Smarter holiday shopping with Google Chrome Extensions (beta!)

Since we launched extensions for Google Chrome on the beta channel for Windows and Linux a few weeks ago, we've seen over 1,000 extensions submitted to the gallery. Several of them have already become browser staples for me. But since I've been spending most all of my free time online doing holiday shopping this December, I found myself relying on a few extensions to find the perfect gifts and great deals.

If you're doing some last-minute holiday shopping in the coming days, one extension to try out is InvisibleHand. This extension discreetly notifies you if a product you are looking at on a particular online store is available for less from another retailer.

Also, the Google Checkout team recently released Promotion Notifier, an extension that alerts you if the online store you're browsing is offering special deals for purchases made through Google Checkout. If so, a notification banner pops up with details such as the discount amount and the minimum purchase required.

Another extension you might find useful is the one created by Woot.com. With just one click to the extension's icon, you can find some really memorable items that are on sale on a particular day at Woot.com (like night vision goggles!).

If you're on the beta channel for Windows or Linux versions of Google Chrome, visit the gallery to browse many more extensions (including extensions from eBay and Kaboodle) that might make last-minute online shopping faster, easier, and maybe a little less stressful. Happy Holidays!

Posted by Christos Apartoglou, Product Marketing Manager

Google Chrome for the holidays: Mac, Linux and extensions in beta

There was nothing more excruciating for me as a kid than seeing the presents pile up under the Christmas tree but knowing that I couldn't open them until Christmas morning. On the Google Chrome team, we've had the same feeling as we've been working to get betas ready for Mac, Linux and extensions. It's been a long time coming, but today we can check the top three items off our users' wish lists.

Google Chrome for Mac (Beta)
We've been working hard to deliver a first-class browser for the Mac — it took longer than we expected, but we hope the wait was worth it! We wanted Google Chrome to feel at home on the Mac, so we've focused on uniting our clean, simple design with subtle animations and effects to create a snappy and satisfying browsing experience on OS X. As you might expect, the speed of Google Chrome for Mac is something we're very proud of. If you have a Mac, try installing the beta and see how fast it launches — there's hardly even time for the icon in the dock to bounce!

For more details on this beta release of Google Chrome for Mac, read on in the Google Mac blog or watch this video from one of our engineers, Mike Pinkerton:



Google Chrome for Linux (Beta)
At Google, most engineers use Linux machines, so we certainly heard loud and clear how much they wanted Google Chrome for Linux. Just like Google Chrome for Windows and Mac, we focused on speed, stability and security, but we also wanted a high-performance browser that integrated well with the Linux ecosystem. This includes tight integration with native GTK themes, updates that are managed by the standard system package manager, and many other features that fit in natively with the operating system where possible.

Google Chrome for Linux in various GTK themes

Just as important, we've had quite a bit of help from the open source community. More than 50 open source contributors have worked on Chromium and they've been especially helpful on delivering our Linux version of Google Chrome. For more details on the beta release of Google Chrome for Linux, check out the Chromium blog.

Extensions in Google Chrome for Windows and Linux (Beta)
When we first launched Google Chrome in September 2008, we knew that we wanted to make it easy for you to customize the browser with extensions. We also wanted to make extensions easy to create and maintain, while preserving Google Chrome's speed and stability. Extensions on Google Chrome accomplishes all these goals: they are as easy to create as web pages, easy to install, and each extension runs in its own process to avoid crashing or significantly slowing down the browser.

Extensions installed on Google Chrome (for PC or Linux)

If you're on a PC or a Linux machine, you can check out more than 300 extensions in the gallery, including a few cool, useful and cute extensions . Extensions aren't quite beta-quality on Mac yet, but you will be able to preview them on a developer channel soon. And if you're a web developer, you can learn more about writing extensions for Google Chrome on the Chromium blog.


We hope the betas for Mac, Linux and extensions were some of the things on your wish list this year. We'd like to say thanks to Mac and Linux users who gave our early developer versions of Google Chrome a test drive on these platforms, as well as developers who wrote great extensions for Google Chrome. And in case you're wondering what we'd like for the holidays, we're always eager for feedback — and I wouldn't mind a brand new extension that makes it snow on demand!


