Webware

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!"

Amazon already has a free Kindle iPhone app. And soon it will have a free Kindle app for Windows PCs.

While the new app won't be available for download until next month, Microsoft demonstrated it at the Windows 7 launch event in New York City on Thursday. Like the iPhone app, Kindle for PC turns your PC into another reading device that can be linked to a Kindle account (you don't have to own a Kindle to set up a Kindle account). You can then choose to send Kindle e-books and periodicals to your PC via a wired or wireless network connection. Also, you can read an e-book on your PC while at home (or elsewhere), then send that same e-book to your iPhone or Kindle and pick up reading where you left off.

"Customers have told us that they want access to a wider variety of content and an increasingly diverse set of form factors," said Mike Nash, corporate vice president of Windows Platform Strategy at Microsoft. "With the announcement of Kindle for PC, Amazon is making its massive selection of Kindle books available on the world's most widely used platform."

Both Amazon and Microsoft are quick to note that Kindle for PC takes advantage of capabilities in the new Windows 7 OS, including Windows Touch technology. Also, the app isn't compatible with Windows 7 machines only, but will also work with Windows XP and Windows Vista computers.

Here's a list of features:

• Purchase, download, and read hundreds of thousands of books available in the Kindle Store
• Access your entire library of previously purchased Kindle books stored on Amazon's servers for free
• Choose from over 10 different font sizes and adjust words per line
• View notes and highlights marked on Kindle and Kindle DX
• Zoom in and out of text with a pinch of the fingers (Windows 7 users only)
• Turn pages with a finger swipe (available in a future release for Windows 7 users)

And what about a Kindle app for Macs? Well, Drew Herdener, Amazon.com's Director of Communications, tells us, "We will be coming out with Kindle for Mac in the next few months." Herdener also confirms that Kindle for Blackberry will debut soon.

To receive an e-mail when Kindle for PC is available for download, sign-up at amazon.com/KindleforPC.

Comments?

Programmers have mostly overcome a crucial hurdle to releasing a beta version of Chrome for the Mac, printing support, but several Windows 7 features won't make the cut for the present 4.x version of Chrome.

The Mac printing support is now added, according to the Google browser's issue-tracking system, though there are "minor remaining issues" and the new features aren't yet distributed with the software.

Google has cited Mac printing support as one holding back a Mac version of the browser. Mac support is important for the company's ambitions to spread the browser and its fast-Web philosophy to mainstream users. The Linux version, while less mainstream now, also is important since it's the foundation of Google's Chrome OS project to build a browser-based operating system for Netbooks.

But on the Windows side of the shop, a number of planned features to support Windows 7 were pushed back to the next version Chrome on Wednesday. That includes support for showing thumbnails of open tabs on the task bar, showing "jump lists" for quick actions such as links recently or frequently visited pages, pinning thumbnails to the task bar, and overlaying a download progress status bar on the Chrome icon.

The present beta and stable releases that Google issued Monday, Chrome version 3.0.195.27 (download for Windows only), are members of the 3.x family. The developer preview is in the 4.x family (download for Windows or Mac OS X). The Windows 7 features had been slated for the 4.x series, but now are planned for version 5, according to the issue-tracking system.

The change doesn't indicate the features have retreated into the distant future, though; Chrome version numbers change relatively rapidly, as evidenced by the move to version 4 in just over a year.

Also pushed back to the 5.x series is built-in support for discovering when Web pages have RSS feeds, one of Chrome's most-requested features. Its absence is ameliorated by a Chrome sample extension for RSS, though.

Extensions remain a work in progress. New ones are arriving steadily, and existing extensions such as Lastpass for filling in passwords and forms and AdSweep for blocking ads is progressing. But Google recently switched interfaces, dropping the use of a toolstrip across the bottom of the browser with pop-up "moles" in favor of browser actions, small icons along the top of the browser.

The Opera 10 browser is now ready to download for Windows, and Mac, and Linux, three months after the beta first emerged (hands-on Opera 10 beta review).

