Good news for users of Google Chrome, Picasa, and other Google desktop apps on Windows systems: Google Update, previously a background new version checker that was mighty hard to kill off, runs as a scheduled task, either when your system is idle or every so many hours. Better still, if you no longer use Google apps at all, it uninstalls itself. [via Google Operating System]

Today we're releasing the Sputnik JavaScript test suite. Sputnik is a comprehensive set of more than 5000 tests that touch all aspects of the JavaScript language as defined in the ECMA-262 standard.Soon after the V8 project started we also began work on what would become the Sputnik tests. The goal was to create a test suite based directly on the language spec that checked the behavior of every object, function and individual algorithm in the language. The task was given to a team in Russia – hence the name "Sputnik" – which went about systematically producing tests. As the test suite grew we used it to ensure that V8 conformed to the spec and to detect unexpected changes in our behavior.Now that the test suite is complete we're happy to be able to release it as an open source project, under the BSD license. We hope Sputnik can be as useful to other implementers of JavaScript as it has been to us, particularly at a time where implementations change rapidly.

Since the initial launch of Google Chrome back in September we have had the Elements and Resources tabs of WebKit's Inspector available. We are now ready to present Inspector's Scripts and Profiles panels built on top of the V8 engine providing web developers with full-featured Javascript debugger and sample-based profiler in the dev channel release of Google Chrome. We are also re-introducing the Elements and Resources tabs running out of process for better robustness, security and support for the new debugger and profiler setup.You can invoke new developer tools by selecting "JavaScript console" from the Developer menu (or using Ctrl+Shift+J). For example, running the statistical profiler on the V8 benchmark suite (below screenshot) will give exact information on the actual code execution as the data is generated straight from running the optimized code from V8.

Filed under: Google, Freeware, Open Source, Beta, Browsers

Internet Explorer 8 is by far the best browser Microsoft's ever released, but most of our readers are happily using a better alternative like Firefox or Chrome. Microsoft's not happy about this, so they've created an absurd piece of propaganda to win you back.

This browser comparison chart pits IE8 against Firefox and Chrome and puts IE8 on top time after time, but in very dubious categories. Each row comes with its own ridiculous set of comments justifying the seemingly meaningless checkmarks, like this note on customizability:

We're excited to see many people are experimenting with the upcoming extension features of Chrome in the dev channel. We're getting a lot of great feedback and are working hard to bring extensions to the stable channel as quickly as possible. First of all, we've set up a new discussion group for extension-related topics. Going forward, chromium-extensions will be your one-stop shop for extension development news, feedback and questions. If you're interested in developing extensions, we invite you to join us at chromium-extensions.

Chrome's in 2.0 on Windows and available on Mac and Linux; Apple's beaming with pride over Safari 4; Opera's still innovating with Opera 10; and we're all eagerly awaiting Firefox 3.5. With all these great choices, which do you use?

Safari, Chrome, and Internet Explorer all reached new final versions of recently, while Firefox and Opera pushed their own web browsers into almost-there betas. We pulled out the digital stopwatch and testing kits to see how they measured up.

If you've never seen our browser speed test series before, you should know it's unscientific but, we believe, fairly thorough. We use a millisecond timer (Rob Keir's timer, to be specific) to manually clock the distance between launching a browser and seeing it fully loaded on a home page, then do the same timer testing while waiting for multiple tabs to load. All of the timing tests are performed three times and averaged, with far-off aberrations excluded and re-tested.

With the release of Mac Chrome to the dev-channel, I wanted to talk about open source and expectations. What was the point of releasing at this stage, you might ask? It's clearly not finished. Clearly. It's missing a large number of features, some half implemented, others not at all. Why even bother? Doesn't it just make us look bad?Open source projects aren't simply about a runnable binary, they're about the community of users, testers, and developers who devote their time and skills to working on a product they believe in. They go hand in hand: there's no binary without the community and there's no community without the binary. At some point in the life-cycle of a project, you have to stop thinking solely about your small band of developers and start growing the larger supporting community that will become your users, testers, localizers, documentation writers, and possibly even new coders.