Posted by Brian Rakowski, Product Manager

Technically speaking, what makes Google Chrome fast?

We're always happy to hear that you're enjoying Google Chrome's speed, and we've often been asked what makes Google Chrome so fast -- from its snappy start-up time, and fast page-loading, to the ability to run complex web applications quickly.

For those of you who'd like to dive into the full technical intricacies on what makes Google Chrome a fast and responsive browser, we've put together video interviews to walk through some of the engineering involved. In particular, we take a look at the inner workings of DNS pre-resolution, the V8 JavaScript engine, and DOM bindings. In a future post, we'll also cover other important aspects of Google Chrome's speed, such as WebKit and UI responsiveness.

You can watch these interviews below - or for more details, check out the Chromium blog and the Google Chrome YouTube channel.

Posted by Min Li Chan, Product Marketing Manager

Tip: New tab from the omnibox

If you've ever wanted to search or navigate without disrupting the page you're currently reading, you've probably opened a new tab to do so. This means either clicking the "new tab" button at the end of the tabstrip, or using the "new tab" menu item or keyboard shortcut (ctrl-t).

A little-known shortcut can help you do this even faster.

If you type something in to the omnibox and hold down the Alt key while you press enter, the resulting page will open as a new tab at the end of your tabstrip, leaving your previous page untouched.

This way you can skip creating a new tab, and go straight to typing in what you want.

Posted by Peter Kasting, Software Engineer

Announcing the Chromium OS Open Source Project

Today we released Chromium OS, the open source project behind Google Chrome OS. Google Chrome OS is an operating system that is intended for people who spend most of their time on the web. It aims to provide a computing experience that is fast, simple and secure. The Chromium OS project as you'll see it today is comprised of the code that has been developed thus far, our early experiments with the user interface, and detailed design docs for many parts that are under active development.

To learn more about what Google Chrome OS is, watch this short video:

To get a feel for the Google Chrome OS user experience, you can watch the demo from this morning's announcement event.

Posted by Kan Liu, Product Manager

Bookmark sync and more speed in the latest beta release

Fresh from a Halloween weekend, we're excited to introduce a brand new beta for Google Chrome, which includes a few new treats and cool tricks for our users.

For those of you who use several computers -- for example, a laptop at work and a desktop at home -- you've asked for a way to keep your Google Chrome bookmarks in sync across multiple computers. Today's new beta release allows you to do just that! You can keep your Google Chrome bookmarks synchronized and up-to-date across the multiple computers you use, without needing to manually recreate your bookmarks every time you use a different computer.

For more on how to use bookmark sync, check out the video below from one of our team members, Anthony LaForge:

Once you've activated Google Chrome bookmark sync on each of your computers, any changes you make to your bookmarks will appear on all synced computers in just a few seconds. (For those of you who are curious, this bit of magic is made possible by the same XMPP-based servers that power Google Talk).

As with every release, this new beta comes with many speed improvements. In particular, as web applications we use every day become increasingly dynamic, browsers like Google Chrome need to be able to construct and change elements on web pages as fast as possible. We've improved performance scores on Google Chrome by 30% since our current stable release, as measured by Mozilla's Dromeao DOM Core Tests, and by 400% since our first stable release.

The beta channel provides a sneak preview of things to come with occasional rough edges and before most users see them, but it's a great way for us to quickly churn out new features and get your feedback. To try out bookmark sync and other beta features, download the beta version of Google Chrome.

Posted by Idan Avraham and Anton Muhin, Software Engineers

Are you seeing red?

It's National Cyber Security Awareness Month, the perfect time to shed some light on a few Google Chrome alerts that are designed to help protect your browsing experience on the web.

