thechromesource - Google Chrome and Chrome OS News and Resources » Reviews

Flock Brings Organized Social Networking to the Browser

Daniel Cawrey — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 19:30:05 +0000

You’ve got your Facebook, you’ve got whatever you use to push out tweets. There’s Digg, Reddit and Stumbleupon for crowdsourcing the news you want. These, amid countless other social networking sites, pose an interesting question.

Is the browser really built for the social web?

The company Flock doesn’t seem to think so. That’s why they have built a browser based on Chromium (formerly, they used Firefox) that takes into account all of the various social networking sites. Instead of having twelve tabs devoted to all these sites, Flock simplifies the whole deal.

That’s helpful since we’re already bombarded with information constantly; being able to keep things under control actually has proven to make people more productive. Fewer avenues to veer off of in the browser can help people stay more focused on the task at hand.

Using Flock, it has the same general UI as Chrome. It has its own design flair of course, but if you use Chrome it will seem intuitive. Flock also could use its own icon since right now they’re just using the Chromium one which can be a bit confusing.

The browser uses a sidebar feature to separate browsing from your social networking accounts, something that the Chromium team has eyes on implementing for Chrome in the future as it would be useful when Chrome OS launches.

It’s great to see the efforts of the Chromium team used for other browsers such as Flock that have very specific purposes in mind. The Comodo Dragon browser, for example, uses Chromium in an attempt to create the most secure browser experience available.

Here’s a post by Flock VP of engineering Clayton Stark that was posted on the Chromium Blog about their move from Mozilla-based code to Chromium.

Keylight – A Musical Chrome Experiment

Daniel Cawrey — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 17:22:50 +0000

Seeing interesting new webapps is always fun, especially if they consist of using the new interactivity of the web in ways I have not yet seen before. Witness Keylight, created by Stockholm-based developer Hakim El Hattab using JavaScript and the HTML5 canvas tag.

By double clicking on different places of Keylight, you create points that generate sounds. The “playhead” then bounces around creating a succession of notes. There are six different levels of tempo you can modify as well in the upper right. This can create a nice little ditty at best or some really terrible dirge depending on where you place the points.

Once you have perfected your masterpiece, you can share the URL with whomever you would like, since the webapp saves it as a permalink you or anyone else can return to later.

Keylight can be hard on the ol’ CPU but that’s because of the way it was coded. According to Hakim, “It does eat up a lot of CPU, mostly because the sound effects are generated/synthesized through code at runtime rather than playing audio files from the server.”

Check out Keylight right here.

Earth Eternal: A Massive RPG in Your Browser

Daniel Cawrey — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 23:57:25 +0000

Yesterday I came across a 3D MMO role playing game called Earth Eternal that seems to foreshadow a coming trend in gaming – the browser-based experience. Earth Eternal runs in almost any current generation browser, and the performance of the game is pretty good. It’s impressive to see a game of this quality perform so well in the browser that you simply forget this fact once immersed in the gameplay.

When you head over to the EarthEternal website, you’ll first have to download the SparkPlayer plugin for your browser. This plugin is developed by SparkPlay Media, the company behind Earth Eternal. This plugin will be used by other games from the company in the future.

After the plugin is installed and your browser has been restarted, there is still a good deal of data that has to be downloaded before you can start the game. I didn’t have DirectX installed on my laptop, so that had to be done as well. Fortunatley, all of this is automated.

Once you get inside the game (more data files need to be downloaded to start, this takes some time) you can set up your character and get started. The game is based on missions that you complete, giving your character experience points allowing you to level up. Although it was first released in 2009, the game is still in open beta, so you can try it right now if you want.

Bottom line: this was a fun, simplistic experience to get started. The game itself has impressive graphics; SparkPlay media invested a good amount of money into the game, getting $4 million in funding to develop the game. Here’s hoping other game developers use the SparkPlayer plugin or its competitor developed by Unity to continue to progress the gaming experience in the browser.

Review: Chrome Canary – More Than One Browser Instance

Daniel Cawrey — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 18:46:46 +0000

I had recently written a post at the Chromium-discuss Google Group about a recent problem I was having with Chrome instances.

The pace of Chrome’s development is mind blowing. So when I read the Chromium-dev Group news about Chrome Canary, I was happy that the team is allowing more instances of the browser to be run for those of us who have a keen interest in Chrome.

