Chrome for Android Beta: The Basics
Browse fast on your Android phone or tablet, and bring your personalized Chrome experience wherever you go. Chrome for Android Beta is available for devices running Android 4.0 and higher. To learn more, visit: google.com

From: googlechrome
Views: 3762

Chrome for Android Beta: Behind the Design
The engineering team behind Chrome for Android Beta shares the design philosophy and approach to bringing the speed and simplicity of Chrome to Android phones and tablets. Chrome for Android Beta is available for devices running Android 4.0 and higher. To learn more, visit: google.com

From: googlechrome
Views: 329

Chrome for Android Beta: Under the Hood
The engineering team behind Chrome for Android Beta talk about the underlying architecture, developer tools, and more. Chrome for Android Beta is available for devices running Android 4.0 and higher. To learn more, visit: google.com

From: googlechrome
Views: 305

If you've got an Android device running Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0), you can now download the beta version of Google's Chrome browser from the Android Market, complete with many of the things we love about Chrome—like bookmark syncing and Incognito mode—but on your mobile device. More »

The Chrome team is excited to announce the release of our first beta of Chrome for Android!  Based on Chrome 16.0.915.75, Chrome for Android (0.16.4130.199) brings an all new browsing experience to your phone or tablet running Ice Cream Sandwich.  More on what’s new can be found on the Chrome for Android page.  Developers who want to learn more about working with Chrome for Android can check out the new developer site for working with mobile. More detailed updates are available on the Chrome Blog. If you find a new issue, please let us know by filing a bug.

In 2008, we launched Google Chrome to help make the web better. We’re excited that millions of people around the world use Chrome as their primary browser and we want to keep improving that experience. Today, we're introducing Chrome for Android Beta, which brings many of the things you’ve come to love about Chrome to your Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich phone or tablet. Like the desktop version, Chrome for Android Beta is focused on speed and simplicity, but it also features seamless sign-in and sync so you can take your personalized web browsing experience with you wherever you go, across devices.

Speed

With Chrome for Android, you can search, navigate and browse fast—Chrome fast. You can scroll through web pages as quickly as you can flick your finger. When searching, your top search results are loaded in the background as you type so pages appear instantly. And of course, both search and navigation can all be done quickly from the Chrome omnibox.

Simplicity

Chrome for Android is designed from the ground up for mobile devices. We reimagined tabs so they fit just as naturally on a small-screen phone as they do on a larger screen tablet. You can flip or swipe between an unlimited number of tabs using intuitive gestures, as if you’re holding a deck of cards in the palm of your hands, each one a new window to the web.

One of the biggest pains of mobile browsing is selecting the correct link out of several on a small-screen device. Link Preview does away with hunting and pecking for links on a web page by automatically zooming in on links to make selecting the precise one easier.

And as with Chrome on desktop, we built Chrome for Android with privacy in mind from the beginning, including incognito mode for private browsing and fine-grained privacy options (tap menu icon, ‘Settings,’ and then ‘Privacy’).

Sign in

You can now bring your personalized Chrome experience with you to your Android phone or tablet. If you sign in to Chrome on your Android device, you can:

• View open tabs: Access the tabs you left open on your computer (also signed into Chrome)—picking up exactly where you left off.
• Get smarter suggestions: If you visit a site often on your computer, you'll also get an autocomplete suggestion for it on your mobile device, so you can spend less time typing.
• Sync bookmarks: Conveniently access your favorite sites no matter where you are or which device you’re using.

Chrome is now available in Beta from Android Market, in select countries and languages for phones and tablets with Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich. We’re eager to hear your feedback. Finally, we look forward to working closely with the developer community to create a better web on a platform that defines mobile.

Google continues to leverage its good work in HTML5 to enable its productivity and collaboration applications to work offline.

The company is now letting users make any Google Docs available offline from their Android smartphone or tablet computer.

This covers documents, Google presentations, Google spreadsheets, uploaded images, and files in formats such as .pdf, .doc, .xls and .ppt. Users may do this with or without a Web connection.

This feature is important for users who don't have access to an Web connection and need to access a file they've saved. Google does not enable Doc editing at this time.

This is obviously not a big concern for users with 3G- and 4G-radio powered smartphones, but Google still has the use case:

I wager the feature is super useful for users of the WiFi-only Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and others of its ilk who need to grab their Docs.

Moreover, Docs will automatically update offline files when users do get on WiFi. Of course, users with Web connections may manually update files by opening the file or tapping Update from the Offline section of the app.

See the manual update screenshot from an Android tablet here:

Users should also follow these instructions for how to enable offline access from their Android gadgets here.

How is Google doing this? Again, it's HTML5, the same technology Google used for offline Gmail, Docs and Calendar through Google Chrome on desktops such as Chromebooks.

Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) marks a major milestone for Android design. We touched nearly every pixel of the system as we expanded the new design approaches introduced in Honeycomb tablets to all types of mobile devices. Starting with the most basic elements, we introduced a new font, Roboto, designed for high-resolution displays. Other big changes include framework-level action bars on phones and support for new phones without physical buttons.

Are you and Android App Developer or interested in eye catching Android applications? If you are you’re in luck, now you can follow guideline and learn how to create exceptional Android apps. Apps that are simple to use, navigate and use subtle effects to wow end-users.

How wonderful it is to see Google put more emphasis into the design and UI of their new version of the Android Mobile Operating system.

While the iPhone syncs with Safari and Internet Explorer, it can't grab bookmarks from Chrome or Firefox out of the box—and most versions of Android can't sync bookmarks with any browser. Here are a few ways to get your desktop bookmarks on your smartphone without any hassle. More »

Reader Worlder Mon created this clean, monochrome home screen using a few simple text widgets and a unique icon set.