You may have run into one of Google Chrome's red alert messages when trying to visit a site and wondered why the browser did not immediately bring up the page you requested. These are messages triggered by the phishing and malware protection feature that's enabled by default in the Options menu. Here's an example:

Whenever you see this warning, Google Chrome has detected that the site you're trying to visit may contain malware. Malware is code that attempts to steal your personal information or download harmful software onto your computer.

Besides the malware warning, Google Chrome also checks the security certificates of sites that claim to be properly encrypted (such as bank sites or shopping sites), but that may also ask you for your personal or financial information under false pretenses. If a site's certificate is suspicious, you may see one of the following messages:

• "This is probably not the site you are looking for!"
  This message comes up when the URL listed in the site's certificate doesn't match the site's actual URL, which means that the site you're trying to visit may be pretending to be another site.
  
  
• "The site's security certificate is not trusted!"
  Since anyone can create a certificate, Google Chrome checks to see whether a site's certificate came from a trusted organization. This message means that the certificate wasn't issued by a recognized third-party organization.

• "The site's security certificate has expired!" or "The server's security certificate is not yet valid!"
  If you see one of these messages, that means the site's certificate is not up-to-date. Therefore, Google Chrome can't verify that the site is secure.
  
  
• "The server's security certificate is revoked!"
  The third-party organization that issued the site's certificate has marked the certificate as invalid. Again, Google Chrome can't verify that the site is secure.

It's a good idea to heed these messages you see, even if the site you're trying to visit is owned by someone you know and trust. Hackers can take advantage of security holes on a site without the site owner's knowledge. So even though you've visited your friend's blog without any problem in the past, the warnings can still show up one day if someone exploits a vulnerability on the site. (And if you're seeing this message for a site you own, we're here to help! Just follow these instructions in the Webmaster Help Center. Also, check out this blog post we've written about detecting and removing malware.)

Google Chrome goes to great lengths to help keep you safe on the web. If you want to learn more about protecting your computer, website, and personal information, check out our security series on the Google blog or visit http://www.staysafeonline.org.

Posted by Fiona Chong, Online Editor

Bringing Google Sidewiki goodness to Google Chrome, Part I

Google Sidewiki was introduced a month ago as a new way of contributing helpful information to any webpage. Google Sidewiki appears as a browser sidebar, where you can read and write entries along the side of the page. A lot of great Sidewiki entries have since been written throughout the web -- a few of my favorite examples include a doctor's entry about flu vaccinations and these tips for tuning bass guitars.

Until now, Sidewiki was available only through Google Toolbar for Firefox and Internet Explorer. Today, we're excited to release the official bookmarklet for Sidewiki, which lets you easily read and write Sidewiki entries in Google Chrome, Safari and others browsers. The bookmarklet is a shortcut you can add to your bookmarks bar: When you click on the shortcut, it opens a window showing Sidewiki entries for the page you're currently viewing.

To add the Sidewiki bookmarklet, all you need to do is click and drag the bookmarklet embedded in the Google Sidewiki Help Center page to your bookmarks bar.

So what's the next step? We're working on a Google Chrome extension for Sidewiki. For more updates on Sidewiki, follow us on Twitter and stay tuned.

Posted by Andrey Adaikin, Engineer, Google Sidewiki

Tip of the day: Dragging to the omnibox

Our last Tip was about dragging links to the tabstrip. But sometimes instead of opening a link you want to search for some text. You might have already discovered that you can highlight text in a web page, right-click it, and get an option to search for that text with your default search engine.

It turns out there's another way to do the same thing: once you have some text selected, just click and hold the selection and drag it onto the omnibox.






When you let go, Google Chrome will search for the text you dropped using your default search engine. And just like with dragging links, you can drag in text from other programs too.

Posted by Peter Kasting, Software Engineer

From Anime to Animation: Google Chrome Around the World

Earlier this week, I read an interesting article in the New York Times about shokunin kishitsu, or the 'craftsman's spirit.' The craftsman's spirit in Japanese culture basically appeals to all of us, regardless of vocation, to aspire to beauty in everything we do and create.