However, does Chrome really need to have a stable, beta, dev and now Canary release? Under normal browser conditions, it does not. But because the pace of releases are being sped up due to Chrome being implemented as an OS as well as an integral part of Google’s TV initiative, it makes sense.

The real purpose is to put a canary build out that can be frequently updated, and possibly rolled back. The Chromium team realizes that the more eyes that are on their early builds, the faster potential problems can be worked out, thus speeding up the development life cycle. Note that this build is currently only available for Windows users.

When I first installed Chrome Canary, I was surprised to see that I was given a choice for which search engine would be queried when I put a term in the omnibox. Actually since Yahoo how uses Bing for search results there’s really only two options here.

Looking at the versions of these two instances, it appears that for now the two are running the same build so there’s really nothing intriguing to report on about canary for the time being. Although canary will only be used to push the more risky features into the build, we’ll keep updating on any of the most interesting changes.

Review: PageRank – Link Extend Extension

Daniel Cawrey — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 15:17:19 +0000

I have searched for some time to find an extension that would give me PageRank information, and the reality is that there are many out there that do not fulfill expectations. The best one I’ve been able to find is the PageRank – Link Extend extension by Linkular.

When you go to a site, such as YouTube, you’ll get a number for its PageRank ranking from the extension icon.

Clicking on the icon when you are at a subpage will give you information about the site. You’ll get page ranking, site ranking and subdomain information as well.

What’s even more useful is that when you perform a search, you can easily see next to each result what the PageRank is.
PageRank is a way to rate linking on sites and is thus an important element of the web. When you have your own site, you become more aware of it, and this tool has been by far the best one out of the many extensions out there that supposedly do this. It does its job, and stays in the background, perfect functionality for an extension.

5 Game Extensions in Chrome to Waste Your Time On

Daniel Cawrey — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 21:10:49 +0000

Now that it’s no secret that Google secretly invested money in social games maker Zygna, it’s pretty clear Google wants to get into the gaming market. There’s really no reason why they shouldn’t – making games easier to play on a PC than a console is a fantastic idea.

With that in mind, I decided to head over to the Official Chrome Extensions site and try to find some interesting games you can play in the browser right now. This is about as Googley it gets for games right now unless you check out Asteroids from Chrome Experiments. Also, it is expected that the Chrome Web Store will have some in-depth games when it is launched later on this year.

Keep in mind I limited this list to games you can play directly on top of the browser, not extensions that lead you to a gaming website. Hope you enjoy the ones I’ve found!

Mini Putt

There’s nothing like time wasting than spending it playing a little mini golf with this game Mini Putt. While this game feels a little bit like pinball with the speed that you are able to putt the ball, I like being able to try different shots out of the banked corners. I don’t know if this game is going to help my actual putting game, but it sure is fun to “putt” around with when I don’t have anything better to do with my time.

I think that I was spoiled with Snake, since Mini Putt is unable to bring me back to my game once I click out of it. How am I supposed to finish nine holes all at once? That’s asking too much.

McDonald’s Manager Game

It’s pretty clear that the people who developed the McDonald’s Manager Game have a distrusting view of the McDonald’s Corporation, but that’s what makes this game entertaining. In Sims-like fashion, you are put into the role of managing some of the business aspects of the fast food industry, from agriculture operations, marketing and even the day to day hustle of running a single store. Money goes out from business expenditures, and money comes in from customers buying those delicious burgers. It’s pretty fun.

One problem though is that once you start the game, I could not find a way to save it – although I think the point of this extension is just for some good fun from time to time.

King’s Quest

King’s Quest is an old Sierra Entertainment role playing game. You wander around looking for things and actions are based on a list of things that you can do. Although I don’t remember playing King’s Quest before, I remember that Sierra’s games got pretty involved, and I’m sure this game is the same way. I seemed to have a serious issue with constantly falling into the water, as shown above clearly our character in the game never found the time to learn to swim.

This game is a bit buggy, but it’s fun to walk around exploring. I also did not find a way to save – is there a recurring development issue I’m seeing here with these extensions not being able to store game data?

Tetris

Ah yes, the classic Russian puzzle game. They say that Tetris is actually good for your brain, which makes me wonder if that means all other games except for Tetris are slowly killing me, or that simply more professorial type people play Tetris leading to extensive research. That would be a fun academic project. Anyways, this game has been around long enough for everyone to know about it, so there’s really no explaining it.