Web/Chrome/Android/iOS: Springpad is a free service that allows you to save places, notes, itemsand more to your account for future reference. The service just got a lot more social with today's update: now you can connect Springpad to your Facebook account to automatically show you items that your friends like, places they visit, and more in case you want to save them to your account. More »

Android: If you don't want to use Google Voice to manage your SMS messages on the desktop, DeskSMS will let you manage them from Gmail, GTalk, a speedy web interface, and even a Chrome extension—no number porting required. More »

While Microsoft and Apple are working to bring aspects of tablet computing to the next versions of their computer operating systems, one big computer maker, Toshiba, is going the other way: It is introducing a tablet that emulates a laptop in some key respects.

Unlike other well-known tablets on the market, the new Toshiba Thrive, a 10-inch Android model available this month, sports a full-sized USB port that works with a wide variety of devices and files; a removable battery; and a file manager application like those on PCs. It also includes a full-sized SD slot for flash memory cards and a full-sized connector, called an HDMI port, that can use a standard cable for linking to a high-definition TV.

Tablet computers generally do a good job of playing videos and music, and displaying photos and documents. But they have limited capacity to store all these files, so you typically can carry only a fraction of your PC’s data on them.

You can get apps that allow tablets to access files you’ve stored in the cloud on services like Dropbox or SugarSync, but these require an Internet connection and can be slow.

Q:

I am going back to school in the fall and I contacted the school to see which laptop or tablet I should be using. They replied I would need the Adobe Flash Player to run the lectures. While I love Apple, I understand the newest Apple laptops and the iPad do not support Flash. Is this correct? If so, what should I buy?

A:

There’s a lot of confusion about this, so here’s the story. Apple’s Mac laptops and desktops do indeed run the Adobe Flash Player, and thus Flash videos and websites, just like Windows PCs. While they no longer ship with the Flash software pre-installed, you can quickly and easily download and install it free of charge. Once you do, Flash videos and websites will work on your Mac.

By contrast, the iPad won’t accept the Flash Player in its built-in browser and thus cannot run Flash videos or websites. There are some third-party browsers for Apple’s tablet, such as Skyfire and Puffin, that do run Flash on Web pages, albeit clumsily at times. The latter are available in the iPad app store. If you want a tablet that runs Flash natively, you could buy one of the newer Android models, or the HP TouchPad, but be aware that some Flash videos and websites don’t run properly on the current generation of Flash-enabled tablets.

Q:

When Apple’s MobileMe service goes away in June 2012, what happens to the stuff I have stored on iDisk? Will Apple still store my material someplace else remotely on one of its servers that I can access via my laptop? Will I still have some sort of .Mac mail system that I can access when on the road and using a computer other than my own?

A:

Apple says it won’t continue to have the equivalent of the iDisk online storage system, accessible directly from the cloud, after MobileMe gives way to its new iCloud service. It advises iDisk users to copy their online files to their Macs or PCs before next June. However, it says the new service will still support mac.com and me.com email accounts, and they will still be accessible via the Web. It promises details later, but has in the meantime published a document answering common questions about the transition at apple.com/mobileme/transition.html.

Q:

Is there a good program that will allow me to capture a Web video, especially a YouTube video, and convert it into an MP4 format file so I can play it on my Android-based Iconia tablet while offline on an airplane?

A:

The tablet-computer race is heating up. The latest entrant, Acer Inc.’s Iconia Tab A500, is the first to offer compelling competition to Apple’s dominant iPad in one crucial area: price.

The Iconia Tab has been keenly anticipated, if only because Acer, a Taiwanese company that made its mark by offering sharp but inexpensive laptops and netbooks, is the world’s second-largest PC maker after Hewlett-Packard Co. The Iconia Tab is Acer’s first to run Google’s Android operating system, and joins an increasingly crowded tablet field that features the PlayBook by Research in Motion Ltd., Motorola Inc.’s Xoom, LG Electronics Inc.’s G-Slate and Apple’s own iPad2, which went on sale in March.

A WiFi-only version of the Iconia Tab went on sale on April 24 for $449.99. A new model that works on AT&T Inc.’s 4G wireless network is slated for release this summer for an as-yet-undisclosed price.

Q:

I have a small but fast-growing business and am strongly considering going with Macs, but I’m not sure if it’s the cost-effective way to go. What are the pros and cons?

A:

To a great extent, it depends on the size and type of business, but I can give you a few general pros and cons. Macs typically cost more upfront, but can save in maintenance costs because they aren’t susceptible to most malicious software and, in my experience, they crash less often. They tend to be easier to network, and, like Windows PCs, they work with Microsoft Exchange. They run standard productivity software, like Microsoft Office, and can access most online business sites and services. But there are many niche business applications that are written for Windows only. You can overcome this by running Windows on a Mac for the occasional program. But if your business would best operate using software that is only for Windows, you’d likely be better off with a Windows machine.

Q:

Q:

Is there software available to allow one to run Apple-compatible apps on Android tablets?

A:

None of which I’m aware. However, bear in mind many of the most popular apps for the iPhone are now available in versions for Android phones. My guess is that, over time, if Android tablets start selling in large numbers, the same phenomenon is likely to occur, with at least the top apps for the iPad being issued in versions for Android tablets.

Q:

I subscribe to 10 magazines. When I want to save an article I tear it out and file it away. I was wondering if there is another way to save articles by faxing/photocopying them and sending them as an attachment to a remote site accessible anywhere in the world. I would be willing to pay for the site but it has be easy to use.

A:

Android/Chrome: No one likes texting on small, autocorrect-prone phone keyboards. Texty connects your phone to Google Chrome, letting you send and receive SMS messages right from the extension bar. More »