A major complaint about Google’s Chrome web browser has been that so far, it is still not available on anything other than Windows. Google promised to deliver Chrome to Mac OS X and Linux as well, but as it turns out, this is a little harder than they anticipated, Ben Goodger, Google’s Chrome interface lead, has explained in an email. It has also been revealed what toolkit the Linux version of Chrome will use: Gtk+.
According to weblog Google Blogoscoped, Google Chrome is spoofing its user agent at Hotmail, Microsoft’s popular but much-maligned webmail application. Why?
The issue was that Hotmail barred the competitor’s browser from entering by checking the user agent. Some sites do so, often without merit and a lot of backfiring, because they think certain browsers can’t cope with their HTML/JavaScript/stylesheets. Not the case with Chrome here, apparently, which now pretends it’s a Safari browser when encountering *.mail.live.com.
If we weren’t the types who give folks the benefit of the doubt, we might suggest that Microsoft’s playing a touch dirty to fend off Google’s competing browser. Then again, as one Microsoft employee says, Hotmail services millions of users—and Chrome is used by such a small percentage of those users—that the bug will be addressed. It’s just not a high priority.
Regardless, the Google, Microsoft, and Apple power struggle via Chrome, Hotmail, and Safari is a saucy one.
CCleaner has added support for Google Chrome in its latest release. Granted, the release first saw light about a month ago, but it’s great to see CCleaner continue to add new browsers. Chrome cleaning includes cookies, download history, cache, browser history, and saved form info.
Google’s Chrome browser is fast becoming the geeks’ choice, as users all over the world tinker with it and explore its deeper capabilities.
Not lacking essential functionality, Chrome is now proving that it can do everything: from starting in Incognito mode by default for better browsing safety to reverting to using a single process for all its tabs to conserve resources. It can even make the images on a web page swirl and dance around like crazy, if you fancy something different.
The range of useful modifications that you can make to get Chrome just how you want it is extremely diverse – made all the more expressive by its blindingly fast V8 JavaScript engine. From simple parameter changes to complex applets, here are 10 handy hacks to whip Chrome into shape.
Marc Chacksfield, www.techradar.com
Mozilla has announced a subtle but significant change to Firefox, tweaking the way tabs work on the browser.
Writing on his blog, Mike Beltzner, director of Firefox at Mozilla, announced a "small change", which essentially means when you click on a tab it will appear immediately to the right of the tab you are working on.
Tab kinetics aside, the significance of the new tab feature means that Mozilla has been looking closely at the decent bits of Google’s Chrome browser and cherry-picking features that would also be useful to Firefox.
Picking up the tab
Beltzner even name-checks Chrome in his blog, writing: "The tab ordering feature is one of the little things that doesn’t get a lot of attention when people talk about Google Chrome.
"Chrome showed us how tab ordering should work and we can’t wait to see Firefox adopt this useful feature."
Firefox has always had a good relationship with Google, adding the search engine’s bar to its browser, which accounts to around 90 per cent of Mozilla’s revenues.
Less than a month after announcing that version 1.0 of its Chrome Web browser is no longer a beta, Google has released an alpha version of Chrome 2.0. Available through Google’s Chrome Developer Channel, the updated browser brings many notable improvements over Chrome 1.0.
The alpha version of Chrome 2.0 shows that Google continues to play catch-up with its elder siblings, Internet Explorer and Firefox. Updates to the Chrome browser include the addition of form autocomplete (one of the features most obviously missing from the initial release), full-page zoom, spell checking improvements, and auto-scrolling–among other features.
We’ve already seen ads for Google Chrome popping up around the Web on sites like LinkedIn. But now, the company is taking the campaign to grow its browser marketshare a step further.
In Gmail, the company is now displaying a rather innocent link that says “Get Faster Gmail” that shows up only for Internet Explorer users. But when clicked, that link takes you to a page promoting the download of Chrome or Firefox.
Of course, Google would prefer you download Chrome, but Firefox works too since it comes with Google as the default search. Nonetheless, “faster Gmail” is a fairly compelling reason to click the ad, so it’s safe to assume Google will convert at least a few downloads from the effort.
Since its launch, Google’s new web browser, Google Chrome, has been applauded for its lightweight look and feel and for the speed of its JavaScript engine. Although the browser still lacks support for things like RSS and browser add-ons, the company has already ripped off the beta label, a move that was probably made in preparation for Google’s upcoming bundling deals with PC manufacturers.
Despite Chrome’s popularity, there are some of us who are a bit uncomfortable with giving Google yet another avenue to track our user data. Luckily, we have several options which can be used to protect our privacy while still enjoying this slick new web browser. (more…)
Now that Chrome, Google’s own internet browser, has been removed from the beta phase, Google has made some interesting changes to the End User Licensing Agreement (EULA) which users are required to sign.
Chrome, which was launched for beta testing only in September this year, has already performed well in such a short period, and now Google is going all out to promote it even further, and increase their customer base.
Thus the latest changes to the EULA have been made keeping this target in mind. (more…)
Now that it’s no longer in beta, Google Chrome has been added to Google Pack. Firefox bundled with Google Toolbar is still available, but you need to explicitly select it. Adding Chrome to Google Pack means that existing users will be informed about the new software and the new users will install Chrome instead of Firefox.
Google contributed significantly to Firefox’s popularity by promoting it on the homepage, including the browser in a software bundle and encouraging publishers to promote Firefox. Google’s official alternative to Internet Explorer is now Chrome.
