mac, full-screen support.

Chrome now has an extensions gallery.

(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Why try Chrome?
For those of you new to Chrome, here's a brief version of why it's my default browser on both Windows and, as of about a month ago, Mac OS X. Your preferences and needs may vary, of course, and I still use Firefox every day, too.

• Speed. It's fast to start up, though not quite as snappy as it once was now that it's not so bare-bones, and rivals are making progress. It's also fast loading Web pages and running JavaScript programs on them.

• Tabs. I spawn innumerable new tabs all day long, and when it takes a long time (I'm looking at you, Internet Explorer), I get infuriated. I also like the order in which new tabs arrive, a style Firefox is mimicking.

• The omnibox. It's a single bar that merges the utility of an address bar and search bar. I hit Ctrl-L (on Windows) or Command-L (on Mac) to pop my cursor up there, and start typing. One nice--if somewhat obscure--feature is fast site search on some domains, so for example I can type A, M, tab, and up pops an Amazon.com icon; what I type afterward is entered as a search on Amazon. That conveniently gets me straight to the search results so I don't have to see yet another Kindle ad.

• A minimal user interface. When browsing, I like my user interface to step aside and make way for the Web page. Scrolling was a wonderful innovation in computers a few decades ago, but I like to avoid it when I can. Chrome puts tabs in the real estate ordinarily devoted to a program's title bar and shuffles the menu controls off to the right of that tab strip (though the Mac version gets a regular menu bar).

Another potential perk: avant-garde Web technology, including WebGL and O3D for accelerated 3D graphics and Native Client for speeding up Web apps with direct access to a processor, are being built into Chrome. Another such Google project, Gears, is already built into Chrome--though Gears doesn't work on Mac OS X 10.6.

There are things you might miss--the full panoply of Firefox extensions, toolbars from Google or others, print preview. And the "browser not supported" error messages on various Web pages are annoying, though in my experience there's rarely an actual compatibility problem. Overall, I like it.

Is Google spying on me?
If you're worried about what new data Google will be able to harvest on you, I recommend a close read of Google's Chrome privacy page. This doesn't worry me much, but I may be insufficiently paranoid. In my opinion, the biggest thing is that Google stores 2 percent of the data it gathers when people type text into Chrome's combination search and address bar, called the omnibox.

That means Google can see not only what you're searching for (as it would for any Google search), but what Web site addresses you're typing as well. The data is anonymized within 24 hours, Google said.

Also, Chrome has a feature called DNS pre-fetching that tracks down the Internet server addresses on Web pages in anticipation that you'll be clicking links on the page. So Chrome--and Google, too, if you're using Google Public DNS--retrieves this information from the Internet.

Updated at 12:30 p.m. PST and 1:20 p.m.. Added further detail.

The first program I open every day is Firefox, and most days the first Web site I visit is Google. That's why I'm glad so many Firefox add-on developers have created tools that give me a new perspective on my Google search results. Here are three of my favorites.

Sharpen your searches with GoogleEnhancer
The primary reason I click Google's Advanced Search option is to limit the results to a specific date range. With NettiCat's GoogleEnhancer add-on I can narrow my searches by date as well as by file type and a handful of languages via drop-down menus that are placed to the right of the search box.

The GoogleEnhancer add-on for Firefox puts drop-down menus next to the text box that let you narrow your results by time, language, and file type.

(Credit: NettiCat)

As nice as the search enhancements are, one of my favorite GoogleEnhancer features is the addition of icons to the left of the results for each link's site. The add-on also numbers the results, though these don't really add much to the results, in my opinion.

... Read More

I've been working on a new Web site for the past few weeks. But instead of doing it alone, I decided to get some help from Firefox extensions. They've made my work a lot easier, and they all can be downloaded in just a few seconds.

Aardvark: Aardvark lets you select elements from a Web page and perform various actions on them. I use it to analyze the structure of a page. You can also remove and isolate elements or generate DOM code. I highly recommend it.

Find any code for the color you want.

(Credit: ColorZilla)

ColorZilla: If there's a color on a Web page that you like, ColorZilla will find the precise code for it and allow you to paste it into your coding program. You can also create custom colors with its built-in palette browser. It saves the most-used colors for easy access later on. It's powerful, it's simple, it's a must-have.

CSS Validator: CSS Validator adds a right-click option in your browser, sending the CSS to the W3C CSS Validator. It opens the results in a new tab. CSS Validator is a nice tool that will come in handy often.

CSSViewer: No Web designer should be working without CSSViewer. The add-on informs you of all the CSS information you'll need from a site. Simply click on the page you want, open it in the Tools menu, and it will display CSS information. I use it almost every day.

FireBug: Firebug is one of those extensions that you simply can't be without. It lets you edit, debug, and view CSS, HTML, and JavaScript. Once you make a change to the HTML on the site, Firebug automatically displays it in the same pane. It's extremely powerful.

FirePHP fills you in on all the issues with your PHP.

