Roll across platforms and race across screens with two new Chrome Experiments

We spend huge chunks of our lives on our phones and tablets. And since life shouldn't be all work and no play, we've created two new Chrome Experiments—Roll It and Racer—that let you play with other people using phones, tablets, and computers running Chrome.

Roll It brings a classic boardwalk game to your browser using your phone and a desktop or laptop computer. Chrome on the phone lets you aim and roll the ball with a flick of your wrist, while Chrome on the computer renders the 3D graphics of the Roll It alley.

With Racer, you can build slot-car-style race tracks which align across up to five mobile screens. Touch your screen, and your car speeds across all the phones and tablets, not just your own. This shows a hint of what’s possible when web experiences are designed for a multi-player (and multi-device) world.

Both experiments use the latest in web technologies and keep themselves synchronized using WebSockets, which allows data to be sent between multiple devices and servers at any time. Developers interested in learning more should stay tuned to the Chromium blog for documentation on how we made both games.

Have fun, and experiment on!

Posted by Iain Tait, Creative Director and Speed Demon

Browse the web across languages, on the go

Today’s Chrome Beta for Android release brings the built-in translation bar you’ve seen on desktop Chrome to help you read more of the web while you’re on the go, regardless of the language of the web page. When you come across a page written in a language that isn't in the same language as your phone or tablet, look for the translation bar. To translate the page, touch the “Translate” button.

Following fullscreen support on phones, we are now adding fullscreen on tablets as well. As you scroll, the top toolbar disappears so you can immerse yourself in the web page content. Finally, on phones, a “+” in the toolbar now makes creating tabs even easier.

For those of you trying out our experimental data compression feature, you can see a graph (under “Settings > Bandwidth Management”) that shows your estimated bandwidth savings.

The latest version of Chrome Beta for Android is available on Google Play. We look forward to your early feedback.

Posted by Miguel Garcia, Software Engineer & Multilingual Maestro

Richer notifications coming to Chrome

When you’re surfing the web, you can get so immersed that you might not realize you’re late for a meeting or that someone messaged you in another chat window. A couple years ago, we created a way for notifications to appear outside the browser window. Starting in today’s Beta channel release, we’re enabling Chrome apps and extensions to show richer notifications with a revamped user interface (as well as under the hood -- developers can learn more on the Chromium blog).

We’ve designed these notifications to be beautiful, useful and engaging. They can display formatted text and images, and can include actions directly inside the pop-up (so you can respond to that email right away).

Missed a bunch of notifications while you were taking a coffee break? No problem -- you can open up the notification center to see them all in one place.

Notification Center on Windows

Notification Center on ChromeOS

You can also disable notifications from any source whenever you wish, for those times when you want some peace and quiet.

Download Chrome Beta today to get a preview of these features on Windows (Mac support coming soon!).

Posted by Somas Thyagaraja, Product Manager and Nifty Notifier

Searching on the go, made even simpler

Chrome for Android, improved search and fullscreen browsing

Today’s Chrome for Android stable update, now available on Google Play, makes searching on the go even simpler. You can now see your search queries in the omnibox instead of the long search URL, so you can easily refine them and view more results.

To make browsing the mobile web even easier, web pages also display in fullscreen on phones. As you scroll, the top toolbar disappears so you can immerse yourself in the web page content. When you scroll up, the toolbar returns so you can get on to the next thing.

Chrome for iPhone and iPad, with voice search (coming soon)

Over the coming days, we’re rolling out an update for iPhone and iPad as well. You can now speak your searches into the omnibox. Touch the microphone, say your search query aloud and see your results (in some cases spoken back to you), all without typing a single letter. Try these queries with the update (coming soon to the App Store):

• “How many miles from San Antonio to Dallas?”
• “What’s the weather in Rome?”
• “Who stars in The Internship?”

This update also enables faster reloading of web pages by using the cache more efficiently when the network is slow, which is especially useful when you’re on the go. Finally, other iOS apps can now give you the option to open links in Chrome and then return to the app with just one tap.

We look forward to your feedback on the latest versions of Chrome for Android and iOS.

Posted by Yusuf Ozuysal and Milan Broum, Minimalist & Vocal Software Engineers

Every second counts

Last month’s Chrome Beta release contained optimizations so that web pages load 5% faster on average. We’ve included those optimizations in today’s Chrome Stable release so all users will enjoy a faster browsing experience.