This version of Tetris, Netris Deluxe, gives you a few customization options, allowing you to enter in your lines and your level. A big bummer with this extension is that you must use the mouse to click on the arrows instead of using a keyboard, which takes some getting used to, and means no turbocharging those blocks to the bottom. If you click out, well, no saved game for you on this one either. Better off using JC-Tetris, although that opens up in a totally different window which is very un-extension like.

Snake

Snake was one of those games that used to come with some older Windows machines. Instead of playing Solitaire or Minesweeper, I used to always enjoy the quick wits of Snake instead which requires you to go after objects that makes the tail of your reptile grow ever longer. This Chrome extension version of the game offers a slow speed easy difficulty and a fast paced hard setting. You just click on the box in the lower right to change the setting.

While this is a more basic version of the game than the original version I remember, it’s still fun. Plus, you can click off the game only to select the extension icon again later to pick up where you left off.

Conclusion

Not being able to save some of these games is a bit frustrating, especially since some of them get pretty involved. I know that many of these games are for fun to show what you can do with a little JavaScript, and hopefully in the future Chrome gaming will become even better. Have you come across a Chrome extension-based game I missed out on? Let me know.

Forecastfox is a Useful Chrome Weather Extension

Daniel Cawrey — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 20:57:40 +0000

Since the days of the notorious WeatherBug process hog, I have never really been into weather related add-ins, widgets or whatever-you-may-call-them. That’s probably because they have not been useful, end up taking too much of my PC system resources or a combination of the two. So when I installed the Ensolis Forecastfox extension for Chrome browser, I found it quite useful despite my misgivings. In fact, I think I like it.

After installing the extension you’ll need to configure your location by putting in your zipcode at the options menu. This can be done either by right clicking on the Forecastfox tab, opening the forecast and selecting option from the bottom or going through the extensions menu. If you are a frequent traveler, you can set up multiple locations and easily switch locations depending on where you are.

Finding out the current weather is real easy when you have the temperature and conditions displayed in the browser at the top right:

Click on the Forecastfox extension icon, and you get a quick rundown of the forecast for the next week, with the information being pulled from the Accuweather database. I was surprised how quickly this data was pulled, perhaps Ensolis caches the data as it is updated from Accuweather:

The extension also gives you a nice little red box at the top when there are severe weather warnings, as was the case for me a few days ago when there was a frost advisory in my area.

Forecastfox actually is a Firefox add-in that has been ported over by Ensolis as a Chrome extension. This is not a bad thing: the folks who developed this already had an existing product that they had a good following on (20 million downloads). I think we can expect to see more solid add-ins for Firefox be moved onto the Google browser platform as adoption levels continue to rise.

Try out Forecastfox for a good weather extension in Google Chrome. I promise it’s not like WeatherBug.

Improve Your Workflow with the Split Screen Extension for Chrome

Daniel Cawrey — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 01:27:08 +0000

It’s been said that you are able to be up to thirty percent more productive when you have two screens for your workstation. Unfortunately, due to the fact that many people have laptops or are experiencing some sort of expense constraints, often times only one screen is available. While this may not necessarily be the same as an extra screen, some developer out there took this as an opportunity and created the Split Screen Extension for the Chrome browser:

The split screen concept is pretty simple. In the upper right corner where most extensions reside there is a little monitor icon. Click on it and you get a new tab that loads up two evenly split screens, allowing you to enter the URLs of your choice on each side. It even seems to remember the sites you’ve been to, so it is taking Chrome’s history data into account as well. Nice touch.

It might be a good idea for the developer to have an icon for the split screen tab so it can be recognized, as right now there is only a generic page that identifies the tab. It’s just a suggestion.

There isn’t much more to this extension – right-clicking on the extension icon gives you the option to disable it, uninstall and of course to open another split screen window. I can see several good uses for this extension: making comparisons, copying and pasting, reducing the amount of tabs as well as just being more productive overall by having more than one site open at the same time.

Overall, a useful extension. I recommend trying it in full screen for the best viewing experience. You can check out the Split Screen Extension for yourself right here.

Comodo Dragon Browser Offers a Secure Browsing Experience

Daniel Cawrey — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 03:57:47 +0000

Comodo, a mid-sized security company based in the United States, has decided to release it’s own version of Chrome browser that puts a particular focus on security aspects. It’s Comodo Dragon Internet Browser, and the purpose, according to the company, is to offer a safer and more protected web browsing experience. Their website notes that there are millions of potential malware and privacy threats that are out there, and that this browser is built to protect from these vulnerabilities.

