A very interesting series of tweets from Liam Mcullough earlier this week. For those of you who don’t know, Mcullough- also known by his nickname, Hexxeh, is the man who’s more or less been solely responsible for pretty much every Chromium OS release since Chrome first hit the market. He’s also the fellow who loaded Chrome onto a Macbook Air. With that information in mind, it was pretty clear what his intentions were when he tweeted on Sunday that he was “picking up an Asus transformer tomorrow, with the keyboard dock.” That said, he continued by establishing that he was “not interested in running Android on there.”

After spending about a day fiddling around with his new purchase(which apparently rather impressed him), Hexxeh managed to load Google’s Chrome OS onto the rig, as made evident by the screenshot above. Though it’s kind of hard to tell due to the lighting, that is none other than the Asus Eee Pad Transformer, complete with a shiny new OS- and it definitely isn’t Android.

Now, before you folks go getting all excited; there are a few things we’ll first need to establish. One; this isn’t as much of a total system overhaul as with the Macbook Air, either- in this case, he booted straight from a USB drive, in order to make it easier to work on the image. Second, the current build of Chromium on the Transformer is suffering from some…pretty nasty bugs, if Hexxeh’s to be believed. When asked about how well it ran, he responded with the following:

“runs terribly things to some huge bugs in the LDK, gonna try to work around them by patching Chromium and the WM. Basics like WiFi, touchscreen work, sound is MIA right now but that’s an easy fix.”

So….long story short, he’s still working feverishly on getting this system up and running. Those of you expecting a touch-based UI might be a bit disappointed, though. Hexxeh’s made it clear that he’s not keen on building a touch interface for the transformer at the current moment- seems likely he’s more focused on getting the basics working before he starts fiddling with the onscreen keyboard- something which is made possible thanks to the transformer’s rather excellent keyboard dock.

Currently, Hexxeh’s managed to shave ten seconds off the boot time of the Transformer (No word on how long it takes to load, I’ll keep you posted), and the release date for this build is…basically “TBA.” According to Mcullough, when or if he releases this build hinges entirely on when he finds the time to finish it.

Considering how fast he seems to work, I’d imagine it’ll probably be some time next month.

Either way, it’s pretty exciting news- as he put it, the experiment is basically “complete proof of concept” regarding the viability of Chrome as a tablet OS. Of course, we sort of knew the concept was true from the beginning- Hexxeh’s just demonstrating it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

You can follow Hexxeh on Twitter here, or visit his blog and toss a donation his way here.

Image Credits: Hexxeh

Looks like Google might be working on a tablet that runs Chrome OS. Or at the very least, the Chromium team’s working on one that’ll run Chromium.

Now, we don’t have much to go on here. There’s been a lot of rumors and heresy bouncing about on the web about this. Ever since the Chromebooks first hit the market, folks have been buzzing about the possibility of tablets, pointing at this move by Google or that action by the Chrome Team. And while it’s true that there is some evidence that points to the eventual development of a Chrome OS tablet…we might not be seeing one for a very, very long time.

And in the event that we do eventually see one, it might not necessarily run Chrome-or be officially released by Google. In all likelihood, It’s going to run Chromium; the closest we can get to Chrome without actually running Chrome. This seems especially likely; in light of what Senior VP Sundar Pichai said on the matter:

Chrome OS is a computer model designed with various form factors in mind but we are entirely focused on the notebook form factor for now. We have no other plans at this time.

Of course, there’s the fact that Google’s actually released a prerendered video of what a Chrome tablet might look like, and that they’ve reportedly been working on a Touch UI…From here, it seems like the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand’s doing, to turn a phrase. Plus, Pichai’s statement was made two months ago…and things change.

Chromium On A Tablet

Earlier today, eminent Google Geek Francois Beaufort did a bit of speculating of his own. “This morning,” he posted on Google + August 5; “I was wondering if Google Chrome Team worked a little bit more on the Touch UI during my holidays. Answer is not so much sadly. However, I made a silent screencast for you guys.” He then proceeds to link what appears to be a demo of Chromium running the touch UI, seen above. It actually looks pretty impressive.

The soft keyboard seems responsive and looks good; the autocomplete function seems to work pretty well, and I certainly like the look of the home screen. On the other hand, the wrench menu seems to ‘bleed’ off the bottom of the screen a bit- not sure if that’s a result of the video capture software, or an issue with the build- either way, it looks a little bit sloppy to me. Other than that…it’s pretty much Chromium. And that’s a good thing.

In any case, Beaufort’s video looks good, but definitely speaks volumes about the stage this build is in- it won’t be hitting the market for a long while yet- particularly since it’s fairly clear that the ‘touch’ portion of the interface isn’t quite up and running yet.  Hey, it’s something to look forward to, right?

