Wednesday 30 June 2010

Making the web more accessible, one step at a time

From text that is too small to read, to user interfaces that do not offer keyboard navigation options, users with special needs face a lot of challenges when trying to access websites they are interested in. We believe that extensions can complement the work we are doing to make Google Chrome more accessible and can help users with disabilities turn the web from an often unwelcoming place to an environment they can truly enjoy.

Today we are launching a new category of featured extensions under the name “Accessibility”. On this page you’ll find ChromeVis a brand new extension from Google that allows users with low vision to magnify and change the color of selected text. You will also find extensions like Chrome Daltonize that can help color blind users to see more details in web pages or gleeBox that provides alternatives to actions traditionally performed via the mouse such as clicking, scrolling and selecting text fields.



All users can benefit from these extensions - not just users with disabilities. To encourage more developers to incorporate best practices in accessibility when designing extensions, we’ve open sourced the code behind Chrome Vis and created relevant documentation. You can get more information in the Chromium blog.

One can develop a lot of great extensions to benefit users with special needs. We plan to release a few more in the next months so stay tuned for more updates.

Adobe Flash Player support now enabled in Google Chrome’s stable channel

In our most recent stable release of Google Chrome, we talked about beta-testing Adobe Flash Player integration into Chrome. We're now happy to enable this integration by default in the stable channel of Chrome. To read more about this integration, check out the Chromium blog.

In testing Flash Player integration into Chrome, the Chrome team admittedly spent many, many fun hours with a few of our favorite Flash-based indie games. So as a side project, we teamed up with a few creative folks to build Chrome FastBall, a Flash-based game built on top of the YouTube platform.



Try pitting your wits against the clock at youtube.com/chromefastball. If you’re using Chrome, your browser should be automatically updated with Flash Player integration as of this week. And if you haven’t yet tried Chrome, download this newest stable release of the browser at google.com/chrome and take it for a test drive!

Update 9:20 AM PST: Due to the overwhelming response to the game, some things aren't quite working as we hoped due to server-side overloading. Please forgive the maintenance work as we get the game back up again. Thanks!

Update 2 6:00 PM PST: All technical issues have been resolved now, so you can enjoy the game. Thanks for your patience!

Wednesday 16 June 2010

Gooooaaal!

Sore throats from yelling after every goal. Red eyes from waking up too early or staying up too late to watch a game. Sick leaves multiplying during important matches. It’s official: Football fever has spread around the globe, as the 2010 FIFA World Cup™ is already underway.

For those of you who are football fans, kick your game-watching up a notch with the FIFA.com Chrome extension that will help you stay up-to-date with the latest news and scores from South Africa. Most importantly, the extension notifies you when a match is about to begin and displays goal alerts within the browser in real-time for the matches you care about.

From the extension, you can also access match schedules and easily share match scores and personal commentary about specific plays and calls on Facebook, Twitter and Google Buzz. To complement the FIFA.com Chrome extension, you can personalise your browser with one of 32 custom themes that shows your team colours.



You can find the FIFA.com Chrome extension and themes in the World Cup section of the Chrome Extensions gallery. While you’re there, you can also try out more than 5,000 extensions -- you may not find one that helps your team perform better on the field, but you’ll likely discover a few that can make your daily browsing more enjoyable. May the best team win!