In amongst a chorus of "what took them so long", the Google folks working on the Chromium project -- the open source project behind the Chrome browser -- have at last added basic support for bookmark management in Mac OS X builds. Now, before you run over to the nightly builds page for Chromium, it's worth noting that the feature is still incomplete - you're not able to remove items from the bookmark manager -- you can only move them around. So there's still some way to go!

If you're using the Chrome for OS X releases, there's also going to be a little wait for the changes to move from Chromium to Chrome -- however if you feel adventurous, the Chromium snapshot builds will give you a taste of the feature (scroll to the bottom of the list for the most recent build).

Windows/Mac/Linux: If you're living life on the bleeding edge of Google's Chrome browser, good news: Google just pushed out an update to the dev channel, improving HTML5 audio and video for all platforms, bringing extension and bookmark sync to Macs, and more.

The Windows build didn't see many changes, but Mac users should be particularly happy with the update. Having been excluded from extension support when the Chrome extension gallery first opened, Mac users can now officially join in the fun. (See these 18 extensions worth downloading for Chrome to get started with Chrome extensions.) Mac users also gain support for much-needed bookmark sync and support for favicon-only pinned tabs.

Chrome only: Firefox users can already use the VidzBigger Greasemonkey script to tweak and customize popular video sharing sites like YouTube, and now the script has been ported as a full Google Chrome extension.

Chrome only: Google's Similar Pages for Chrome extension adds a button to the toolbar that uses Google's search algorithms to find other web sites similar to the one you are currently browsing.

Once you've installed the extension, you can simply click the new button in the toolbar to see a list of related pages, complete with thumbnail previews, descriptions, and a link. The related sites are usually fairly accurate, but where it seems to work best is when browsing more permanent articles on a specific subject—for example, using the similar pages button on the Wikipedia article on Shadow Copy brought back a list of useful related pages, but if you are on the home page of a site, the results will be more general.

If you need to do a lot of research and can't always think of the right query to use on Google, this extension could come in handy. Google Similar Pages is a free download, works wherever Chrome extensions do.

Chrome only: Notifier extension One Number checks for unread messages in Gmail, Wave, Voice, and Google Reader and displays the unread count right on the Google Chrome toolbar.

Once you've installed the extension, you'll immediately see the button added to the toolbar, where you can see the previews for each service, and access the settings page. You can enable or disable services that you don't use, and customize the colors or how often the extension checks for new unread messages. It's a simple extension, but if you've been looking for an unread message notifier, One Number might be worth a try. One Number is a free download, works wherever Chrome does.

Google Chrome extension A Bit Better RTM is one of our favorite ways to tweak the popular Remember the Milk online to-do list web app, and now it's been ported as a native Google Chrome extension.

We've mentioned the A Bit Better RTM Greasemonkey script twice before as one of our favorite user scripts for Greasemonkey in Firefox, and the the native Chrome version works much the same way—the most noticeable feature moves the tabs over to the left, saving precious vertical space for widescreen laptop users, and making them more readable in general.

In addition, you can rearrange the lists, hide the lists you don't use, use keyboard shortcuts to switch between them, and even move an item to a folder from the keyboard. It's an extremely helpful extension, and this author, at least, is thrilled to finally have it on Chrome. A Bit Better RTM is a free download, works wherever Chrome does. Thanks, CookingCat!

I've been waiting to try it out since I heard the first rumblings about Carakan, and it's here at long last. Opera's new Javascript engine has finally appeared in the developer build just posted on their website. 

The bottom line: it's fast. Carakan should serve as proof to the world that Opera is serious about building a competitive browser.

Google Dec. 16 moved to attack the increasingly prevalent problem of incomplete Web page viewing by creating a tool that lets Web site operators see how visitors see their sites. Browser Size is a nifty 20% time solution to missed buttons that stems from browser clients rendering Web pages on different monitor sizes, or when browsers are not full screen or have to account for toolbars and the like. Why is this a big deal? Because we miss a lot when we go to Web sites. Google offers the great example of Google Earth, which has a big ole download button, but far fewer people downloading it compared to the visitor rate. Google's Arthur Blume wrote:

The install rate increased by 10% when we moved the "Download" button 100 pixels upward. We can attribute that increase to users who wanted to try out Google Earth, but didn't see the button before.

Those are benefits that any Web site operator can recognize if they apply Browser Size. The tool employs special code to collect data on the height and width of the browser for a sample of users to Google.com. The tool tells what percentage of users can see a Web page at a given point in the Web browser.

Google Chrome (on Windows): Password saving and management webapp LastPass offers a single space to drop your web site passwords and quickly use them on any browser—now including Chrome, through an extension available to development channel users.

LastPass works on Chrome similarly to how it does on Firefox and Internet Explorer, and it's a bit more convenient and functional than its bookmarklet form filler. The concept remains the same: you only have to remember your LastPass login, and LastPass remembers all your other passwords and, if you want, credit card and form data, too. Before you ask, here's how LastPass justifies its safety and encryption.

Last week, a Google employee launched the WhatBrowser.org Web site to inform users about what a browser is, the different types of Web browsers available to them is, along with tips on how to manage them. Today, Google dispensed with the agnostic approach and championed its own Web browser with this guide on how to use Chrome. I actually created this Chrome tips slideshow not long ago, but this guide is official and has four sections. First up is a tour of the browser, followed by a lesson in browser settings, and an offer to take Chrome for a spin.

