Tag Archives: Native Client
Play Classic Games in Chrome/Chrome OS with NaClBox
Posted on 12. May, 2011 by Daniel Cawrey. 
1 Comments
One of the most exciting developments coming in the Chrome universe sometime this year is Native Client, also known as NaCl. With this technology, developers will be able to use direct hardware in order to process webapps. But we don’t have to wait to see what this can do. NaClBox is a way to use Chrome’s inherent Native Client technology to play old-school DOS games.
You might be familiar with games from back in the day such as SimCity 2000, Alone in the Dark and Falcon 3.0. These are all available – as well as others – in demo form through NaCLlBox that you can play right inside the browser. And although the developer warns that NaClBox may take up a bit more CPU processing than normal, rest assured its using direct code on your hardware right through the browser. 
All you need to do is have at least Chrome 11 installed. In order to turn Native Client, you’ll need to go to “about:flags” in you Omnibox and enable the option – you’ll see in it the listing.
Gaming is going to be one of the biggest benefactors for Native Client in Chrome. We’ll be seeing some great games and apps right inside the browser this year, and it’s a very exciting time to be a fan of Chrome because of that. Stay tuned!
What game would you most like to see come to the browser?
via Engadget
Run PPAPI Flash in the Renderer Process Appears in “About:Flags”
Posted on 04. Apr, 2011 by Daniel Cawrey. 1 Comments
The newest builds of Chromium (here if you want to download) include a new experimental feature that is in the “about:flags” menu you can access by putting that text into the Omnibox. It’s called Run PPAPI Flash in the renderer process.
PPAPI is an acronym for the Pepper plugin API implementation. Pepper is an interface that was developed by Mozilla to handle plugins, although this version is different from the old NPAPI version. A while back the Pepper API was added as a feature in Chromium’s “about:flags” for JavaScript. Now it’s an experiment for Flash-based renderer processes.
This new PPAPI will be used for running Native Client securely, and is why it has been added to Chromium’s experiments. In February, a new Native Client SDK was released that supported Pepper for developers to work on.
This is all in a goal of running Native Client in a secure fashion. It’s important that plugins don’t have any sort of elevated security privileges since that could result in problems down the line seeing as Native Client has direct access to hardware resources.
Are you developing with the Native Client SDK?
P2P API Appears in About:Flags
Posted on 03. Mar, 2011 by Daniel Cawrey. 13 Comments
The newest builds of Chromium have a new option that can be enabled through the “about:flags” menu. It’s called P2P API and turns on the P2P Pepper API and the P2P JavaScript API. Yet even in the description, the feature states that it doesn’t even work at this point. So what does it do?
Well, the peer-to-peer connotation here would suggest a connection of sort using both Pepper and JavaScript. Pepper is a plugin that can use Native Client to harness hardware resources. In the notes for the latest Native Client release in February, it is pointed out that peer-to-peer networking is not yet supported, among other APIs such as 3D graphics and file I/O.
So this is being implemented likely to test its compatibility with Native Client. It’s also possible that it’s being used to test Chromoting, another experimental feature in about:flags that doesn’t work unless you are on the dev team for Chromium.
Google Preparing to Fuel Webapp Growth with Native Client for Chrome
Posted on 18. Feb, 2011 by Daniel Cawrey. 3 Comments
The latest Beta release of Chrome includes an important update: a first release of Native Client. This is a new launch which is designed to work with a plugin called Pepper and allows the browser to harness the power of computing hardware to run applications over the cloud.
Much has been talked about Native Client as it has been in Chromium as well as the Developer builds for some time. But it’s clear from Google’s pronouncements that the company wants developers to utilize the Native Client SDK to develop powerful applications right inside of the browser. That’s further aided by some security improvements that have been added: there is now an outer sandbox implemented and a method for auto-updating in case security fixes are required.
Chrome OS Dev Update Brings File System Support, More Experiments
Posted on 19. Jan, 2011 by Daniel Cawrey. 5 Comments
After many reboots and constant clicking on the “Check for Updates” button, I’ve been updated to the newest Dev build of Chrome OS. The update took some time to download, so by that measure I would think that there are a number of updates involved with the release.
The biggest change I’ve seen is that the advanced file system actually lets you see devices and files. I can even upload images and other files to this site now, a needed element to the system that I’m sure many people will appreciate. If you want to get on the Dev channel to experience the joys of using the file system, see how here.
Native Client Comes to Chrome Labs
Posted on 07. Nov, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 5 Comments
Another day, another feature that once required a command switch in order to work in Chromium.
