thechromesource – Google Chrome and Chrome OS News and Forum

Chromoting Fits the Chrome OS Thin Client Model

Posted on 10. Jun, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 1 Comments

The idea of Chromoting as a way to bridge the gap between the web-enabled environments of the future over to the old model of installed applications on Windows, Mac and Linux seems to fit with the overall theme of Chrome OS. That theme is to get away from natively installed applications, though many of us still will rely on these “legacy” apps to some degree.

In the smartphone realm, the use of remote desktop is possible to go into our computer at home or at work to do things. Chromoting will be no different than that, installed as an extension on a Chrome OS device with another application on whatever other machine you need to remote into.

As cloud computing in ramps up from an operating system standpoint, there is going to be some software that simply will not be available in the cloud. Although it is true when Google says that most major applications are coming out today arrive web-based, there are still some resource-heavy tasks that require a traditional computer. Chromoting thus offers power users the ability to possibly use virtualization on servers to harness both Chrome OS and whatever applications they may need directly through the cloud.

I can see a variety of uses for Chromoting, and not just as a stopgap solution for legacy purposes but also as a path to allow Chrome OS to act as a window to more process-intensive computing capabilities. One would not only be able to use it to access powerful software tools on a thin client Chrome OS device, but the enterprise would benefit as well. I could see IT support analysts, salespeople and health professionals utilizing Chromoting on a tablet or netbook to access resources in a safe and controlled way that perhaps other devices would be unable to.

What other intriguing purposes could Chromoting provide for that I have missed?

thechromesource Daily: Links for 4/29/10

Posted on 29. Apr, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments

The Graphic Mac has an article that runs down the various browsers available for Mac, saying they all suck expect for Chrome.

Synaptics has issued a press release for its Guesture Suite multi-touch features that will be coming for Linux and Chrome OS.

One of our partnership blogs, ChromeOS-Blog.com, has posted up a new “spring release” of Chrome OS for download.

The Google Apps Engine Blog has an interview with Jay Kyburz, who developed the web-based strategy game Neptune’s Pride.

Google has purchased Labpixies, which is an app publisher that primarily develops personalizations for iGoogle.

The Google Code Blog has case study guest post talking about what HTML5 can do for the development of mobile applications.

Microsoft Takes Issue With Chrome Feature That Can be Turned Off

Posted on 01. Apr, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 1 Comments

In a video that is meant to show off the security features of Internet Explorer 8, Product Manager Pete LePage takes aim at the Chrome browser, claiming that because IE8 allows users to search in a separate box rather than doing so in an all-in-one inbox box that Google is possibly compromising a user’s security by reporting every term back to Google.

“By keeping these boxes separate, your privacy is better protected and the addresses of the sites you’re visiting aren’t automatically shared with Microsoft, or anyone else,” LePage says in the video.

“As I start to type an address into the address bar, Fiddler [a Web debugging proxy] shows that for nearly every character I type, Chrome sends a request back to Google,” LePage says. “I haven’t even hit enter yet to load the website and Google is already getting information about the domain and sites I’m visiting.”

This only partially true. You are capable of changing your search provider in Chrome, and when you do the information that you search for in the Omnibox will send it back to the engine of your choosing. Just because IE8 has two separate boxes for these functions does not make it safer.

The option for sending information back to Google when you start typing into the Omnibox can be turned off by following these instructions. I know this because I downloaded Fiddler myself and tried it to make sure.

LePage also goes on to promote the virtues of IE8′s InPrivate feature, which allows users to surf the web anonymously. Interestingly, this feature sounds eerily similar to Chrome’s Incognito mode which has been a part of Google’s browser since 2008.

Look, there’s no doubt here that Internet Explorer is facing a decline in market share. A recent graph out by Net Applications shows that Internet Explorer is dropping while Chrome is gaining. At the same time, competitors like Safari (which can be traced to Mac adoption), Firefox and Opera are filling in the space where users once had Internet Explorer as their preferred browser. If Microsoft does not go on the offensive with videos like this they risk losing even more market share.