Last week, a Google employee launched the WhatBrowser.org Web site to inform users about what a browser is, the different types of Web browsers available to them is, along with tips on how to manage them. Today, Google dispensed with the agnostic approach and championed its own Web browser with this guide on how to use Chrome. I actually created this Chrome tips slideshow not long ago, but this guide is official and has four sections. First up is a tour of the browser, followed by a lesson in browser settings, and an offer to take Chrome for a spin.

Chrome extension WOT adds the Web of Trust community web site rating service to the Google Chrome browser, so you can check the trustworthiness of a web site without leaving the page.

Once you've installed the extension—by simply clicking on the link and accepting the install—you will see a new icon in the Chrome status bar that shows the community rating for the site you are browsing. Clicking the icon will display a dialog on the page with full details about the trustworthiness of the site, and a link to the rating page for more information. You can configure which of the rankings to use in the settings, but unfortunately you can't move it from the status bar to anywhere else.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt said in an interview a couple of days ago that Chrome for Mac is very important to Google, and that a final version of Chrome should be available for OS X "within months". It's pretty vague, but seems entirely reasonable, considering that the Chrome dev channel version for Macs is actually very usable. Have you been using Chrome on your Mac—or are you waiting for a stable release? If you have been using Chrome's dev channel releases for OS X, let's hear how happy you've been with it in the comments. [AllThingsD via Gizmodo]

Many of us who work in high-tech have family that we consider so-called civilians.

Civilians to us are those computer users who are not only non-geeks, but are so far out of the loop on high-tech mechanics that they use Microsoft Word, but don't know enough to call it a word processing application. They just know that it lets them write things.

Google, exasperated by the number of people who don't seem to know what a Web browser is (see this Google-conducted interview from New York City), today launched this WhatBrowser.org Website, which defines what a Web browser is and lets users download the applications that let us surf the Web.

The Google Chrome developers have released a new version this week with enhanced support for extensions and—dare we say it—a proper extensions menu item so you can access Chrome's extension manager with ease.

Windows and Linux versions received some minor tweaking. The updates to the Mac version include fixing a slew of keyboard commands and updating the way secure HTTP sites are displayed, to more clearly alert the viewer that the site has a bad security certificate.

We've learned to be skeptical of Chrome OS rumors, but PC World picks up on a manufacturing news tip about at least one netbook manufacturer possibly installing "preview builds" of Google's Chrome Operating System and shipping those devices in late October. While we'd guess that the market for a thoroughly untested Chrome OS on non-name-brand netbooks would be fairly thin, if the report is accurate, we'd at least get to see the ideas behind Google's quick-loading system sooner rather than later. That said, drink this in with a huge grain of salt.

[PC World]

Google Chrome's Pin Tab feature shrinks any tab down to only a web site's favicon to save precious tab bar real estate—no extension required.

In August we detailed how to set up space-saving, icon-only tabs in Firefox so you've always got quick access to your most-used webapps (like Gmail and Google Reader) without wasting a lot of tab bar real estate. The FaviconizeTab Firefox extension is the secret sauce to that setup, allowing you to shrink any tab down to just the site's favicon (the small icon image already in the tab); in the most recent dev channel releases of Chrome, you get the same functionality without needing to install anything. Here's how it works:

If you're running the Development ("dev") builds of Google Chrome and have already jumped in with a few extensions, like Xmarks' bookmark syncer, recent builds give you a more convenient way to monitor and remove those add-ons.

Type chrome://extensions into a new tab, and you'll see something similar to the screen above. Reloading and uninstalling extensions that aren't quite helpful is certainly useful, but the buttons on the right-hand side could be a bit better explained. This is, of course, an early version of a tool stuffed into a development channel release, so we'll expect the look and feel to get a bit more polished in the "stable" channel.

Think you can make a better fast-booting, Chrome-focused OS than Google? Want to craft a custom Linux system that boots from a USB stick? SUSE Studio gives you 15 GB to do exactly that, and you do it all online.

SUSE Studio is what powered the fan-made "Chrome OS" we posted yesterday, which, in that case, was a semi-stripped-down system loaded with the developers' version of Chrome, Google webapp links, and OpenOffice. If speed and cloud computing aren't your bag, you can create a fully functional system with Firefox, 3D graphics, and whatever apps you can find installed. Want your system to start up with an AWN dock and Launchy keystroke launcher running? Not a problem.

Even if you don't know all that much about Linux, it's pretty easy to build a system you can boot from a USB stick or live CD/DVD, run inside a virtual machine program, or actually install it—or, heck, even test it out in your web browser.

Windows/Mac/Linux: The official, actually-made-by-Google Chrome OS won't hit netbooks until late 2010, but you can try out a custom-built Linux distribution that's somewhat stripped down and puts Google's browser at the center of everything.

"Chrome OS" was built using SUSE Studio, a distribution and virtual appliance builder spawned from the OpenSUSE Linux distribution. It loads up with a Chrome icon, uses built-in webapp links to Google Calendar, Gmail, and other Google services as apps, and carries a copy of OpenOffice, just in case you need some straight-up desktop editing done. Most importantly, it holds the latest development copy of Google Chrome inside, along with a pre-built Flash plug-in.