As we collaborated with artists around the globe to create themes for Google Chrome, we hope that bringing art from different cultures into the modern browser expresses some of that spirit. We've enjoyed hearing your thoughts on these designs and how you've used them to personalize your browser. For a friend who emailed me recently, the Hedgehog in the Fog theme brought back fond memories of his Russian childhood and the intrepid Yozhik (as the hedgehog is affectionately known in Russia). This Google Chrome theme is based on the 1975 animated film, which incidentally won "No.1 Animated film of all time" at the 2003 Laputa Animation Festival.

Beauty can be based on a heart-warming 34-year-old animation that makes us nostalgic, or cultural references that makes us who we are today. Our friends working on Google Chrome in Tokyo pointed us to a few Google Chrome themes that resonate with our users in Japan. These themes are based on a modern-day, participatory culture of remixing ideas. Take for example, the Google Chrome theme from global virtual pop star Hatsune Miku. Hatsune Miku began as a character in a vocal synthesis software package from Sapporo-based Crypton Future Media. But as musicians and artists created a body of work, including songs, drawings and animation for Hatsune Miku, she became a best-selling recording artist in Japan!

If you're curious for more, you can get a taste of Google Chrome themes from Japan, including TENORI-ON, Yamaha's nifty 16x16 visual musical instrument; the classic game Super Monkey Ball from Sega, and tea-loving ninjas Nintea from designer Panson Works and anime company Toei Animation (of Dragon Ball and Sailor Moon fame):

For the craftsmen -- the engineers -- working on Google Chrome around the globe, shokunin kishitsu provides lots of food for thought, as we continue to build on a browser designed to be fast, simple, and beautiful for users.

In the spirit of what our Japanese colleagues call "速い + ART" (or, speed + art), we'd like to leave you with a new video (with a surprise ending). Check it out at youtube.com/googlechromethemes, or by clicking on the image below.

Posted by Min Li Chan, Associate Product Marketing Manager

A guided tour for new Google Chrome users

Did you, or someone you know, recently switch to Google Chrome and wonder, "Where's the file menu?" "What happened to the search box?" "How do I bookmark a page?" To address these initial questions and help people settle into the browser, we created the "New to Google Chrome?" guide.

The first section of the guide invites people to take a tour of the browser with a simple and interactive image map. The guide then walks through key browser settings and presents a few simple tasks that highlights the browser's main features.

Savvier users could go directly to the advanced section and pick up a few tricks like creating application shortcuts and doing site searches.

Check out the guide when you get the chance and pass it along to friends who are trying out Google Chrome.

Posted by Fiona Chong, Online Editor for the Google Chrome team

A splash of color to your browser: Artist Themes for Google Chrome

In the most recent stable release of Google Chrome, we looked at ways to make a snappy, simple browser even more customizable, and we're happy to hear that you've enjoyed personalizing Google Chrome's look and feel with a few of our early themes for the browser.

Today, we are introducing Artist Themes for Google Chrome. We invited leading artists, architects, musicians, illustrators, filmmakers and fashion and interior designers from across the globe to create artwork for an unusual canvas: the modern web browser. The result is a vibrant fusion of art and technology, with a hundred Artist Themes that we hope will add a touch of inspiration and delight to your web browsing experience with Google Chrome.

One of our favorite themes comes from Yulia Brodskaya, whose innovative paper art techniques and passion for typography and illustration have brought her into the international spotlight. We were particularly intrigued by Yulia's approach to the design challenge at hand, explained in her own words:

I was really curious to see how the traditional paper craft, which I use for creating my work, can be applied to the Google Chrome browser. I made a quick pencil sketch first, choosing the two main elements for my theme: green jungle leaves for the top and a very colourful parrot to accompany it. Then I followed my usual working pattern and created a physical artwork out of edge glued paper stripes. I used the photographs of the paper leaves and parrot to design my theme layout, and sent the resulting mock-up to Google designers who brought the whole thing to life.