Expect Microsoft to heavily market IE8 and eventually IE9. They will also do well if they keep copying key elements of other popular browsers if they hope to stay relevant, one of the other “industry standard” practices LePage talks about in the video.

Chrome 5 for Mac Adds Translation, Other Updates

Posted on 26. Mar, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 1 Comments

Good news for all you Mac users: the newest update to Chrome 5 will offer the Translate feature that those of us on the Windows version have been able to enjoy for the past couple of weeks. If you’ve never used Google translate, you probably don’t know what you’re missing. I have a piece out there already that pretty much outlines what I’m talking about, and you can check it out here.

Here are the new updates to Chrome 5 Beta for Mac:

• Translate feature has been added
• Greater control over privacy (learn more here)
• Full screen mode by using Shift-CMD-F (Thanks Nick!)
• Forced reload, instead of using cache by using Shift+Reload

Already have Chrome 5 Beta for Mac? You will be automatically updated. If you don’t have Chrome 5, get it here.

With the news that Safari was the first browser successfully hacked at this year’s Pwn2Own competition, those of you out there who like using Apple products may want to consider giving Chrome 5 a try. An earlier version that is in stable release, Chrome 4, has yet to go down at the competition where hackers (they’re called “researchers” these days) try to compromise operating systems, browsers and mobile phones.

Apple comes out with great products. There is no doubt about that. But one big problem is that they aren’t nearly as ubiquitous as Windows products, and therefore have not been as susceptible to attack by those with malicious intentions. Unfortunately that landscape is changing. Check out this graph that shows the correlation between the prevalence of Apple stores and adoption of their products:

So while Apple has been building its own retail stores around the world they have increased their market share from 3.5% to almost 10% in a span of seven years. That means more Macs and more of them means the potential to attack them increases. As an example of how much work needs to done to protect Macs, Apple added data execution protection (DEP) to Snow Leopard which was something adopted by Windows in XP SP2 which came out in 2003.

So this post may have gone off on a tangent from its original theme, but I hope it has been informative nonetheless.

New Chrome 5 Release For Mac Tackles Bookmarks

Posted on 16. Mar, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments

A few hours ago, the Chrome browser team announced an update to the Chrome 5 version for Mac that’s still in the “development channel”. The main update? Functionality of bookmarks has been vastly improved. This includes bookmark copying, the creation of bookmark buttons and some cosmetic issues with the bookmark bar alignment that was just plain annoying. Also, some Autofill features were added to help with overall quality.

This is great news for Mac users, as although Chrome has not been out as long for Apple computers than Windows ones, they are moving closer to being comparable. Obviously having things such as bookmarks and Autofill working well goes a long way towards adoption of the browser. Even though Safari is still the majority on Mac, Firefox dominates on Windows and Opera still offers one of the the fastest browsers available right now, it’s still amazing what Google has been able to do with Chrome after only being in the browser space for about a year and a half.

So for you Mac users who want to be on the cutting edge of Chrome, join the dev channel here.

IDC: Hardware Components Will be Pricey for Chrome OS

Posted on 12. Mar, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments

Owing to the notion that a Chrome OS netbook will require specialized hardware from computer manufacturers, Bob O’Donnell of IDC believes that such a device will actually be just as expensive as netbooks that run on Windows. O’Donnell, who is vice president of clients and displays, seems to take a view that perhaps the technology is not quite ready for public consumption.

“PC OEMs say the hardware requirements—still under NDA–will make the systems actually more expensive than a Windows device, yet they don’t have anywhere near the applications support,” O’Donnell said. He was talking up this point while at Directions 2010, which is an economic conference that is held in Reno, Nevada. ”Clamshell systems need Windows or Mac OS because if a system looks like a notebook people want it to act like one,” he said.