 Final Thoughts

Personally, I think Chrome would make a rather excellent tablet OS. I was a little bummed when Pichai announced that they wouldn’t be manufacturing a Chrome tablet in the foreseeable future- but not particularly surprised. See, I can think of a pretty likely reason why Google’s not yet introduced a Chrome tablet relates at least marginally to their currently dominant platform, and its name is Android. It’s a pretty dominant force in the mobile market, and releasing Chrome OS as a potential competitor to Android…might run somewhat counter to Google’s  recent efforts at consolidating their products.

Right now, some of their holdings include Chrome for web browsing, Google + for social media, Android for mobile platforms and Chrome OS for…well, Chromebooks. Releasing their OS onto a new platform could end up being something of a fragmentary move, and I’m not certain it’s something Google really wants to commit to.

Still, if they’re not planning a tablet release of Chrome, why would they have the Chrome team working on a touch UI? Could there be a Chromebook in the future that features a touchscreen, or could they really have pulled a 180 on their ‘netbook only’ stance for Chrome? Then again, it’s Chromium we’re talking about here, so there’s a good chance the folks who are working on the touch UI could be working at least somewhat independently of Google.

Open source, and all that.

So what do you guys think? Could Google have a Chrome OS tablet in the works? Will the video linked by Beaufort end up being part of an official Google product, or will it remain part of Chromium- simply an open-source project that could be installed on a tablet?

There are quite a few questions, and definitely not enough answers for my taste.

Via Good E Reader, Web Pro News

Image Credits: Good E Reader,

So, we’ve got a (relatively) new functionality in Google Chrome’s browser and OS. Known as chrome://sync-internals, it’s pretty much what’s written on the box- it lets you view internal and technical data about your connection to the Google Cloud. It’s pretty simple to use, and pretty simple to navigate as well- though I get the feeling that several tabs (and for that matter, some of the information) is intended primarily for devs, and not for your average, run of the mill user.

The Basics

Anyway, I’ll give you folks a rundown of the sync-internals page, and then go over how to search your sync data. The first tab, “About” is pretty straightforward. It’s pretty much a summary page, and tells you the status of your sync. You can see when you last synced, whether you’re authenticated, the server you’re syncing to….you get the idea. Note that here, like much of ‘sync-internals’, you’ll need a touch of technical knowledge to understand some of the listed information.

What I’m basically saying is that a working knowledge of CSS, HTML5 and Java would certainly be assets here- particularly on the next tab, “Data”. This tab provides you with a text dump of all your sync information, but the problem is it’s in Chrome’s base programming language. So, if you don’t understand it, you won’t understand this wall of text the browser vomits at you.

The “Notifications” tab presumably displays any notifications Google’s browser has seen fit to send you about your sync status. The “Events” tab shows, as expected, events related to your browser’s connection to Google’s server. Since I’ve been suffering from a rather shoddy internet connection of late, it displayed a lot of reconnects on my end. Next, we have the “Sync Node Browser.”- currently the final tab in the stable version of the Chrome browser. This tab lets you manually browse your sync data- though said data is strictly ‘read only.’   Oh, and there’s no search function- at least, not in the current stable and beta releases of the Chrome browser. In other words…if you’re looking for some specific information, well…have fun, and here’s hoping you enjoy sifting through data.

If you’re virtualizing Chromium OS or using the most recent developer build of Google Chrome, well, we’re not done here yet- there’s a bit more ground that we’ve yet to cover.

Searching Your Sync Data

You’ll notice I said that the “Sync Node Browser” is the final tab in the stable version of the Chrome browser. There’s actually another tab, but it’s only available in some of the latest Chromium builds (one version of which you can grab from Hexxeh’s site, here- download a version from March or April, virtually all newer releases have bugged network) and in the latest developer build of the Chrome browser(here’s a list of release channels for Chrome, assuming you don’t already have this page bookmarked- which you probably should, if you’re interested in the subject matter of this article.)

Oh…hmm. Seems I forgot to tell you what the tab is actually called, didn’t I? Well…it’s aptly titled “Search.” You can probably guess what it does it lets you search through your sync data for specific lines of information, rather than having to trudge through line upon line of text and code. A rather convenient addition to the browser, if you ask me. Anyway, you may need to enable this feature before using it. Don’t worry, it’s really quite a simple task.

All you need to do is go to the page “about:flags,” scroll down the list until you see the flag titled “IndexedDB uses LevelDB.”(It’s near the bottom of the list).  Then click enable. Oh, and the other flags? You probably shouldn’t touch them if you don’t know what you’re doing. Playing with fire, and all that.

Final Word

Well, that’s pretty much it. I’ve said pretty much all there is to say about the sync-internals functionality of Chrome. It’s pretty nifty, knowing about how your browser (or operating system) is connected to the big cloud on the airwaves, for sure…but you might not understand one hundred percent of what’s going on unless you have at least a passing knowledge of some of the scripting languages utilized by Google’s browser.  As a result, the channel seems more geared towards developers for the time being. Perhaps we might eventually be seeing it release in a format that can be understood by your run of the mill user.