Yulia's original pencil sketch

Yulia's final theme in Google Chrome

We're honored to have the opportunity to work with a hundred artists around the world, including Jeff Koons, Jenny Holzer, Karim Rashid, Jonathan Adler, Oscar de la Renta, Anita Kunz, Tom Sachs, Kate Spade, Donna Karan, Kid Robot, Dolce & Gabbana, Michael Graves, Todd Oldham, Yann Arthus-Bertrand, Mariah Carey, and Wes Craven (and that's just to name a few!). Many, many thanks to all the artists for lending their vision, imagination, and hard work to this collaboration.

If you haven't tried Google Chrome recently, download the latest version and give the Artist Themes a whirl. If you're already using Google Chrome, you can check out the themes gallery and try on your favorite Artist Themes.

Posted by Glen Murphy, Software Engineer, and Mark Sabec, Associate Product Marketing Manager

Tip: Dragging to the tabstrip

We've already seen how to open links in new tabs or windows using keyboard modifiers. But what if you want to open a link in some existing place?


Click and hold on the link, and then drag it onto or between any of the tabs in the tabstrip.


You should see a small arrow appear showing where the link will open. When you release the mouse button, the link will load right at that arrow. If you drop it in the empty space after the last tab, you'll open a new tab at the end of the strip.


Rather than needing to copy and paste links, you can also just drag links from other programs, such as word processors or other browsers, and drop them on the Chrome tabstrip in the same way.

Posted by Peter Kasting, Software Engineer

Sporting a new stable release

Thanks to a full year of great feedback from our users, we're kicking off our second year of Google Chrome with a brand new stable release. This stable release incorporates many of the improvements and features that we tested out in our most recent beta release, including a 150% increase in Javascript performance since our very first beta, a freshly redesigned New Tab page, an improved Omnibox, Themes capability, as well as HTML5 features. You can get the full, play-by-play details on the Official Google Blog.

If you haven't tried Google Chrome recently, we invite you to give it a whirl. Many of the improvements in this release were inspired by the responses from users, so we're all ears if you have any feedback. If you're already using Google Chrome, you'll be automatically updated to this new version soon, but if you're itching to try this right away, download the latest version at google.com/chrome.

Posted by Anthony Laforge, Program Manager

Tip: Even more control over opening links

In the previous tip, we covered middle-clicking and ctrl-clicking to open links in new tabs. There are even more shortcuts you can use to take total control over where links open. Feel free to try these:

Shift-click: Opens a link in a new window (just like right-clicking and selecting "Open link in new window")


Shift-middle-click (or shift-ctrl-click): Opens a link in a new tab, and switches to that tab immediately


Alt-click: Saves the contents of a link to your computer


With these shortcuts, you can quickly handle links no matter how you wish to use them. Enjoy!

Posted by Peter Kasting, Software Engineer

Google Chrome Turns 1!

A lot has happened for Google Chrome since the day we prematurely shipped our comic book, announced Google Chrome just a day before we initially intended, and pushed our browser out of the nest and into Beta. To take stock of this past year, we thought we'd celebrate with a birthday cake, birthday balloons, and a few interesting factoids. Since September 2, 2008, there have been:

• 51 developer releases, 21 beta releases or updates, and 15 stable releases or updates
  
• Over 20,600 bugs filed (4367 of them were duplicates, 3505 have been fixed, which leaves a whole lot left to go!)
  
• 11 external committers and bug editors, 46 external code contributors
  
• 50 Chrome Experiments
  
• 26 posts on the Google Chrome blog
  
• 12 Chrome Shorts, a collection of short films about Google Chrome
  
• A sequel to the comic in Japanese
  

More importantly, we've improved by over 150% on Javascript performance since our initial beta:

We've also added some of the most commonly requested features -- including form autofill, side-by-side view, the ability to remove items from the New Tab page, and full screen mode (just hit F11!) -- and even a bit of magic to make the entire web three-dimensional (okay, that was just a joke).

There's still plenty for us to do. Extensions for Google Chrome are well underway. We're also hard at work on Google Chrome for Mac and Linux, which are making rapid progress on the developer channel. Our Mac and Linux versions are missing a few key features (such as printing), so we're keeping them in the developer channel a little while longer to make sure that they provide a satisfying native experience on these platforms and meet our standards for stability and performance. If you like living on the cutting edge and don't mind the work in progress, you can download Google Chrome for Mac and Linux today through the developer channel.

