Browser maker Opera’s first WebKit browser has exited beta. The full launch for the browser previously code-named Ice adds a few additional minor updates to the meaty feature-set demoed at the Mobile World Congress tradeshow back in February. The Android browser represents a huge shift for Opera as it moves away from its own Presto framework to the de facto standard WebKit engine, plus Chromium. → Read More
Google’s decision to fork WebKit and launch its own Blink rendering engine came as a surprise when the company made the announcement just over a month ago. Yesterday, at the Google I/O developer conference, the Blink team provided an update about the state of the engine. As Alex Komoroske, a product manager on Chrome’s Open Web Platform told the audience, the team has already removed 8.8 million… → Read More
Francois Beaufort had a very good day yesterday. Not only did the leaked video of the Chromebook Pixel he discovered earlier this month turn out to be real, he also noticed that Google started work on a new web protocol in Chrome called QUIC. This protocol, it seems, aims to update the User Datagram Protocol (UDP), a core part of the Internet protocol suite that also includes TCP, for example. UDP… → Read More
Browser maker Opera plans to move to using the WebKit engine, as well as Chromium, for “most” upcoming versions of browsers for smartphones and computers. Its first WebKit product is likely to be a browser for Android — due to be previewed at the Mobile World Congress tradeshow in Barcelona later this month — with desktop and other products following. → Read More
As part of their effort to speed up release cycles, Google no longer likes to acknowledge in a big way when they update Chrome. They’re simply doing it too often for it to mean much. But today they’ve taken a bit of time to acknowledge an update to both Chrome and Chrome OS, in part because they were able to quash a big bug.
Specifically, Chrome and Chrome OS were updated to… → Read More
It should be pretty clear by now that Google is taking location very seriously. The original launch of Latitude in early 2009 was just a first step. Now they have robust APIs, Google Places, and key executive Marissa Mayer is now in charge of these and various related projects. And earlier today they finally rolled out a Latitude iPhone app. But if a fairly small tweak to Chrome is any indication… → Read More
You remember RockMelt, right? After the social browser launched two weeks ago, talk about it exploded — then seemed to die down just as quickly. But today brings an update that may get people interested again.
The service has just rolled out their first big update to their browser. Version 0.8.36.74 (sexy name) contains a number of bug fixes and stability improvements. It also updates the… → Read More
If you are going to create a new browser from scratch and go up against the Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Apple, you might as well make it really different. Rockmelt, a company backed by Netscape founder Marc Andreessen which has been under wraps until today, is trying to build a new browsing experience from the ground up. Are they crazy? “The big thing,” says Andreessen, “is that the browser… → Read More
A month ago, when Google unveiled Instant, their new search-as-you-type feature, I thought it sounded great except for one little thing: I don’t use google.com that often to search anymore. That doesn’t mean I don’t use Google — I do — I just use it in Chrome’s Omnibox (the URL/Search box that’s baked into the browser). And I’m hardly alone there. When asked when Instant would be making it to… → Read More
Few things piss me off more these days than the carriers taking advantage of Google’s openness to load up Android phones with crapware and their own proprietary garbage. But you know, a big part of the problem is us.
When Google CEO Eric Schmidt was on stage during our TechCrunch Disrupt conference this past week, he spoke briefly about Google’s thinking with regard to this issue with the… → Read More
Google Instant is great — but I rarely use it. Why? Because I simply don’t go to google.com that often. That’s not to say I don’t search Google a lot — I do — I just use the Omnibox in Chrome for almost all of my searches. When Google launched Instant, they noted that it would be added to browser for people like me “in the next few months“. Well, guess what? It only took them 9 days.
Granted… → Read More
Today at the Google Search event in San Francisco, the search giant unveiled Instant, a huge new feature that allows users to search in real time (without hitting the search button). It looks to be an awesome product that will save users a lot of aggregate time. But that’s on Google.com. I rarely use Google.com anymore. I want it in the Chrome Omnibox.
That’s coming soon, Google’s Marissa Mayer… → Read More
Those of you stuck using boring old stable builds of Google’s Chrome web browser are missing out. Chromium (the open source browser that Chrome is based on) is where it’s at. Sure, it may not be as stable as Chrome, but it has some cool new things that Google is working on.
For example, the latest builds of Chromium (already into version 7) include the new “Apps” area above the “Most visited”… → Read More
It looks like Google wasn’t lying when they said they planned to more rapidly iterate their Chrome web browser. Today brought the initial release of version 7 of Chromium, the open source browser that Chrome is based on. If all goes as planned, this latest iteration should begin to trickle into the Chrome stream in just a few weeks.
It wasn’t even a week ago that version 6 of Chrome hit the… → Read More
Flock, the social Web browser company, has released a new and completely different version of its desktop browser client after nearly a year of silence. The news comes about a week after Apple released Safari 5 and around the same time Opera launched a beta version of its upcoming Opera 10.60 browser.
In a perhaps surprising twist, Flock is moving away from Mozilla technology after 6 years and … → Read More
Potentially big news in the world of open source software, friends. Apparently Ubuntu, the most popular Linux distribution, is considering dropping Firefox for Chrome. Well, maybe for Chrome, or maybe for Chromium, the open source project that Chrome is based upon. Therein lies the rub, I do believe. What’s going on is that Ubergizmo, a fine site, hears that Canonical (the company behind… → Read More
As we noted last night, Google looks to be on the verge of unleashing Chrome extension support in a major way. Not only does the home tab page on the new builds of Chromium (and the dev builds of Chrome) feature not-yet-turned-on links to what looks to be an extensions gallery, but there are plenty of references (and pictures) in the Chromium boards as to what Google is planning with extension… → Read More
Yesterday, there were a number of stories suggesting that a beta version of Chrome for Mac was due in early December. These stemmed from CNET’s Stephen Shankland digging around a Chrome Extension Google Group page where Nick Baum, a Chrome Product Manager, made what seemed to be a very clear comment. “The earlier you switch, the more time you will have to polish your experience for our Beta launch… → Read More
We’ve spent the past several months closely tracking the progress of Chrome for Mac. Well over a year after its release for Windows, there hasn’t been so much as a beta version for Mac (or Linux, for that matter) yet. Even Google co-founder Sergey Brin expressed his displeasure with this last week. But Brin also noted that he was using the pre-beta version of Chrome for the Mac, but warned that it… → Read More
Pretty much every morning and every night I download the newest build of Chromium for Mac (the open source builds that will eventually turn into Chrome for Mac). While we made an auto-updater to do it for you, you can also manually find the latest builds here. This morning, I visited this site and noticed something new: A Chrome OS folder.
Sadly, this is Linux-only for the time-being, but that… → Read More
As most Mac users have undoubtedly read over the past few days, there are some pieces of software that are a bit buggy with the latest version of OS X, Snow Leopard, which was released on Friday. Applications that have been having issues include the developer builds of Chrome and Chromium for OS X. While these versions are obviously still not complete yet, there are more and more people using them… → Read More
We’ve been gushing for weeks now about the latest Chromium builds for Mac. Every day, they seem to get better. The problem is that every day, several updates are released and you have to manually go to the site and scroll down a long list to find the newest version to download. So we’ve made an application that allows you to easily ensure that you have the latest version at all times.
Our Mac… → Read More
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