Faster than a speeding rabbit: speed, sync, and settings

In the spirit of the lunar new year, we’re excited to kick off the Year of the Rabbit with a slew of enhancements in the Chrome beta channel. Today’s new beta includes a dramatic improvement in JavaScript speed, new password sync features, and entirely revamped browser settings.

In our new beta release, JavaScript is as quick as a bunny. With a new speed boost that we previewed in December, Chrome’s JavaScript engine V8 runs compute-intensive JavaScript applications even more quickly than before. In fact, this beta release sports a whopping 66% improvement on the V8 benchmark suite over our current stable release.



This release also includes a preliminary implementation of GPU-accelerated video. Users with capable graphics hardware should see a significant decrease in CPU usage. In full screen mode, CPU usage may decrease by as much as 80%! This means better battery life so you can keep going and going like that pink bunny in the commercials.

For those of you who enjoy the convenience of saving passwords in Chrome, you can synchronize your saved passwords across multiple computers, along with your bookmarks, preferences, themes, and extensions. For added security, you can choose to encrypt your synced passwords with your own secret sync passphrase. To enable sync, visit the “Personal Stuff” section of Chrome’s settings dialog.

Speaking of settings, you’ll notice we have reworked the look and feel of the settings dialogs. Instead of opening in a separate window, they now open in a tab. More importantly, we’ve added two new settings features that make it easy to customize Chrome to your liking. Firstly, if you can’t remember where a particular pesky configuration setting is, simply type its name into the search box to see the settings that match as you type. Secondly, you can also now jump directly to most settings pages using their own dedicated URLs, without needing to navigate through a sequence of windows. Here’s a short video of the new settings interface in action:



As always, we’re eager to get your feedback, and look forward to bringing this basket of beta-fortified carrots to the stable channel over the coming weeks! (For those of you keen for some fun and games in this Year of the Rabbit, we’ll leave you with the mind-bending #ThinkFastGame speed challenge to try out alongside our new beta.)

Posted by Jeff Chang, Product Manager and Min Li Chan, Product Marketing Manager

New Chrome extension: block sites from Google’s web search results

Today the Google web search team launched a new Chrome extension to block low-quality sites from appearing in Google’s web search results. Read more in the post below, cross-posted from the Official Google Blog. - Ed

We’ve been exploring different algorithms to detect content farms, which are sites with shallow or low-quality content. One of the signals we're exploring is explicit feedback from users. To that end, today we’re launching an early, experimental Chrome extension so people can block sites from their web search results. If installed, the extension also sends blocked site information to Google, and we will study the resulting feedback and explore using it as a potential ranking signal for our search results.

You can download the extension and start blocking sites now. It looks like this:

When you block a site with the extension, you won’t see results from that domain again in your Google search results. You can always revoke a blocked site at the bottom of the search results, so it's easy to undo blocks:



You can also edit your list of blocked sites by clicking on the extension's icon in the top right of the Chrome window.



This is an early test, but the extension is available in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish. We hope this extension improves your search experience, and thanks in advance for participating in this experiment. If you’re a tech-savvy Chrome user, please download and try the Personal Blocklist extension today.

Posted by Matt Cutts, Principal Engineer

A dash of speed, 3D and apps

Today, we’re excited to bring several new features from Chrome’s beta channel to the stable build, including WebGL, Chrome Instant, and the Chrome Web Store.

WebGL is a new technology which brings hardware-accelerated 3D graphics to the browser. With WebGL in Chrome, you can experience rich 3D experiences right inside the browser with no need for additional software. Curious about the three-dimensional possibilities? Try out these demos to experience the power of WebGL in the latest stable version of Chrome.

With Chrome Instant (à la Google Instant), web pages that you frequently visit will begin loading as soon as you start typing the URL. (“Look, Mom - no enter key!”). If supported by your default search engine, search results appear instantly as you type queries in the omnibox. To try out Instant, you’ll need to enable it in the Basics tab of Chrome’s options.

Lastly, the Chrome Web Store is now open to all Chrome users in the United States. As part of this, we’ve now added a link to the Chrome Web Store on the New Tab page, along with two sample apps. (If you don’t use these sample apps, they will automatically disappear after some time).

Some of the newest additions in the Chrome Web Store include BBC GoodFood, Autodesk, Sesame Street, nine King.com Games and Marvel Comics. There are also many apps that take advantage of the latest web technologies to deliver an immersive experience, such as Tweetdeck and The New York Times. While the store is currently only available for Chrome users in the U.S., we’re working hard to expand availability to users around the world soon, so stay tuned!



Posted by Erik Kay and Aaron Boodman, Software Engineers

Living on the web with the Chrome Web Store (and the Cr-48!)