Before we blow out the candles on Google Chrome's first birthday, we'd like to send a huge thank you to all our users who browse the web with Google Chrome, provide great feedback, and shared your all-round awesomeness with us. The second year of Google Chrome's life is shaping up to be a pretty exciting one, and we look forward to an action-packed year for the browser and the web. Stay tuned.

Posted by Brian Rakowski, Product Manager

50 Chrome Experiments and counting!

When we launched Chrome Experiments in March, we wanted to create a showcase for innovative uses of web browsers and JavaScript. It was also our hope that artists and programmers from around the world would be inspired to submit their own experiments. Today, we're excited to announce that Chrome Experiments -- which started out as nineteen experiments at launch -- now points to fifty very impressive JavaScript experiments.

We'd like to send a huge thank you to the community for submitting such great work over the last five months. And we're thrilled to see many new submissions by developers from around the world, from Lithuania to Brazil to Australia. As the new generation of JavaScript engines make the web faster, we hope that you're enjoying the creative possibilities as much as we are. Some of our favorite new experiments include Depth of Field, Wavy Scrollbars, JavaScript Canvas Raytracer, and Bomomo.

The 50th Chrome Experiment, Sebastian Deutsch's 100 Tweets, shows a hint of the future by using the HTML5 canvas and audio tags. The audio tag, which is supported in Google Chrome Beta, allows audio playback without a plug-in.

We're very excited about HTML5 becoming standard in modern browsers. If you're thinking about submitting an experiment to Chrome Experiments, we'd love to see some innovative uses of this new standard. We're especially psyched about the video and audio tags.

If you haven't checked out Chrome Experiments recently, we hope that you take some time and explore all the latest experiments. Please keep the experiments coming, and, hopefully, we'll see you again at 100.

Posted by Aaron Koblin, Google Creative Lab

Tip: Opening links in new tabs

Tabs can be great for working with multiple pages at the same time. But if you open them by right-clicking links and selecting "Open link in new tab," you might not have realized that there's an easier way. Just use your middle mouse button (it might look like a wheel) to click a link, and it will open in a new tab in the background.


"But wait," you say, "my mouse doesn't have a middle button!" No problem -- another way to get the same effect is to hold down the Ctrl key while clicking (with the left mouse button) on a link.


(If clicking the middle button on a link doesn't open it, your mouse may be set to use the middle button for something else. You can configure your mouse settings by going to the Windows Control Panel.)

Posted by Peter Kasting, Software Engineer

Recreating the Google Chrome icon: videos from around the world

When I was originally designing the Google Chrome icon, I went through many iterations to figure out how to best represent our brand new web browser. The design needed to stand out on the desktop, look stable yet dynamic, and use color to show some Google branding. Through the design process, another quality that became important to the team was to make the icon feel like a real, tangible object so that clicking on it would be like pressing a real button.

This June, we invited users to take the icon and actually build it in a new, creative way. Many people around the world accepted the challenge and submitted fun and surprising videos of their process. We got to see the icon made out of some interesting materials — like cups, dominos, food and even clothing — as well as many unique digital creations.

I was really impressed by the great care people took in recreating the icon, and I particularly enjoyed this video by Renaud, a fan of Google Chrome in Annecy, France:

A big thank you to everyone who sent us videos. Check out all the submissions here.

Posted by Micheal Lopez, Web Design Lead

A New Beta: Why slow down when you can speed up?

There's a brand new beta for you to try out today. As always, we continue to focus on speed, and this beta release shows over 30% improvement on both the V8 and SunSpider benchmarks over our current stable channel release. We've also improved two of the most loved and most used features of Google Chrome: the New Tab page and the Omnibox. Plus, we decided to add a little bit of style by allowing you to deck out your browser with colors, patterns, and images.

