Oodles of improvements to Chrome’s spell checking

Another stable release of Chrome arrives today, bringing you improved spell checking in the browser. We’ve refreshed the dictionaries for all languages, and users who speak Korean, Tamil, or Albanian will appreciate that we’ve added support for those languages, too. In addition, users who add custom words to the dictionary can now sync their settings to bring those changes to all the devices where they use Chrome.

The “Ask Google for suggestions” spell checking feature, powered by the same technologies used by Google search, now supports grammar checking, proper nouns, homonyms, and context-sensitive spell checking in English. This means that you can now enjoy corrections like the following:

Users on Windows, Linux and Chrome OS will receive these enhancements in the coming weeks (we’re still working on Mac support).

If you haven’t used Chrome yet, give it a try today.

Posted by Rachel Petterson, Software Engineer and Miss Spelling

Painting the streets with the web in Indonesia

People around the world are using the web as a platform to both showcase and create amazing local culture. In the last six months, Chrome has played host to some of Indonesia’s finest up-and-coming artistic talent with the Chrome Open Spaces project.

From old masters like Basuki to contemporary street artists like Darbotz, Indonesia has a long and rich history of art. The rapidly growing population and economy has led to densified urban spaces, crazy traffic and the rise of Indonesian street art. The Chrome Open Spaces project used the web to bring all these elements together.

Designed to showcase the creativity possible with modern web technologies, Chrome Open Spaces called on aspiring artists from across the archipelago to submit drawings via a custom-designed app. The app enabled people to create ‘street art’ online using digital spray paints, brushes and stencils. Over 12,000 drawings were submitted and 11,000 votes were cast. From these virtual paintings, nine winners were chosen to have their creations showcased on buildings and walls across Jakarta and Bandung.

You can check out how their digital creations came to life on the streets and meet the local artists here:

We built Chrome to help drive innovation on the web. Projects like Chrome Open Spaces highlight how technologies that Chrome pioneered, such as HTML5, can be used to showcase local culture and innovation, and also take you to amazing places — both online and offline.

Posted by Krishna Zulkarnain, Country Marketing Manager Indonesia

Make a silent movie by talking to Chrome

Last month, the Web Speech API brought voice recognition to Chrome users in more than 30 languages. We thought it would be fun to demonstrate this new technology by using an old one: silent film.

The Peanut Gallery lets you add intertitles to old black-and-white movie clips just by talking out loud while you watch them. Create a film and share it with friends, so they can bring out their inner screenwriters too.

We hope that developers will find many uses for the Web Speech API, both fun and practical—including new ways to navigate, search, enter text, and interact with the web. We can’t wait to see how people use it.

Posted by Aaron Koblin, Creative Lab

Bringing Chromebooks to new frontiers (literally)

For our international readers, additional details can be found for Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands.

Over the past few months, Chromebooks have become a part of everyday life for many people - a computer for the kitchen, for on the go, or for sharing with the family (or not). In the U.S., the Samsung Chromebook has been at the top of Amazon’s best-selling laptop list for 149 days since launch and in the U.K., Dixons says Chromebooks make up more than 10 percent of laptop sales in Currys and PC World stores.

Many of you around the world have told us you're eager to get your hands on a Chromebook, so we've been working with our partners to make this possible. Today we're happy to say we're one step closer to making Chromebooks truly “for everyone” -- or rather, pour tout le monde, für alle, and voor iedereen.

Starting Tuesday, the Acer, HP and Samsung Chromebooks will begin rolling out in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands. To help improve computing for organizations, we’re rolling out Chromebooks to businesses and schools in these same countries as well. Learn more on our Enterprise blog.

In the U.S., Chromebooks will also be expanding to more than 1,000 Best Buy stores nationwide -- doubling the number of stores Chromebooks are presently sold in -- over the next couple of weeks.

It’s been rewarding to work with our partners to make Chromebooks available to more people around the world, and we’re looking forward to bringing Chromebooks to even more countries in the months to come.


Posted by Caesar Sengupta, Product Management Director and International Man of Mystery

Update 4/3: The Samsung and Acer Chromebooks will be available in Sweden starting today. See the Swedish blog for more details.

Update 5/27: Chromebooks are now available in Singapore and Malaysia from local retailers.

Update 6/26: The Samsung and Acer Chromebooks are now available in Finland.

Type less when you’re on the go

Tired of filling out web forms on your Android phone or tablet with the same information, time and time again? When you’ve signed in to Chrome on your desktop, you can take your saved passwords and autofill entries across your computers and laptops. With today’s Chrome Beta for Android update, you can now access these from your phone and tablet too. This makes for a faster and simpler way to fill out forms, especially handy on a small screen.

The latest version of Chrome Beta for Android is available on Google Play (use the link, you won't find it in search)! To try syncing passwords, make sure you are on the latest beta version of desktop Chrome. This feature will roll out in the coming days, so you may not see it right away after upgrading. As always, you can manage your signed in preferences in Settings.

Posted by Tommy Nyquist, Software Engineer & Mobile Sync Ninja

Faster browsing for your smaller screens

Our recent Chrome updates bring faster and simpler browsing to your phones and tablets.

Chrome for Android, faster and more responsive

Speed is critical, especially when you’re on the go. With the latest version of Chrome for Android, you can scroll and fling to view all of your favorite web pages with even more speed and ease. Based on the latest version of the V8 Javascript engine, now optimized for mobile, we have improved the Octane performance benchmark by 25 percent on average since our previous update. This means that interactions within web pages in the browser are snappier.

We’ve also added expanded support for HTML5 features such as CSS Filters, which should result in better mobile websites in the future. We plan to continue optimizing Chrome for Android platform at the same rapid pace that you’ve come to expect on Chrome across other platforms.

Chrome for iPhone and iPad, improved search and sharing

If you’re using Chrome on your iPhone or iPad, searching with Google just got even easier. Now you can see your search term in the omnibox, instead of the long search URL. This will help you refine search queries and view more content on the results page. This feature will roll out in the coming weeks, so you may not see it right away after upgrading.

Also, thanks to your feedback, we’ve added a couple more fun features. To quickly view your tab history, simply press and hold the back button to access any page you had previously visited from that tab. Head to "Menu" then "Share" to share a web page via email or to your favorite social network. Now you can also share any web page via Messages.

We’re continuing to add plenty of under-the-hood stability, security improvements and bug fixes to Chrome for both Android and iOS. We look forward to your feedback on the latest versions of Chrome, now available on Google Play and in the App Store.

Posted by Grace Kloba & Rohit Rao, Especially Mobile Software Engineers