IDC does a lot of research, and they know what they are talking about. However, we have already seen devices that are running Chrome OS that don’t cost that much – the Freescale 7″ tablet that was shown off a few weeks ago is expected to go for only $200. And a quick look at the Chromium site shows that manufacturers and developers have successfully tested a Asus Eee PC 1005HA, which retails for around $300.

Now, it is possible that in order to offer users the best user experience possible Google is making some heavy handed demands for these devices to be able to quickly boot and get users where they need to be – right on the web. Since the experience is so important, I would not be surprised by that. But the reality is that they are going to need to balance this with a price point that makes it possible to compete in a totally new class of cheap and lightweight computing device.

Even Chrome OS Engineering Director Matthew Papakipos said in an interview last November that the goal of the operating system was going to be for something cheaper than traditional netbook fare.

It certainly explains why we are only seeing devices from manufacturers with Android on them, because perhaps the right mix of hardware and software just has not been pinpointed just yet.

Parallels to Support Chrome OS

Posted on 05. Mar, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 2 Comments

MacWorld is reporting that the Parallels software, which allows Apple users to have Windows or Linux run in a virtualized environment, will support Chrome OS. At CeBIT this week in Germany they have been even showing off a machine that is running their latest version, Parallels 5 with Chrome OS. I haven’t been able to find a video but when I do I will post it here.

This is news but at the same time it isn’t. That’s because its already a known commodity that Parallels works with Chrome OS on a Mac, as instructions but the website Cult of Mac showed in mid-January how to run Chrome OS successfully in Parallels. But with that being said, since this is something that the company can show off at CeBIT, making it known that they officially stand behind supporting Chrome OS, there is a bit of significance here.

Still, one must keep in mind that the portable computer products with which Google is planning to put Chrome OS on doesn’t directly compete with Apple. That’s because devices like the iPad, iPod Touch and iPhone do not support Parallels other than the less-powerful Parallels Mobile Remote free application from the App Store. So unless Apple is planning on putting out a netbook or smartbook with Mac OS X on it, this seems like more of a tool for those application developers who use Mac hardware with OS X rather than the typical user.

Video: How to Create a Chrome OS Flow USB Drive for Mac

Posted on 26. Feb, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 2 Comments

Ok, so I’m not a Mac user. But I know there are some of you out there reading that are. So when I get asked how to create a USB image for Mac I’m at a loss of words. Fortunately there are directions, and even better, there is a video for those non-Mac users like me who look at the written instructions and have no idea what is going on. So here you go, I hope this helps out the Apple users:

So, how does Flow run on a Mac? I’m curious.

UPDATE: Hexxeh, the creator of Flow, has said that it probably will not work on Macs, anyone out there get this running?

Linux Chrome 5 Beta is a Go

Posted on 03. Feb, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 4 Comments

Although Chrome 5 Beta has been available for those using Windows and Mac for a little while already, Google held back its release of the Linux version of their beta browser. That’s no surprise, as the initial developer version of Chrome for Linux users has only been out since June and has a much smaller user base than the other two platforms. Regardless, Google announced yesterday that the 5.0.307.1 Beta for Linux is now available.

Some of the new features being released with this version include support for notifications, a different directory for loading plugins and improved text support for various languages.

It’s important that Google keeps the Chrome browser for Linux up to speed with Windows and Mac. An ever-increasing amount of users are turning to open source, and all of the solid OSs are based on Linux. In terms of netbook operating systems, platforms such as Ubuntu Netbook Remix, Moblin and Jolicloud are all based on Linux. This helps drive the cost of netbooks lower, as these OSs save money on the overall product price when compared to Microsoft’s licensing fees that are required for every device that ships with Windows.

At the same time, when Google eventually comes out with Chrome OS, it will be essentially competing with these machines, but will still have a leg up on overall browser competition because Linux does not support the closed-source Internet Explorer. Opera and Firefox currently are some of the most popular browsers for Linux. Safari is also available as well.