Customize the new New Tab page
The New Tab page has been one of the most popular features in Google Chrome. It's also the one that we hear the most about. Embarrassed that checking out lolcats is showing up as your most popular browser pastime? Now you can bump up something dignified and refined into that top Most Visited slot with a simple click and drag of your mouse. You can pin website thumbnails to a particular spot so they don't disappear even if your browsing habits change. Last but not least, you can hide parts of the page if you don't want to see them using the layout buttons on the top right of the New Tab page.


Rearrange website thumbnails on the New Tab page by clicking and dragging thumbnails


Pin websites thumbnails to a particular spot


Try the latest and greatest Omnibox
The Omnibox is indisputably an important part of Google Chrome -- it helps you get to the sites you're looking for with just a few keystrokes. With this release, we've optimized the presentation of the drop-down menu and added little icons to help you distinguish between suggested sites, searches, bookmarks, and sites from your browsing history.




Tweak the chrome of Google Chrome
We built Google Chrome to be speedy, stable and more secure. Now we're adding a little bit of style by allowing you to add a theme to your browser. So, if you've been dying for a browser that reminds you of the Friendly Confines, or if you just want the comfort of your favorite blanket when you're browsing the web, now you can have it. Of course, if baseball or quilting isn't your thing, you can change the theme of your browser by visiting the Themes Gallery. There is still some testing to do -- we're only launching some very basic themes and there are still some kinks to work out, but we will add more themes in the future as we roll this out to the stable version.


A sneak peek at the woody "Desktop" theme



...and your favorite website thumbnails basking on a grassy field


Experience HTML5 capabilities
We're always trying to further push the things you can do in the browser. For example, we've started building HTML5 capabilities into this beta release, including video tag functionality and web workers.


Speed, Speed, and more Speed
Beyond the improvements in JavaScript execution in this latest beta, there are a host of other improvements that should help Google Chrome make the most of your network connection. For example, when you open a new web page while other web pages are still loading, Google Chrome is now smarter about prioritizing the requests for the new page -- for instance, fetching text, images, and video for your new page -- ahead of the requests from the older pages. Loading pages on this beta release should also be faster than ever with DNS caching, more efficient DOM bindings, and using V8 for proxy auto-config.


To try out these new features, you need to get on the beta channel. This means that your version of Google Chrome will regularly get updated with new speed enhancements, features, and bug fixes before most users see them. The beta channel provides a sneak preview of things to come with occasional rough edges, but it's a great way for us to quickly churn out new features and get your feedback.

If you're interested in giving all these fresh new features a whirl, download the beta version of Google Chrome.

Posted by Glen Murphy, Software Engineer

Tip: Quick site searches with the Omnibox

We recently showcased how the address bar (also affectionately known as the Omnibox) doubles as a search box: simply type a search term in the box and press Enter to see results from your default search engine.

Here's another fun fact about the address bar: you can use it to search sites that you've previously visited.

Say you frequently go to YouTube to watch funny videos. The next time you need a good laugh, just start typing "youtube" in the address bar. After a few letters, the address bar will automatically offer you the option to search the site.

Now the cool trick: hit Tab on your keyboard to convert the address bar into a search box for the site.

Then type what you're looking for and press Enter. Google Chrome will immediately bring you to the search results page on that site. In this case, you'll see YouTube's search results page for "dog on skates":

Use this "tab to search" shortcut to save yourself a few clicks the next time you want to quickly search a site. Try it out and let us know what you think!

Posted by Fiona Chong, Google Chrome team

10 days left to submit your video

Over the past few weeks, we on the Google Chrome team have been delighted and entertained by your video entries for the Google Chrome Icon Project.

Videos so far have ranged from dessert making in California to coordinated hockey players in Russia to complex 3D animations from Japan. You can view all the submissions on YouTube.

There are still 10 days left to submit your video - so break out your most ambitious ideas and submit something iconic!



Posted by Jason Toff, Google Chrome Team

Google Chrome OS - FAQ

We've been getting a number of questions in reference to our 'Introducing the Google Chrome OS' blog post, and so here are a number of your most frequently asked Qs – along with our As. We'll be sure to add more to this list as popular questions come in.