If you've been keeping up with the beta updates, the final build of the cross-platform browser shouldn't surprise you. Opera Turbo, the browser's much-publicized compression engine for slow-poke connections, remains a feature highlight. Opera claims that Opera Turbo runs the browser up to eight times faster on suffering connections than do competing browsers.

The refreshed user interface is also noteworthy. Joining the new default skin (changed from version 9.6), are changes to tab bar behavior. The conventional tabs double as thumbnail images. Double-click the thin gray bar below the tabs (indicated by dots) or click and drag to expand open tabs into preview windows that you can navigate by clicking among them.

Other enhancements include an expanded Speed Dial (a feature that has later been adopted and adapted in Google's Chrome browser) that shows more commonly visited Web pages than in previous Opera browsers. You're also able to customize it with a background picture. You'll see that spell check will be applicable to any text field (for 51 languages), and that Opera's incorporated e-mail client takes a page from Google's books by threading e-mail conversations.

Developers get access to a newer version of Opera Dragonfly, the publisher's online development tools, but everyone can benefit from the speedier rendering engine that, according to Opera, makes version 10 up to 40 percent faster than version 9.6--before switching on Turbo's compression.

Despite all the additions that Opera hopes will keep Opera 10 competitive, there are still two notable omissions for this final release. The first is Opera Unite, which uses your browser as a Web server for sharing your content with others. The second is the Carakan JavaScript engine that promises to process JavaScript about 2.5 times as fast as the engine used in Opera 10 alpha.

Related story: Opera 10 browser to emerge Tuesday

Google released an update for Chrome to fix compatibility problems with Snow Leopard on Monday, which along with other fixes shows the gradually maturing state of the Mac OS X version of the browser.

Chrome 4.0.203.4 for the Mac is only a couple notches up the version ladder than the version 4.0.203.2 it replaces, but there are some significant changes in the developer-preview software. For Snow Leopard compatibility, programmers fixed a garbled text bug, said Jonathan Conradt, a Chrome engineering program manager, in a blog post Monday.

Google began Chrome on Windows but has been gradually moving it to Linux and Mac OS X. Those versions so far are still only developer-preview incarnations not ready for prime time yet, though I find myself gradually slipping over to Chrome on my Mac system now that it's getting mature enough for me. I suspect a beta version isn't far off.

Google is fleshing out some basic features, though. One user-interface tweak enables support for command- and shift-clicking.

Another feature coming to the Mac is support for the tab-to-search feature in the omnibox. That lets you perform a site search directly from the address bar by typing a URL, for example news.cnet.com, then the tab key, then search terms.

Tab-to-search also works with Amazon, Google, Google News, and Yahoo, The New York Times, but not Bing yet. I search a lot, and this saves me one step and waiting for a page to load just so I can click in its search bar.

The most annoying issue I've found--and let me know if I'm missing something obvious here--is that I lose the file-upload dialog box while using Gmail with Chrome on Mac OS X if I switch away from the application while halfway through. If I don't attach a file immediately, that tab's instance of Gmail becomes useless because I can't get back to it.

Performance still is an issue with the Mac version, though. I was pleased to see some work on new-tab creation speed, with programmer Mark Mentovai using various changes to work the time from 1-3 seconds down to a fifth of a second.

Google is working hard to spread Chrome, though it has small market share at present. It's now installed as the default browser on some Sony laptops, as Endgadget noticed in July with the Vaio NW, and I heard about earlier in August.

Google has been advertising the browser as well and is at work making it the foundation of its Chrome OS.

Google has released a new Mac application that lets users search both their Macs and the Web in the same window as well as launch applications.

Google Quick Search Box was unveiled in January, but is now ready for a formal release, Google announced on its Mac Blog. It's a pretty lightweight application that Mac users can use as a universal search tool to find local documents, applications or Web sites featuring a certain term: for example, a query for "Wilco" allowed me to launch my iTunes library of Wilco songs, read news stories about the band, and find images.