I went ahead and downloaded Comodo, and while you can tell that the Chrome UI has largely stayed the same, they have added their own skin to Comodo that make it their own. Like Chrome, when you install the browser, it allows you to import your things from whatever browser you have been using, which is helpful.

One of the first things I realized about this browser is that I was unable to install extensions. This would lead me to believe that Comodo Internet Browser is based on an earlier version of Chromium browser that did not support extensions, but I’m not entirely sure of that after reading their technical documents and forum. You are able to install your own theme – but for some reason you’re not be able to install extensions. That could be an issue for some people, especially since you aren’t even able to use Google’s own approved extensions from their official site.

It appears that the main benefit of using Comodo right now is to restrict Google themselves from accessing the information that is normally sent back to them while you surf. Features that are inherent to Chrome browser have been stripped out. This include things such as reporting back to Google’s servers of the version number of the browser, the GoogleUpdate auto-updater, usage statistics and RLZ-tracking, which sends to Google information about where you downloaded Chrome from.

Comodo claims to offer a faster experience than other browsers, but in a test between Chrome 5, Firefox 3.6 and Dragon using Sunspider Javascript benchmarking, they came in second after Chrome 5. Hopefully they can continue to develop their own flavor of Chrome, but I would be hard pressed to expect that they will be able to surpass the most recent Chromium browser source in terms of rendering speeds.

I surfed around with Comodo Dragon, and the experience wasn’t any different from using the latest Chrome version, which is 5 Beta right now. Although Comodo’s website says there are added security features, I could not find any located within the options menu. In fact Chrome 5 has more content setting options than Comodo Dragon, so my guess is that they plan on adding more features with a security focus soon.

You can download Comodo Dragon Internet Explorer right here. Unfortunately, it only runs on Windows for now – from XP and up.

Review: Chrome OS Flow

Daniel Cawrey — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 03:09:17 +0000

I’ve finally gotten Chrome OS Flow downloaded, imaged to a USB stick and running on a machine. It took some time, as when I started the download yesterday morning I came back later in the day only to find that less than half of the archive for the build had been downloaded before it petered out. Hexxeh noted this in his Twitter account, so this must be a widespread outage that occurred. Once I finally got the download finished in the wee hours, I couldn’t get it to run on any of my machines – probably because I wasn’t actually awake anymore.

The best part of this new version that I found was that it now can store your wireless settings. That’s helpful, because now you can jump right into whatever you need to do once you get logged in. In the past, you would get some ugly “cannot connect” pages every boot, but once you configure your network from the upper right hand corner for the first time, it is good to go.

For whatever reason, I was only able to use the facepunch/facepunch login to get into Flow. Attempting to use my own Google account would not work. Thanks to a commenter, I found out that a quirk to Flow requires me to login using a wired connection using my account, and then after that it is cached. Still dealing with beta, and that’s how it goes.

Flash is working on this one, and the sound is working too. The power indicator is also functional, although I never really had an issue with it in past builds. I busted out some tunes on Lala, and I was excited. This is starting to look like something I could use on one of my machines on a regular basis. YouTube videos ran fine, and I think Hexxeh had to spend quite a bit of time getting the Nvidia hardware to work correctly for Flow in order to get codecs to run.

I didn’t see any elements of customizable windows for the applications that had been previewed via a screenshot at first just a week ago. Hexxeh tossed a comment on this post saying it does work, by clicking on the Chromium logo in the upper left and it would pop up. It does work now, and you can get access to many web apps that are already out there. I had some problems moving icons around, but I’m still happy with the fact that these pseudo-bookmarks work to get me to places like Facebook, Google Docs and status updates for Flow.

There are added network preferences in the options menu, among a few other tidbits that have been changed. However, I don’t want to write too much, as this is still an early release and these things are subject to change. I know Hexxeh spent a lot of time trying to get this working, and he is planning on using his new auto-update system to work out any bugs and system changes that there may be. So go ahead and download this, try it out. The resources are on Hexxeh’s site, and include a bug tracker, so check it out right here.

UPDATE: I have modified this article based on the comments below. Feel free to offer your own. I have also found that Extensions do not work.

2ND UPDATE: Extensions do work, you have to hit Enter through the menus when asked if you want to install the extension instead of using your mouse. Its kind of quirky, but at least they are working.