Mac/Linux: We've already seen unofficial Mac and Linux builds of the Google Chrome browser's open-source base, but now the Chromium team is throwing them out for real—even if they're also saying "DON'T DOWNLOAD THEM"

That is, of course, just a tongue-in-cheek warning that these early builds will certainly see bugs, crashes, and real limitations in day-to-day use. As with their fan-compiled predecessors, these builds lack support for Adobe Flash and other plug-ins, changing privacy settings, setting a default search provider, and, just to round out the to-do list, printing. So what you can really do is see how snappy the rendering and navigation controls are.

In order to get more feedback from developers, we have early developer channel versions of Google Chrome for Mac OS X and Linux, but whatever you do, please DON'T DOWNLOAD THEM! Unless of course you are a developer or take great pleasure in incomplete, unpredictable, and potentially crashing software.How incomplete? So incomplete that, among other things , you won't yet be able to view YouTube videos, change your privacy settings, set your default search provider, or even print.Meanwhile, we'll get back to trying to get Google Chrome on these platforms stable enough for a beta release as soon as possible!Posted by Mike Smith and Karen Grunberg, Product Managers

Google Chrome is moving fast. Version 2.0 was stabilized just six months after 1.0, and auto-updates have ensured that nearly all users are using the newest version of the browser within days of a release. As a web developer, it can be a bit daunting that the browser version changes so fast: What if the new version breaks something? How can I be prepared for changes that will affect my sites?

Sandboxing is a technique that Google Chrome employs to help make the browser more secure, and was discussed in a previous blog post. On Windows, getting a process sandboxed in a way that's useful to us is a pretty complicated affair. The relevant source code consists of over 100 files and is located under the sandbox/ directory in Chromium's Open Source repository. But for our Mac and Linux ports, sandboxing is a very different story. On Linux there are a number of different sandboxing mechanisms available. Different Linux distributions ship with different (or no) sandboxing APIs, and finding a mechanism that is guaranteed to work on end-user's machines is a challenge. Fortunately, on Mac OS X, the OS APIs for sandboxing a process are easy to use and straightforward.Sandboxing on the Mac

If you want to add Microsoft's new search engine in the quick search box for your favorite browser, we've got you covered.

Adding the search providers is simple enough—just visit the links below and install the version for your browser, choosing whether to enable suggestions or not. Readers using Internet Explorer 8 might want to enable the suggestions because of one interesting feature: Bing will show you a preview of the weather by simply typing "weather" followed by your location—extremely handy for a quick glance at the temperature.

If you're an Ubuntu Linux user looking to try out a form of Google's Chrome browser, set up the Chromium daily builds repository and install its packages, because the open-source roots of Chrome has hit what its developers are calling an Alpha stage. As with the really rough pre-alpha we saw before, that still means no Flash or other plug-ins, no Google Gears, and a few other rough edges, but it definitely feels snappy when loading straight-up web pages. [via Ars Technica]

Firefox: We've covered a number of ways to make Firefox new tab page look somewhat similar to Google Chrome's: installing the Google Toolbar, or using add-ons like New Tab King or Speed Dial. Then there's New Tab JumpStart, which blatantly copies Chrome's new tab look.

Today I gave a presentation at Google I/O explaining some of the cool ideas that lie at the heart of our upcoming extension system. For those who didn't get a chance to attend the conference, you can check out the slides, below: The actions menu, visible in full-screen mode, will let you show speaker notes. We'll also post a video of the talk as soon as it's available.As some of you know, it's already possible to write extensions using the latest developer build of Google Chrome. You can find out more about the system, and learn how to write your first extension, by reading our HOWTO document. We've really focused on making extensions as easy as possible to write, so you'll be up and running in no time.

Windows only: Fresh on the heels of the Google Chrome 2.0 release comes an unofficial portable version from German blogger Caschy—who put together the last portable version of Chrome.

Like before, you can simply extract the setup file to a folder on your drive and run the ChromeLoader executable to launch the regular portable application, or IncognitoChromeLoader.exe to open a new private browsing mode window. The application is completely self-contained in the folder, so if you are running a previous portable version you can simply copy the files over top to upgrade—just don't copy the Profile folder since that contains your user settings.

Filed under: Windows, Google, Browsers