The recent builds of the open source browser now allow one to enable Native Client. This sandboxed feature developed by Google, often abbreviated at NaCl, allows browsers to run direct hardware resources.
Video: Native Client SDK
Posted on 08. Sep, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments
This is a great overview of Native Client’s use on the web. You are able to take existing code libraries and transport them to a web application, or even just add more functionality to a web page.
Enabling GPU Acceleration in Chrome 7
Posted on 29. Aug, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 7 Comments
Although I have already written a how-to on being able to use Native Client in Chrome 7, you can also use a command switch to be able to enable just GPU acceleration.
It’s pretty easy, so here’s how. In your shortcut for Chrome Dev or Chrome Canary, put “–enable-accelerated-compositing” into your shortcut, just like this.
So what can you do with GPU acceleration in Chrome? Right now, not a whole lot. You can check out the interactive examples that Microsoft is offering at their Internet Explorer 9 site, since they are planning to make a big push into hardware acceleration within the browser in order to retain market share.
GPU acceleration is another part of Native Client, when you enable it the GPU portion of it is turned on via a plugin process that is sandboxed. You can see more information on how it works by viewing the Chromium Blog post that refers to it.
Chrome Dev Hits Version 7; Native Client Part of Release
Posted on 26. Aug, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 4 Comments
While Chromium has been perched at version 7 for about a week or so, it was only today that the development channel of Chrome was updated to version 7.
So what’s new? Along with the typical release fixes, Native Client is getting closer to reality in Chrome 7. That means webapps are going to be able to directly use a computer’s hardware resources to run processes, making them working like native applications.
As DownloadSquad’s Lee Mathews points out, you can check out a couple of Native Client demos right here if you’re using version 7 with the switch “–enable-nacl”. You can see it here in the Task Manager of my browser.
Note that Native Client is still experimental, on my machine it ran the above applications very slowly. But hey, it’s the first release.
Is Chrome OS Just a Web Browser?
Posted on 08. Jun, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 1 Comments
It’s hard not to think that Chrome OS will be just a glorified web browser when it is released later on this year. The reason for this is because Google has been very adamant about their message that the web will be the platform of the future, and Chrome OS serves to be a way to serve up the web in a different manner than we have seen before. But when you hear this, it makes one start to wonder whether or not all we’re getting is a bootable version of the browsers we know of today.
The Chrome browser plays a part in the development in its counterpart operating system, as we’re starting to see with Chromium that Native Client is going to have to play a big part in the interface between the web and hardware. It’s being implemented in Chrome browser as well, so it will be interesting to see if we will see some cool Native Client stuff prior to the release of a Chrome OS gadget although an official device will be better optimized to do this because of the requirements that have been made by Google in the regard.
One thing that has been brought up in the Chromium discussion list (join here) is that a way to get around the issue of connectivity is that Chrome OS could use the browser interface as the way to run apps both online and locally. Local apps will still be based on web technologies, and all of the executables and information to need them will be securely stored on the hard drive. This will be the stopgap while emerging wireless internet available continuous to become more ubiquitous, one issue that is of great concern when you start considering a completely web-based computing solution.
So, without going much more into detail, no Chrome OS is not just a browser. It is a web-enabled solution paired with hardware that runs on an underlying Linux architecture to allow for processes that run just like any other operating system, but will be a tad more locked down in terms of applications for users.
I guess that would be kind of a mouthful to explain to someone, right?
thechromesource Daily: Links for 5/26/10
Posted on 26. May, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments
Google’s Chrome OS user interface design team developer Glen Murphy talks to Lifehacker Australia in a brief Q&A session.
Early adopters are increasingly making a move from using Firefox to Chrome browser, according to an analysis by ReadWriteWeb.
It seems pretty clear that the Chrome Web Store will have applications that run code using Native Client.
An anonymous CEO from a public company tells Business Insider that Microsoft’s Outlook mail client will never be able to compete with Gmail.
Google VP of Engineering Vic Gundotra talks to TechCrunch about location based services and Google’s plans in the tablet market.
thechromesource Daily: Links for 5/13/10
Posted on 13. May, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments
The Chromium Blog has a sneak peak at how their Native Client software development kit will allow for development of Chrome applications.
ARMDevices speculates that the Native Client SDK will allow complex web applications to run on ARM processors.
ReadWriteWeb has an article out that is about Mozilla’s plug-in checker, which now works with all browsers.
It’s clear that Google Apps plans to offer more than just the document and spreadsheet package common with productivity suites.
Those behind the Linux-based Ubuntu OS are contemplating switching from Firefox as the default browser over to Chromium.