Since we opened the Chrome Web Store last month, I’ve made it a daily habit to check out the store for new applications. Each time, I’ve discovered new things I can do on the web that work just as well as and often better than software I had to install and maintain on my computer -- such as playing games, listening to music, or getting work done. Living on the web is much easier than you might think!

If you already live on the web and are itching to get your hands on a Chrome notebook, we’ve teamed up with a few Web Store apps for a chance to test-pilot the Cr-48. Check out blogposts from MOG, Box, LucidChart, and Zoho for more details. Then go ahead and rock out with 10 million songs, manage your files in the cloud, perfect your diagram drawing skills, or move your office onto the web. While you’re at it, you might also discover a new favorite app among the more than 2,000 apps in the Chrome Web Store.

Have fun!


Posted by Heaven Kim, Product Marketing Manager

Appy Holidays from the Chrome Web Store

The winter holidays are my favorite time of the year: I get to spend quality time with friends and family and eat lots of delicious food. However, between booking airplane tickets, sending greeting cards and looking for the perfect gifts, the pre-holiday season can be busy...and even a bit stressful. This year though, I feel much more in control thanks to the apps I discovered in the Chrome Web Store’s Holiday collection.

If you are looking for last minute holiday gifts, try Gilt for Chrome. Within the app, you can find the latest designer fashion items on sale and search for specific items and sizes like “men’s shoes size 11.”



I also recommend Amazon Windowshop. You can use the app to browse through millions of products in a slick way. For example my cousin really likes cupcakes: a search in the app shows me cupcake related products organized across categories like books, groceries and clothing, helping me find unique gifts.



For those of you still planning your trip home, check out Hipmunk. Hipmunk sorts all available flights to your destination by “agony” -- a mix of price, duration, and number of connections. You can see all the flights that meet your needs in a single view.



Finally, if you are late like I am in sending holiday cards, I suggest checking out Stupeflix Video Maker. In the app you can select a theme (my favorite one is “Celebrate”), insert pictures, text, and music, and create a free 60-second greeting that you can email or post on YouTube and Facebook. Or, you can simply create beautiful photo slideshows with DropMocks and comemories.

There are hundreds more apps to discover at the Chrome Web Store.

Happy Holidays!

Posted by Christos Apartoglou, Product Marketing Manager

60 million tabs towards good causes

In 2010, the Chrome community has joined us in moments of fun, invention, exploration, and now, giving. Last week, we invited Chrome’s users worldwide to “donate” their opened tabs in Chrome to drive a charitable gift of one million dollars. We on the Chrome team were deeply impressed with the support and participation and now we’re happy to share the results with you.

The Chrome community responded with staggering enthusiasm and, acting together, raised 60,599,541 tabs for charity.

Each Chrome user chose the causes their tabs would support, which determined how we allocated our one million dollar donation. Accordingly, we’re excited to make the following donations on behalf of the Chrome community:

• $245,278 toward planting trees in the Atlantic Forest, one of the world’s endangered tropical forests.
• $232,791 toward providing clean water, by building freshwater wells for communities in developing nations.
• $112,078 toward building shelter, to be constructed by volunteers for impoverished families in Latin America.
• $267,336 toward administering vaccinations against meningitis to combat outbreaks in Africa.
• $142,518 toward publishing books by local writers and illustrators, which will be created and donated to schools and libraries across Asia and Africa.

We’ll be making the donations at year-end, and our partner charities are already looking towards applying the funds from Chrome for a Cause in 2011. Read more about how your donation will be applied specifically by visiting our partners’ websites:

• The Nature Conservancy
• charity: water
• Un Techo para mi País
• Doctors Without Borders
• Room to Read

We're glad to connect Chrome users with these important causes all around the world -- so much so that we’re already thinking of more Chrome for a Cause projects for the future!

Feel free to keep your extension installed if you’d like to hear about future opportunities to work together with the Chrome community for a good cause. We’ll post all the details about how to participate on the Chrome blog, so make sure you check in when you hear about new opportunities.

Thanks for joining us in this endeavor. Happy Holidays!

Posted by Sarah Nahm, Product Marketing Manager

Guest post from the Demo Lab: Help us test the Cr-48

Here at the Demo Lab we have only one mission: to protect your data no matter what happens to your computer. To serve this mission we have been evaluating our Cr-48 prototype notebooks in challenging, some might say extreme, conditions. We’ve been in the lab testing notebooks exhaustively (I'm talking 24 hours a day here). But, to try out as many notebooks as possible, we’re opening up the lab to the public today.

Are you ready to help take the Cr-48 through its paces? If you are up to this challenge, take these mean machines through explosions, carbicide, and destruction by ravenous zombies at google.com/demolab. While you're at it, you can submit an application to the Chrome notebook Pilot program.

That's all from here. Good luck, remember to wear your safety goggles at all times, and see you in the lab.


Posted by Lab Tech, Demo Lab