(Credit: FirePHP)

FirePHP: FireBug is a fine tool for CSS, HTML, and JavaScript, but FirePHP, which only works when you have the FireBug extension installed, creates a full-featured development experience. With the help of both add-ons, you can view the quality of your PHP and find errors. It's a great aid.

Font Finder: Font Finder allows you to highlight a font you like on any site, right-click on the selection, and after choosing "Font Finder", view the full CSS text styling of the selection. You can then paste that into your own Web page.

HTML Validator: HTML Validator is an extremely powerful tool available to Windows users only. The add-on gives you feedback about errors on the page. It also lets you know where problems need to be addressed. But unless you're an advanced Web designer, stay away from this tool. It's very complicated.

IE View: As long as you're running Windows, IE View is a helpful tool. The extension adds an "Open in IE" option in the right-click menu, allowing you to quickly open a site in Internet Explorer. It's a great way to check how a page looks in both browsers.

Google has begun work on one much-requested feature of its Chrome browser, the ability to detect when a Web page offers a subscription service through RSS or Atom technology.

Google programmer Finnur Thorarinsson formally marked the RSS support issue as "started" on Wednesday, though the feature is disabled for now.

"The first part of this has been implemented and checked in," Thorarinsson said, referring to the part that discovers when RSS feeds are available on a Web site. The feature is disabled for now, though, because the second part, which will produce a page that lets people actually subscribe to the feed, isn't yet available, he said in his comment about Chrome's RSS support.

When Chrome debuted in September, many often basic features available in rival browsers were missing. Google has been working feverishly to add them, though. A total of 250 people flagged RSS support as being an issue of interest, second only to the Chrome extensions, which 725 people flagged.

Google is working on extensions, too, which will let people customize the browser with features such as ad blocking. Extensions are a popular selling point with Firefox, the second most popular browser after Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Earlier this week, Google programmer Aaron Boodman published a how-to guide for writing Chrome extensions. "Right now extensions can only really contain content scripts, so that is all this doc covers. But we'll be expanding it over time as more features develop," Boodman said in an e-mail announcement of the how-to document.

The document caught the attention of another Googler--Matt Cutts, who oversees Google's efforts to screen Web spam out of search results but who also blogs more broadly. "I'm sure the Chrome team is thinking about ways to add more functionality to extensions, but the current developer version of Chrome already lets you do a lot of neat things," Cutts said in a blog post about using the Chrome extensions framework.

Boodman, though, followed up with a note of caution in a blog post of his own that said Cutts jumped the gun. "There's not much to see yet," he said. "We're working on more toys, and you can bet we'll start blogging when there's something to play with. But not... quite... yet."

Google has published its plan to build into Chrome what is arguably its most requested feature: the ability to accept extensions that can customize how the open-source Web browser operates.

And guess what? Google's dependence on advertising notwithstanding, one of the extension examples the company points to is the ability to block advertisements.

The Chrome extensions document, spotlighted Saturday by Google programmer Aaron Boodman, doesn't include a timeline, but it does shed light on why the project is a priority for Chromium, the open-source project behind Chrome.

"Chromium can't be everything to all people," according to the document. "User-created extensions have been proposed to solve these problems: the addition of features that have specific or limited appeal; users coming from other browsers who are used to certain extensions that they can't live without; bundling partners who would like to add features to Chromium specific to their bundle."

When Google launched Chrome three months ago, it promised a Chrome extensions framework. Extensions are a popular feature of Chrome's most likely rival, Mozilla's Firefox, and one very popular extension is AdBlock Plus.

And AdBlock makes a specific appearance on the list of extension uses that Google said it would like to support eventually:

• Bookmarking/navigation tools: Delicious Toolbar, StumbleUpon, Web-based history, new tab page clipboard accelerators.

• Content enhancements: Skype extension (clickable phone numbers), RealPlayer extension (save video), Autolink (generic microformat data--addresses, phone numbers, etc.)

• Content filtering: AdBlock, Flashblock, privacy control, parental control

• Download helpers: video helpers, download accelerators, DownThemAll, FlashGot

• Features: ForecastFox, FoxyTunes, Web Of Trust, GooglePreview, BugMeNot

Demand for extensions is real.

In an unscientific CNET News poll about why people don't use Chrome, about 19 percent pointed to the lack of an extensions feature. And on Google's issue tracking site for Chromium, a Chrome extensions feature is the top-requested item.

"Of all the Firefox plug-ins, this is the one essential one," said Firefox user Ole Eichhorn. "Chrome is faster until you factor in all the cruft that gets downloaded as ads, then it isn't faster anymore. When Chrome supports AdBlock, it will be the winner, but until it does, Firefox is the only choice."

In its document, Google described some of its goals for Chrome extensions. The extensions should silently update, just like Chrome does. They should be isolated for security reasons and only get access to resources it's entitled to use. Installation should be easy, taking only two clicks.

They should permit rich user interface options--rich enough to implement some parts of Chrome as extensions, Google said. Among the interface options should be "toolbars, sidebars, content scripts (for Greasemonkey-like functionality), and content filtering (for parental filters, malware filters, or AdBlock-like functionality)," Google said. Some interfaces will require the user to grant specific permissions, such as "access to the history database" or "access to mail.google.com," Google said.