A 5% improvement may not seem like much by itself, but our estimates show that when you add up those saved seconds across all Chrome users, it totals to more than 510 years of people’s time saved every week.

Want to make that number even bigger? Download Chrome today.

Posted by James Simonsen, Software Engineer and Saver of Split Seconds

Live from Google I/O: Mo’ screens, mo’ goodness

[Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog]

This morning, we kicked off the 6th annual Google I/O developer conference with over 6,000 developers at Moscone Center in San Francisco, 460 I/O Extended sites in 90 countries, and millions of you around the world who tuned in via our livestream. Over the next three days, we’ll be hosting technical sessions, hands-on code labs, and demonstrations of Google's products and partners' technology.

We believe computing is going through one of the most exciting moments in its history: people are increasingly adopting phones, tablets and newer type of devices. And this spread of technology has the potential to make a positive impact in the lives of people around the world—whether it's simply helping you in your daily commute, or connecting you to information that was previously inaccessible.

This is why we focus so much on our two open platforms: Android and Chrome. They enable developers to innovate and reach as many people as possible with their apps and services across multiple devices. Android started as a simple idea to advance open standards on mobile; today it is the world’s leading mobile platform and growing rapidly. Similarly, Chrome launched less than five years ago from an open source project; today it’s the world’s most popular browser.

In line with that vision, we made several announcements today designed to give developers even more tools to build great apps on Android and Chrome. We also shared new innovations from across Google meant to help make life just a little easier for you, including improvements in search, communications, photos, and maps.

Here’s a quick look at some of the announcements we made at I/O:

• Android & Google Play: In addition to new developer tools, we unveiled Google Play All Access, a monthly music subscription service with access to millions of songs that joins our music store and locker; and the Google Play game services with real-time multiplayer and leaderboards. Also, coming next month to Google Play is a special Samsung Galaxy S4, which brings together cutting edge hardware from Samsung with Google’s latest software and services—including the user experience that ships with our popular Nexus devices.
• Chrome: With over 750 million active users on Chrome, we’re now focused on bringing to mobile the speed, simplicity and security improvements that we’ve seen on the desktop. To that end, today we previewed next-generation video codec VP9 for faster video-streaming performance; the requestAutocomplete API for faster payments; and Chrome Experiments such as "A Journey Through Middle Earth" and Racer to demonstrate the ability to create immersive mobile experiences not possible in years past.
• Google+: We unveiled the newly designed Google+, which helps you easily explore content as well dramatically improve your online photo experience to give you crisp, beautiful photos—without the work! We also upgraded Google+ Hangouts—our popular group video application—to help bring all of your real-life conversations online, across any device or platform, and with groups of up to 10 friends.
• Search: Search has evolved considerably in recent years: it can now have a real conversation with you, and even make your day a bit smoother by predicting information you might need. Today we added the ability to set reminders by voice and we previewed “spoken answers” on laptops and desktops in Chrome—meaning you can ask Google a question and it will speak the answer back to you.
• Maps: Today we previewed the next generation of Google Maps, which gets rid of any clutter in order to put your individual experience and exploration front and center. Each time you click or search, our technology draws you a tailored map that highlights the information you need. From design to directions, the new Google Maps is smarter and more useful.

Technology can have a profound, positive impact on the daily lives of billions of people. But we can’t do this alone—developers play a crucial role. I/O is our chance to come together and thank you for everything you do.

Posted by Sundar Pichai, SVP, Android, Chrome & Apps

Access Google Keep with the new Chrome app

[Cross-posted from the Google Drive Blog]

Last month, Google Keep launched to help you quickly jot down ideas and keep track of things while on the go with your Android device or on the web. Today, with the launch of a new Chrome app, Google Keep is even easier to access on your computer using Chrome.

The Google Keep Chrome app launches in its own window, so you can create notes, cross out your to-do lists, and attach photos to tasks while you work on other things. And if you don’t have an internet connection, don’t fret: the Chrome app works offline because we all know that ideas (big and small) can be sparked at any time.

You can visit the Chrome Web Store to add the app today (use the link, you won’t find it in search)!

Happy note taking!

Posted by Eddy Mead, Software Engineer and Talented Task Tracker