You can get Linux Chrome 5 Beta from the download page here.

Chrome 4 Now Natively Supports Greasemonkey

Posted on 02. Feb, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments

Now that Chrome 4 has been promoted to a stable release, the folks at Google have decided to remind us of the fact that it now natively supports Greasemonkey scripts. Although these are scripts and not full-blown extensions, this allows Chrome to have an even wider variety of features that are able to run in the browser. This was mostly overlooked last week after the stable release was announced because of the promotion of extensions that are now available for all versions of Chrome, which is for Windows, Mac and Linux.

So what is Greasemonkey? It was developed as a Firefox add-in in 2004 and is a utility for using scripts users have created to enhance their browsing experience. Written in Javascript, Chrome’s speedy V8 engine is perfect for this feature because it runs the platform so fast.

Most of the Greasemonkey scripts are small features for websites that can enhance the web experience for a user. For example, many of the scripts that I found on the main site for these, userscripts.org, were for removing ads from sites like Facebook or Windows Live Hotmail. There were also scripts for filling in forms or performing mass actions such as adds or deletes on social networking sites.

We’re going to have to check out some of these scripts before we are able to recommend any of them. If anyone out there has found a useful Greasemonkey script that Chrome users should know about, by all means please let us know by adding a comment. Also, if you have written a Greasemonkey script that may be useful, please drop us a line.

Chrome 5 Beta Released

Posted on 31. Jan, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 11 Comments

Now that Chrome version 4 has been officially released as a stable browser version, Google has now given users a chance to check out the Chrome 5 beta (Mac users must follow this link). Javascript performance has improved in this version, as I ran a SunSpider test for my previous Chrome 4.0.249.78 version and overall benchmark speed has increased when compared to this new 5.0.307.1 version. For those of you interested, I advise you to try this benchmarking test yourself to check out the speed with which this browser as well as any others you may use can render pages.

According to the developer changelog, there are a few new features (more sure to come):

• Use of the default downloads directories in Windows 7 and Vista
• Better plugin stability for Mac
• A fix for tab dragging in Mac that used to cause Chrome to crash

Also, in the Under the Hood tab for Chrome Options, there is a new Content section for fonts, language and Google Gears settings:

Both Windows and Mac is supported for this developmental build. For those of you interested in making some money finding flaws in Chrome browser, you probably want to have the latest and greatest version. Just keep in mind this is a beta, and therefore it is a version that Google deems unstable. If you experience issues you can report them here.

UPDATE: For Mac users, there’s a different download link – thanks to the commenter who pointed this out!

Chrome Browser Now at Version 4

Posted on 25. Jan, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 2 Comments

Coming out of beta, Chrome browser is now at version 4 stable. What does this mean? Well, the most recent version before today that was being run was a beta of version 4, and now Google has declared it a “stable release”. Some of the features that have been enhanced in this version include support for extensions, which are pretty much like Firefox’s add-ins. Also, Chrome 4 has a host of newer application programming interfaces (APIs) for web development that will provide better performance as well as increased support for features such as offline storage. Unfortunately, this is only a new stable release for Windows. The Linux and Mac versions are still in beta for now.

So where do you get it? Don’t worry, as this is part of the Chromium project: automatic updates for major releases.

With version 4 moving to stable, Chrome browser’s bookmark sync is also coming out of beta. What bookmark sync does for users is allow them to keep the same links with them as they move from computer to computer as long as the are using the internet with Chrome. It’s accessed through the tools menu, and you’ll need to sign into your Google account in order to allow your bookmarks to be properly saved. You can check out more about bookmark sync here.

But the biggest deal is the amount of extensions that are now available on the official site. There are now extensions for every platform. By Google’s count, there are over 1,500 extensions that are available. My favorite? I recommend checking out Google Translate, which allows you to surf to sites that don’t speak your native language. Pretty cool. You can also check out a video about Chrome 4 here: