Hasta La Gadget!

It’s a big Chrome day for Google today, and they’re kicking things off with new features for the browser itself, features that will be included in Chrome 9 when it lands. The real highlight is the addition of Instant Search to Chrome’s famed “Omnibox.” It works about as you’d expect: as you type a Google search you still get your regular suggestions, but you also get a full search results page loading and refreshing live as you type. Google took things a step further and actually implemented this for regular sites too: based on your typical behavior, when you start typing an address, Chrome will pull up that site for you automatically (we hope when you type “e” you’ll get Engadget, instead of Google’s espn.com example).

The other huge improvement is “Crankshaft,” which Google claims is a 2X improvement in JavaScript speed, based on what benchmark you’re looking at. To put it in context, Google claims Chrome is 100X faster than IE’s JavaScript performance back in 2008. Other rendering tweaks include a super fast built-in PDF reader (Google demoed the browser loading the entire health care bill in a blink), and full-on WebGL support.

Developing…

Google spruces up Chrome with Instant Search from the Omnibox, other nerdy things originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Dec 2010 13:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Netflix caused a lot of head scratching in October when it started rolling out its new, disc-free Netflix experience for the PS3. Namely, different people were getting a different UI, and there didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to the differentiation. Well, it turns out Netflix was flexing a bit of its HTML5 muscle, rapidly testing different experiences to see which ones worked best for users, all without having to push out app updates or back-end changes to accommodate its indecision. Apparently, Netflix’s engineers actually ported WebKit to the PS3 to make all this possible, and hopefully it’s a sign of things to come in the HTML5 iPhone, iPad, and Android apps — which could probably use some serious sprucing, or even a bit of scattered rapid prototyping just to relieve the monotony. It’s also seems to be good news for other PS3 apps which can lean on the framework — presumably VUDU’s own HTML5-based UI took advantage of this when it landed on the PS3 in November. What we’d really love is if Sony and Google are secretly in cahoots to bring the entirety of Chrome and its couch-friendly Google TV UI with it. Hey, we can dream, right?

Netflix ported WebKit to the PS3 to enable HTML5 goodies, a dynamically updatable UI originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Dec 2010 04:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink eHomeUpgrade  |  Netflix  | Email this | Comments

It’s just a Chrome OS sorta day, isn’t it? To catch you up here, we told you earlier that Google is planning to announce its own Chrome OS netbook this coming Tuesday, and well, now we’re peering at a supposed picture of that very machine’s keyboard. We don’t know all that much about the rest of the netbook — we’ve heard from multiple sources that it’s powered by an Intel Atom processor — but the image above was taken from an Inventec (as in, the ODM making the netbook) presentation. We’ll call a spade a spade here and say it looks like your average chiclet keyboard, but there are obviously some interesting differences. Over on the left side of the panel you’ll see a “search” key subbing for a Caps Lock key, and up above, the function row has forward / back keys as well as Window, full screen, and “configuration” keys.

Wait, but couldn’t this be any old netbook keyboard? Sure it could, we’ve got an exclusive photo of Acer’s Chrome netbook (that “ZGA” model) which happens to have the same exact keyboard layout. You can check out the picture of that one after the break, and you’ll see it looks extremely similar to this shot. We should also mention that the tipster that sent the above photo in claims the Google-branded Chrome OS netbook will be announced next Tuesday, but won’t be on sale until December 14. Looks like it’s going to be a very interesting Tuesday morning!

Continue reading This is the Google Chrome OS netbook keyboard

This is the Google Chrome OS netbook keyboard originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Dec 2010 19:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

The headline pretty much reveals the brunt of it, but indeed, it looks like next week Google is going to start talking about how its Chrome operating system is coming along. Multiple sources have told us that Google will be holding some sort of event on Tuesday, December 7th — we’re not sure if it’ll be a live event, a webcast, or something else entirely — and that the shindig will see the launch of that Google-branded Chrome OS netbook we’ve been hearing about. Again, we’ve heard that the Atom-powered laptop isn’t going to be a mass market device — there will only be around 65,000 units available to Google’s closest “friends and family” — and that the Cloud-based OS is still very much in a beta, non-consumer-friendly state. It’s a bit odd that we still haven’t received an invite to this planned event since it’s purportedly days away, not to mention it conflicts with the All Things D: Dive Into Mobile Event, but at the time of publishing this post we had yet to hear back from Google’s PR team with an official comment.

Of course, this all lines up with TechCrunch‘s report that Google will be launching its Chrome Web / App Store very soon, as well as yesterday’s launch of Chrome 8, which supports those aforementioned Chrome apps. (Companies like TweetDeck have already started demoing their browser apps.) Don’t forget that those apps are going to be a large part of the OS, so it would make sense for Google to talk about ’em in tandem. The pieces sure do seem to be fitting together quite well, and while we still have lots of unanswered questions, we’re feeling confident that we’ll be getting some official answers on all this Chrome-ness very soon.

Update: AllThingsD has also heard a similar December 7th launch date of the Chrome Web Store. The evidence seems to be mounting here…

Update 2: Well, there you have it, Google just sent out invites for its December 7th Chrome event! We will be there!

Image note: As we said last time, that picture above is just our own mockup of what a Chromebook may look like. We even added a Chrome key!

Sources: Google-branded Chrome OS netbook to launch on December 7th originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Dec 2010 15:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Hey, Adobe’s finally figured out how to make Flash secure — have Google do it! The guys behind your favorite search engine have updated their latest Dev channel release of Chrome to include a new sandboxing facility for Flash Player content. It’ll serve to limit access to sensitive system resources and make Flash’s operation a generally less threatening proposition than it currently is. This also marks the fulfillment of a longstanding promise from Google to give Flash the same treatment it’s afforded to JavaScript and HTML rendering for a while, and should be welcome news to Windows users eager to minimize “the potential attack surface” of their browser. Sorry, Mac fans, you’re out in the unsecured cold for now. Of course, the Dev channel itself is one step less refined than beta software, so even if you’re on Windows it might be advisable to wait it out a little bit.

Chrome sandboxes Flash Player in latest Dev channel release for Windows originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Dec 2010 05:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Download Squad  |  Chromium Blog  | Email this | Comments