Google will play a major role in extensions, providing a central service that can be used to issue updates and to blacklist "malicious or harmful extensions" so the browser won't use them.

"It's likely in the future we may want to provide a consumer front-end which would allow users to more easily find the most popular, highest quality and trustworthy extensions," Google also said.

Galleries of images set off against a black background have become common as software and Web sites try to help people show off their photos better. Cooliris' PicLens offers a clever way to do set up such galleries from many Web sites on the fly.

a view of PicLens in action

(Credit: Cooliris)

The PicLens browser extension can convert a bunch of images from Google and Yahoo image search, Flickr, Picasa, Facebook and RSS Media-based sites and other locations into a full-screen gallery of pictures. The photos slide by at a stately pace or advance when the user clicks the keyboard's arrow key, and a handy filmstrip across the bottom aids in jumping to the photo you'd like to see.

The first 1.0 beta version worked only on Apple's Safari browser on Mac OS X, but a new version 1.5 beta released this month now works on PicLens now works with Firefox on Windows. In addition, with the new Safari 1.5 release, PicLens for the Mac now is out of beta.

I found the software worked on Firefox, but imperfectly. The on-screen controls were missing the first time I used it, though they appeared after a reboot. I couldn't get it to work with Picasa Web albums. The interface could use a button to exit.

And alt-tabbing to switch between applications seemed to send PicLens into a zany limbo zone. Apparently the software won't yield control of the screen to other applications, but the mouse and keyboard interact with whatever software is hidden underneath. If you alt-tab back to PicLens/Firefox, though, you can resume using it or hit the escape key to exit.

One disappointment--and it's not really PicLens' fault--is that low-resolution previews such as the default Flickr photostreams look pretty coarse when scaled up to full screen, but the full-size images that can be found through Yahoo image search, for example, can take a long time to download. And because of the aforementioned screen-hogging issue, you don't have much choice but to wait or exit.

(Via John Nack)

Weezu is a downloadable chat app that runs as an extension in both Firefox and Internet Explorer. Like some of the other chat apps we've covered lately, Weezu resides in a sidebar on your browser. It's a bit more graphical than some of the other extensions out there, and if you want something that's a little prettier than plain text, Weezu's for you.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

One of the things that attracted me to Weezu was its eccentric interface, which puts you in several different locals and is completely skinnable. My favorite is the sea floor--if you had kids they'll likely enjoy this. When you're not interested in chatting, Weezu can be hidden. Settings and messaging commands reside on your "command module," which also houses your user avatar and chat boxes. Other users show up as floating heads, clicking on them starts up a chat right away.

Weezu is an interesting chat service. It's really simple to use and can be turned on and off at any time, but it lacks some of the ease of entry I've seen with the no-download chat solutions. You still have to install something, which might keep the casual user from committing. There also are not a whole lot of people using the service right now, which isn't Weezu's fault, but rather the design of any of these browser chat services that spread users out across the entire Internet. Weezu has several language localizations, the English one can be found here.

See also Me.dium and Dai.sy.

On Monday, Mozilla launched an updated version of its add-ons page for its popular browser Firefox. The new page has redefined genres, language localization, and snazzy Ajax-enabled previews for screenshots. Mozilla also is adding a user community element that allows users to add their own reviews, complete with a rating system. Previously, you were only able to add comments. Mozilla also has cut hundreds of extensions to make room for the more popular ones, making the updated site more of a "best of" than a full compendium. New or noteworthy extensions can be voted up to popularity with user reviews. If users want the full list of extensions, they can go to Mozilla's developer community page.

The move caters to new Firefox users who might not be so familiar with extensions, and aims to weed out some of the older extensions that don't work with more recent builds of the browser.

The team behind the popular browser extension FoxyTunes is hard at work on a new mashup site that integrates the music controls of FoxyTunes with an aggregation tool to give you more information and media about your favorite musical artists and new discoveries.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Each FoxyTunes Planet artist page has several customizable widgets. There are Flickr photos, YouTube videos, albums for sale from Amazon, and even various Internet radio stations such as HypeMachine and Last.fm where you can listen to the band's other songs. If you're like me, you might be listening to a Shoutcast feed on iTunes and come across an artist you like but aren't familiar with. If you have FoxyTunes installed, clicking the little Planet button brings up the artist's page on FoxyTunes Planet.

If you want to find out more about a band that you're not currently listening to, the FoxyTunes Planet site uses a simple search interface that returns artist pages, in a system akin to Google's. Results are fast and even obscure artists are likely to return some information. If you want to add more widgets to the results page, there are currently 12 others to choose from. Rearranging them on the artist page is accomplished by simply dragging and dropping.

FoxyTunes Planet is a handy tool for music discovery. You could accomplish something similar using an aggregator like Netvibes, but the seamless integration with FoxyTunes makes sense. FoxyTunes Planet is in private beta; you can sign up here. You can download the original FoxyTunes for Firefox or FoxyTunes for Internet Explorer at CNET Download.com.