Is Google Chrome OS free?
Yes – Google Chrome OS is an open source project and will be available to use at no cost.

What companies is Google working with to support Google Chrome OS?
The Google Chrome OS team is currently working with a number of technology companies to design and build devices that deliver an extraordinary end user experience. Among others, these companies include Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba.

I'm a developer – how can I work with you?
Thanks for your interest. Later this year, the Google Chrome OS code will be open sourced. We're looking forward to working with the open source community and making our own small contribution to the great work being done out there. Please stay tuned.

If you are interested in a full time position as a software engineer please visit the jobs pages for the following offices and indicate that you are interested in Chrome.

• Mountain View, US
• San Francisco, US
• Kirkland, US
• Santa Monica, US
• Reston, US
• Montreal, CA
• Aarhus, DK
• London, UK
• St. Petersburg, RU
• Tokyo, JP

Posted by Sundar Pichai, VP Product Management and Linus Upson, Engineering Director

Update on 7/8/2009: We updated the list of companies we are working with.

Lost a tab? Not to worry.

Google Chrome has a lot of features that make your browsing easier, but you might not notice them all right away. This is because we've taken great care to keep our design clean, so features don't get in your way when you're not using them. A great example of this is our session restore functionality, which lets you reopen tabs and windows you recently closed. Here's how to use it:



Posted by Nick Baum, Google Chrome team

Google Update, Updated

A few months ago, we released the source code to Google Update, our software that ensures that users are using the latest and greatest version of Google Chrome. Today, we are making another improvement to Google Update such that it will run at periodic intervals, as opposed to running as a continual process. Learn more on the Open Source Blog.

Posted by Jason Toff, Google Chrome Team

Land of the Rising Chrome

Google Chrome is available in 50 languages, but that's not the only thing international about it. The browser was developed by open-source contributors and Google engineers from around the globe, including our Tokyo office.

Engineers at Google Japan developed the Navigational Suggest feature that makes it faster to get where you want to go. For example, if you type "tokyo tower" into the Omnibox, the nifty search and address bar, you'll see a suggestion that will take you directly to the landmark's official website.



Our Japanese engineers also figured out how to speed up Google Chrome's rendering of double-byte languages like Japanese, Chinese, and Korean.

Since comics (or manga) are quite popular in Japan, we thought Japanese users would enjoy a comic book about the contributions of our local team. So we created a brand new issue of our comic book in Japanese. Even if you can't read Japanese, I think you'll enjoy it.




The illustrations are by a talented Japanese artist named Yutanpo Shirane, who picked up right where the first comic left off.

Posted by Kaori Negoro and John Fu, Google Japan

Get to where you're going, faster

Google Chrome's New Tab page is designed to help you get to where you're going, faster. In the following video, I'll show you an overview of how it works and the newly added ability to remove items from the page.



Posted by Glen Murphy, Google Chrome team

Join the Google Chrome icon project

A few weeks ago, a few of us on the Google Chrome team decided to experiment with creating the Google Chrome icon out of different objects. We started off simple, using things like spoons and balloons, and eventually progressed to more elaborate creations, using stop-animation and other video effects. We even created a cake!



We know from past experience that users are the ones who come up with the coolest stuff. So with that, we now turn the challenge to YOU to make a video showing the formation of the Google Chrome icon in a big, unusual or creative way.

Imagine a bird's eye view of a parking lot with carefully arranged cars, coordinated outfits in a stadium's bleachers, a 10,000 M&M mural, etc. We are excited to see what you come up with and we'll showcase the best submissions!

Here are the details:

• You have until July 22 to submit your video
• Users from all over the world are invited to participate
• The best entries will be featured on Google & YouTube

To start you thinking, here's a quick video of our team's experiments. It also includes two great ideas from FlippyCat and Anna the Red:



To learn more and submit your video, visit google.com/chromeicon09.

Posted by Jason Toff, Google Chrome team