It's basically a Googlized front end on Mac OS X's Spotlight search, according to a Web page explaining the difference between Google Desktop and Google Quick Search Box. The main difference between the two Google products is that you can launch applications from the Quick Search Box, which isn't possible in Google Desktop.

Techcrunch noticed that you can also use Google Quick Search Box as a Twitter client, because the world apparently needed yet another Twitter client. It doesn't appear that you can use Quick Search Box to actually do real-time searches of Twitter, however, which was the subject of much of the speculation regarding Google's potential interest in Twitter.

Updated 8:53 p.m. with download links and further details and 9:47 p.m. with hands-on testing results.

Google released Chrome for Mac OS X and Linux Thursday--but only in rough developer preview versions that the company warns are works in progress.

"In order to get more feedback from developers, we have early developer channel versions of Google Chrome for Mac OS X and Linux, but whatever you do, please DON'T DOWNLOAD THEM," Google product managers Mike Smith and Karen Grunberg said in a blog post, evidently trying to employ a little reverse psychology. "Unless of course you are a developer or take great pleasure in incomplete, unpredictable, and potentially crashing software."

Until now, Google's open-source browser has been a Windows-only product, and some Mac and Linux users have been clamoring for their own version. Google coders have been working to rebuild some Chrome components, such as its graphical interface and its sandbox that isolates different processes from each other, to move beyond just Windows.

Google offers three versions of Chrome: stable, beta, and developer preview. The Mac OS X and Linux versions fall into this last, category, the most buggy and least tested and complete.

The Flash plug-in won't work, for example, so forget watching YouTube videos. Printing or bookmark management aren't implemented yet. And privacy controls aren't fully baked. Google said there are more than 400 bugs that need to be stomped.

Even though only released for the experimental crowd, the new versions are a big step forward for the browser. First, the versions will plug into Google's auto-update service that automatically downloads new versions. Second, the products bear the Google Chrome brand, not just the Chromium label of the only incarnations available until now. And third, a much larger audience will be helping Google debug the code through automated crash reports of the new versions.

Not everyone can try the Mac and Linux versions, though. Google spokesman Eitan Bencuya said the Linux version is supported only the Debian and Ubuntu incarnations of Linux, and the Mac OS X version only works on Intel-based Macs.

I gave the Mac OS X version a 40-minute whirl and was delighted to find one of my favorite Windows features--fast launch. Pages loaded reasonably quickly, too, though a few times the browser seemed to hang while loading one.

The only pages that didn't work for me were Yahoo Mail, which told me I had an unsupported browser, and those that required Flash. But a number of complicated JavaScript-based sites, including Gmail, Flickr Organizr, and Google Docs, had no troubles.

The animation around the tabs is pleasing, but also helps your mind grasp what's going on. A new tab rises up from the window frame. When you close a tab, the adjacent ones slide over to fill the gap. The active tab is lighter, though the other tabs are not as relatively dark as in an earlier build that I tried.

I experienced what I thought was one crash I feared brought down my machine, but after about 15 seconds the browser and machine became responsive again as if nothing had happened.

I was pleased to see the three-finger left or right swipe work to page backward and forward. However, some keyboard shortcuts were flaky--or perhaps I just have to learn new ones.

Google isn't saying when the new versions will make it to beta status, much less stable. "It's unclear. This is a first step," Bencuya said.

After years of near-dormancy when Microsoft's Internet Explorer ruled the roost, the browser world again is on fire, fueled by competition and a new generation of more interactive Web applications. Mozilla is on the cusp of releasing Firefox 3.5, as is Apple with Safari 4 for both Windows and Mac OS X. Opera 10 is in beta, and even battleship Microsoft is slowly starting to speed up with the weeks-old Internet Explorer 8.

According to Net Applications statistics, Internet Explorer remains the king of the heap, with 65.5 percent market share in May 2009. Firefox has 22.5 percent, Safari 8.4, and Chrome has edged up to 1.8 percent since its launch in September.