Or maybe it’ll just be one of those little technical back alleys of chrome, navigable only by those who know exactly what they’re doing. As it is, you’re probably not going to be using this without some knowledge of the tech behind it anyway- seeing as how you’d have to either virtualize Chromium or download the developer’s build of Chrome…well, yeah. you get the idea.

See you folks next time.

(Via Howtonew, Chromestory)

The most recent builds of Chromium are showing a feature that allows for different types of webapps to be installed with Chrome called CRX-less webapps. The CRX file name is used for installation of Chrome extensions.

According to the Google Code site, a CRX file contains:

These are then placed in a CRX file, which is compressed much like a ZIP file.

Relying on a manifest file in a web page, which is simply text, instead of a CRX could result in a more streamlined process for packaging/installing webapps. I’m going to assume that somehow these files are marked as trusted and require Chrome users to allow/disallow installation.

One of the founders of Netscape, Marc Andreessen, is backing a new social browser called RockMelt. It’s based off of the Chromium code and aims to add more social functionality than other other browsers. This has already been done with a browser called Flock which is also based on Chromium, but I’d put my money on Andreessen staying with this venture for the long haul.

As he said recently, “We think it is a fantastic time to build a company around a browser.”

Do you think that’s true in 2010? Decide for yourself by getting an early invitation to RockMelt.

Version 9 of Chrome is on its way. This is because the builds of Chromium that are released frequently throughout the day have now reached 9.

What’s going to be new in Chrome 9? It’s hard to say, the releases are starting to come so fast most of the work being done is on bug fixes and the like. We can expect to see more “about:flags” functionality along the way, and the implementation of more File API specifications should be coming along for the release of the webapp-laden Chrome Web Store.

Recently, Google VP of Engineering Andy Rubin took to Twitter in an effort to take a shot at the openness of Android when compared to Apple’s iOS. That certainly got former Mozilla engineer Joe Hewitt fired up, tweeting some thoughts about the actual openness of Google’s smartphone platform.

Since it’s pretty hard to get in-depth on Twitter about the technicalities of open-source, Hewitt wrote a full blog post and he makes a lot of good points. Unlike Android, Chromium has been developed in the public eye and people outside of Google are capable of following the progress with builds of both the browser and the OS.

The wireless carriers are exerting a lot of control over Android, which probably led to the Chromium project which fuels the commercial browser and Chrome OS. We can probably thank Google’s experience with Android and its development for what will be a computer platform that will have separate and distinct versions. One will be locked down for manufacturers and wireless carriers and another open version for developers that want to do their own thing with it.

Hewitt talks about his concern about Chrome OS lacking the support of manufacturers and carriers for it to take off. I can understand where he is coming from, but I would like to point out Sundar Pichai’s stumping for Chrome OS to Tawian manufacturers at Computex as well as this article about wireless carriers looking to profit from connecting tablets to their networks to increase their profits from an already phone-saturated global market.

There are concerns, however. Unlike phones, computers have not traditionally done well in major marketing outlets like television. If the carriers and manufacturers are able to advertise Chrome OS like something better and easier to use than a computer, they may be successful.

What else are their options?

CNET is reporting that although hardware acceleration can be enabled in current versions of Chrome available, it won’t come standard to the browser until at least Chrome 9. Jason Kersey, a Program Manager for Chrome at Google, announced on the Chromium development discussion list recently indicating that version 8 is going to soon be pushed to the Canary and Development builds.

That means we can expect Chrome 7 to move to stable very soon. It was about six weeks ago when 6 went stable, so an announcement should be just around the corner.

Two new Google Chrome Labs have popped up with the most recent builds: the ability to disable a plugin that is out of date and an XSS auditor. Both can be used if you download the newest Chromium browser version and type in “about:labs” in the Omnibox. A restart of the browser will then enable these new features.

Before now, there really wasn’t a way to easily shut down plugins in Chrome that were out of date. Now with the amount of expected plugins to increase, the browser can reference whether or not a plugin is updated and offer to download the latest version. This is a security feature that takes the effort of updating right out of the users’ hands so that the browser has less vulnerability.

The other feature in the new builds is the XSS Auditor. XSS is cross-site scripting, and it allows for client side injection of malicious code into web pages. While Chrome already has some ability to identify this type of code by warning users of suspicious sites, this helps developers find issues within web code that could potentially be problematic.

More code in complex websites and more plugins for interactive content are on the way for browsers. These are just more security features to help keep the more dangerous elements of the web in check.

Today’s build of Chromium has brought a new feature to the Google Chrome Labs “about:labs” feature when entered into the Omnibox: the ability to open the options menu in a HTML-built tab. Since the concept of Chrome is everything in the cloud, this feature is a logical step further towards that end and will surely pop up in Chrome channels sometime soon.

Once you enable the option, the browser will prompt you for a restart, and when you access the Options menu through the wrench icon, you get a tab with your settings. Everything is the same, just in a slightly different format.

Check it out with one of today’s Chromium builds, and let us know if you like the new options menu.