Only 2 years ago, Google has released the very first build of Chrome web browser. Now, two years later, company is celebrating its browser birthday with two new releases: stable and beta.

Google Chrome then


Google Chrome now

As Google Chrome 7 (dev) now includes hardware acceleration, guys from DownloadSquad decided to test it along with Internet Explorer 9 (developers preview) and Firefox 4 (beta).

What are the results?
Google Chrome 7 utilized the most of the hardware resources, delivering better FPS (frames per second) than Internet Explorer 9 or Firefox 4, which took the last place.

However, as those are not the final builds, don’t draw your conclusions yet, things might change in the future.

Thanks to geek for the news tip.

Using a web browser’s keyboard controls can speed up web surfing significantly. But most web browsers limit those keyboard shortcuts, and do not offer options to add additional hotkeys to speed up specific operations that are not supported by default.

Vimium is a Google Chrome extension that adds a few dozen keyboard controls to the browser to speed up web surfing.

The controls become available directly after installation, and can be used to achieve various goals in the Google browser.

It is for instance possible to press h, j, k or l to scroll left, down, up or right, press gg to automatically scroll to the top, or Shift-G to reach the bottom of the active page.

More useful than those commands that are already available, albeit set to different keys are the additional options that are provided by Vimium

Chrome users with Vimium installed can press t to open a new tab, d to close the active tab, u to restore the last closed tab and Shift-J or Shift-K to navigate quickly between tabs.

That’s just a sample of the possibilities that the extension offers. Other commands of interest are Shift-H, and Shift-L, that allow to go back or forward in history. This especially is useful for users who usually right-click to do that, as the right-click menu does not always offer that functionality.

The key r reloads the current page, and y copies the url to the clipboard.

A complete list of commands is available at the Google Chrome Extensions gallery page. It is possible to pause the extension by pressing i, which ignores all hotkeys until Esc is hit.

Vimium can speed up standard web surfing processes in the Chrome browser. Firefox find in Vimperator a similar extension for their browser.

During the press event in San Francisco, Google has announced the availability of Chrome to Phone extension.

What does it do?
Basically, it allows you to send currently selected text, links, maps, etc. from your Chrome web browser to any Android 2.2 devices.

Download.

Yesterday, Google has released the Beta version of Chrome 6 web browser that not only increases JavaScript performance but also brings an AutoFill feature.

According to the test results, Google Chrome 6 has ~15% edge over Chrome 5 in SunSpider and V8 JavaScript benchmarks.

As for AutoFill feature, NeoWin argues, whether it’s a good idea for Google to allow storing sensitive information, such as: credit card details.

You may download latest Google Chrome 6 release from the dev channel here.

TabSense is a Firefox Tab Candy inspired extension that allows you to group your tabs into separate categories.

Install, click on the icon or simply press Shift+Ctrl+S and you are ready to go.

Future versions are also set to include tab movement, search and other features.

Just recently Google has introduced their new Chrome release cycle. According to it, new stable browser versions will now be available every 6 weeks. Therefore, major version numbers will be changing much faster.

There are three reasons for such change, company said:

Shorten the release cycle and still get great features in front of users when they are ready
Make the schedule more predictable and easier to scope
Reduce the pressure on engineering to “make” a release

What do you think about release cycle shift? Still excited about Google Chrome 10?

Thanks to Blake for the news tip.

The latest version of Google Chrome extension called AdBlock is now able to not only hide ads, but also prevent them from downloading at all.

Add-on version 2.0 uses “beforeload” event, that was added by Apple to their WebKit engine sometime this year, and made its way into Google Chrome 5.

You may download AdBlock extension from the following page.

For the last days, the developer version of the Google Chrome web browser has had troubles downloading large files from the Internet. Downloads of files with a minimum size of 50 Megabytes, stopped abruptly at about 30 Megabytes.

Retrying the download yielded the same results. The first thought was that this was related to a single file or server, that acted up strangely.

But the problems persisted and after trying to download a dozen different files, all with a file size of 50 to 200 Megabytes, it became clear that Google Chrome was the problem.

Examples of files are the Emsisoft Emergency Kit with a size of 103 Megabytes, some Mediafire downloads with a size of about 180 Megabytes each, and downloads over at Softpedia, like Kaspersky’s Small Office Security.

All downloads stopped at approximately the same size, 36.7 or 36.8 Megabytes. File extensions were also different, including archive formats like zip or executables like exe.

There does not seem to be a fix for this issue yet, and it is not clear if all Chrome versions are affected or only the latest developer release, version 6.0.466.0.