All this variety means Web developers have to test their sites to make sure they work with more versions. Because Chrome uses the WebKit engine for interpreting and displaying Web page coding, the same engine Safari uses, Google argues that Chrome should be similar. But Chrome uses a different engine for JavaScript called V8, and Web-based JavaScript instructions are at the heart of much of the present proliferation of elaborate Web pages and applications.

The browser challengers argue that having multiple browsers on the market means that Web programmers will aim more for supporting standards such as HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), and JavaScript. And indeed, Microsoft made a standards mode the default for IE 8. However, varying interpretations of standard and varying degrees of support complicate the matter, and a large number of people haven't upgraded from IE 6, much less IE 7.

Update 9:19 a.m. PDT: I redid the benchmarks, and Firefox fared better.

I spent the better part of Monday trying out the Mac OS X version of Chromium, the open-source project on which Google Chrome is based, and I'm favorably impressed.

The software, available for download from the Chromium Web site, is incomplete and definitely buggy, as one would expect for a developer version that reflects all the latest changes programmers are making with the project. But for Mac users who've been clamoring for the software, I can tell you that overall, it works, and it shows glimmers of what I liked about the open-source browser on Windows.

I used build 15752, released at 8 a.m. PDT, but just to give you a flavor of the pace of publicly available Chrome development, 19 new versions arrived in less than 12 hours afterward.

So you'd be ill-advised to call this well-tested software that's had time to mature into stability. But I think it's good enough for the Mac curious to try.

So why bother?
There was a day, about a decade and a half ago, when a Web browser was a revolutionary technology. Google's browser is not that, but Chrome does have its moments, in my opinion: high performance in launching, loading pages, and running Web-based JavaScript programs; a get-out-of-the-way user interface; and a combination search and Web address bar called the Omnibox (though it should be noted that many see the Omnibox as a privacy invasion, not a useful tool).

Those advantages aren't enough to get most folks to install a new browser, much less uproot and change to a new default. But if you're a tech enthusiast, give it a whirl, and if you're a Web developer, take it seriously, given Google's muscle and its stated ambition to use Chrome to advance the state of the art for Web applications.

Google has put a lot on the line with the project, pushing Chrome by funding many programmers, paying for TV ads and launching promotional stunts, and Google is moving fast, and it's catching up to rivals' features.

Here's a snapshot of today's to-do list. Extensions, which in Chrome's case reuse Web page coding methods, are gradually maturing and should be available in more than their present rudimentary state. Themes, which will permit a custom look to the browser, are imminent: A "first pass" at the technology arrived Saturday in what will become a new developer version of Chrome.

Local storage, a feature of the still-unfinished HTML 5 standard that can improve performance and let Web applications work better offline, is due "real soon now," according to Chrome programmer Aaron Boodman. RSS feed subscription is en route.

"Stay tuned for some exciting new features we hope to land in the Dev channel," said Google Chrome Program Manager Mark Larson in a blog post Friday.

Bugs, naturally
The worst shortcoming I found for ordinary Web surfing was that Adobe Systems' widely used Flash technology didn't work. Sure, that means I didn't have to grimace through the Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow demo of banana aerodynamics, but it also means YouTube didn't work, which is a showstopper.

Also in my day's testing I got three crashes, none during particularly unusual activities. The first, while clicking a link in a Gmail message, took down the whole browser. The second two--while using Google Translate and Facebook chat--just crashed the tab while the rest of Chromium marched on unfazed.

Three crashes in a day is bad, but again, this is about as raw and untested as software gets, so I'll cut the developers slack.

I also had other problems. In Gmail, attachments didn't work, and in a Gmail message, labels were stacked on top of each other instead of running side by side. I had some sluggish visits of Web pages. I missed some keyboard shortcuts to command the browser to show downloads and to move back to the last page, for example. Google Docs wouldn't load until I appended the "?browserok=true" option to the Web address, and then, as with some other sites, it trouble with its frame across the top of the page.

But most pages did work for me, even ones such as Yahoo Mail and Microsoft Hotmail where I've had new-browser teething problems in the past. Most straight-up Web pages rendered just fine and only broke down when dealing with more elaborate JavaScript actions.

Speed tests
Even better, Chromium loaded them very quickly in my unscientific side-by-side tests of Firefox 3.5 beta 4, Safari 4 beta, and Chromium. I was trying this out on a 2.8GHz dual-core MacBook Pro with Mac OS X 10.5.6.

Somewhat more quantified were my launch-speed tests. Here, Chromium and Safari tied at about 3 seconds to launch after a reboot, though subsequent relaunches were all faster at about a second. One of the most pleasurable aspects of Chrome on Windows for me is its near-instant launch, especially given my need to reboot Windows XP about once a day, so I was glad to see this performance on the Mac, as well.

I'm also glad to see Mozilla has put faster launch speed in its priority list for the successor to Firefox 3.5, but to be fair, it's the only browser here that has extensions, so I'm willing to overlook a bit of programming overhead.

Then I did some real tests of JavaScript speed. All three browsers have been pushing heavily to improve how fast Web-based programs written in this language perform, with the likely end result that we'll see faster and richer Web applications. Google, developer of JavaScript-powered Web apps such as Gmail and Google Docs, has the most at stake of these browser vendors.

So it was interesting to see that on two prominent JavaScript speed tests, SunSpider 0.9 and Google's V8 benchmark, Chromium came out on top. On V8, where big numbers are better, Chromium scored 3,012 to Safari's 2,208 and Firefox's meager 168. On SunSpider, where short scores are better, Chromium scored 677 to Safari's 694 and Firefox's 1,059.

Note: I re-ran all these tests after a reader report that showed Firefox wasn't so bad. Indeed, it fared better on SunSpider after a reboot, and Safari moved up a bit on the V8 test.

However, on the Google-sponsored JavaScript Experiments site, Chromium on the Mac didn't fare as well.

On my favorite, Ball Pool Chromium couldn't handle the sloshing window-shake effects, and it looked to me like it lagged Safari in performance. Both fared better than Firefox, which was poky.

On another, RayTracer, Chromium handled the default graphics rendering in 5.8 seconds to Safari's 8.5 and Firefox's 25.6. On Wavy Scrollbars, Safari worked with aplomb, Chromium was broken with a static display, and Firefox wouldn't load it at all.

Does it look the same?
One Chromium-on-Mac aspect I was particularly curious about was to see how well the software fit in with the Mac. Would Google aim for something that looked identical to the Windows version, or try to fit in with the general Mac user interface?

Overall, the answer is the latter. For example, the Windows version puts its two menus for dealing with windows and tools to the right of the combination address and search bar Google calls the Omnibox. On the Mac version, menus are the plain old kind in the menu bar that always lives across the top of the screen, disassociated from the browser window itself.

And Chrome's blue color scheme on Windows adopts the Mac's neutral gray. Apple's subdued window-frame tones are nice when it's time to let the contents of a Web page or application stand out, but I like prefer something punchier when it comes to showing me which tab is active. Chromium on the Mac uses stronger contrast than Firefox and Safari to spotlight the active tab, which is a step forward in usability at least in my tab-infested life.

The user interface itself was familiar coming from Windows, aside from the aforementioned menu change. For example, opening the browser or a new tab shows, by default, the array of nine Web page thumbnails that Windows gets.

One of my favorite parts of the Mac, the multitouch trackpad, is largely ignored by Chromium for now, alas.

But I uncovered some niceties, too. First of all, I love the way new tabs sprout up--and that's coming from a person who disables menu animations in Windows. Second, I found that the new-tab view scales down the thumbnails when I shrank the window. It turns out that Chrome on Windows does this, too, but not with live images of the thumbnails resizing, so it's hard to notice.

When I surveyed readers about what it would take to get them to switch to Chrome, the second-place answer was lack of Mac support. Overall, it's clear that the Mac version, while certainly not ready for prime time, is well on its way. So all you curious Mac OS X users, take the plunge.