All downloads were completed successfully in other web browsers like Firefox, which seems to confirm that this is a Chrome-only problem. This also is the workaround for users who experience the same download problems.

The test system was running Windows 7 Pro, 64-bit. Have you been experiencing the same troubles? Let us know in the comments.

Hitler thinks that Chrome, his favorite browser, is the fastest. But he is about to discover that he is wrong, and his generals will experience his wrath!

Google employee Blair has posted a list of software applications that are known to crash the Google Chrome web browser. Among the list popular applications such as PPLive, Nvidia NTune, SpeedBit Video Accelerator or Folder Guide.

The suggested course of action is to temporarily disable the program to see if it resolves the crashes.

Google has also identified workarounds for some applications that are incompatible with Google Chrome if they are run in their default startup setting.

If you have Internet Download Manager (IDM), disable the ‘Advanced browser integration’ option within IDM (go to Options > General).

If you have NVIDIA Desktop Explorer, try removing the nvshell.dll http://www.spywareremove.com/security/how-to-remove-dll-files/

If you have FolderSize, try the fix on this site: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2900504&group_id=127365&...

If you have NOD32 version 2.7, upgrade to the latest version of NOD32 or disable internet monitoring in NOD32 2.7.

Finally malware has also been identified as known causes for Google Chrome crashes.

In rather pointless benchmark, DownloadSquad has tested latest Internet Explorer 9 build against Google Chrome 6 dev.

I think the video speaks for itself!

If you can't watch the video: IE9 is some orders of magnitude faster than HTML5 when it comes to hardware-accelerated canvas rendering.

In some other initial benchmarks, IE9 is about 30% slower than Chrome 6 in the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark -- and about 10% faster than Firefox 3.7.

I also tested FishIE with Opera and Firefox -- and believe it or not, Opera's a lot faster than both Chrome and Firefox!

Anyway, if you missed the news, IE9 developer preview 3 came out earlier today -- Lee's post has more info, if you're curious, or simply download it now.

I'm sure most of you have used Google Docs in one form or another. You might've shared a document with a friend or collaboratively planned your trip expenses in a shared spreadsheet -- maybe you've even used the new 'public sharing' feature for more nefarious purposes!

Even if you're looking forward to Microsoft's Office Web Apps, the point remains: we're doing more and more processing in the cloud. The platform that matters is no longer Mac or Windows or Linux, but rather which Web browser. And let's be honest, Web browsers still have a long way to go before they're as usable as operating systems. Sure, one day you'll have a Windows 7 Superbar at the bottom of Firefox, but not yet -- and that's why we have EXTENSIONS!

I should probably get to the point of this post: the Google Docs blog has collated a bunch of handy extensions for making the most out of... Google Docs. At their most basic, they provide 'New Spreadsheet' and 'New Doc' buttons next to your address bar, but advanced extensions like Snippy allow you to copy and paste entire sections of websites to a new Google Doc.

That's Chrome out of the way, but now someone needs to collate a bunch of Firefox add-ons for Google Docs integration. I found 'Send to Google Docs', but I'm sure you guys know of some other great add-ons? If so, share them in the comments!

Softpedia has published a great article on Google Chrome and Chromium differences. Worth a read if you are confused.

Chromium:
- the open-source project on which Google Chrome is based;
- bleeding-edge features;
- several binary builds for Windows, Linux and Mac made available each day, sometimes 20 or more;
- not considered stable, don’t blame the developers if it crashes your computer or eats your cat;

Google Chrome dev:
- based on very recent Chromium builds;
- new versions every week or so;
- relatively stable, more like what other companies would consider ‘beta,’ but not stable enough for production use;
- the latest and greatest features and updates; ;

Google Chrome vs Chromium

The long awaited Google Chrome OS will be make its debut later this year, Sundar Pichai, the head of the Chrome project confirmed yesterday at the Computex Taipei.

Pichai also noted:

Chrome OS is one of the few future operating systems for which there are already millions of applications that work…

You don’t need to redesign Gmail for it to work on Chrome. Facebook does not need to write a new app for Chrome.

 

The versioning of Chromium and thus Google Chrome has been criticized in the past for being raised with light speed. The first beta version of the Google Chrome web browser was released on September 2, 2008 and the web browser quickly made its way through versions 1 to 4. The official releases at this point are either a version 4 release (stable) or version 5 release (dev and beta).

This could change pretty soon as the latest Chromium version has been raised to version 6. It usually does not take long before the Google Chrome developers are raising the version of their web browser as well which means that we will soon see the first Google Chrome 6 releases appear.

Cutting edge users who want to try the latest Chromium 6 build can download the latest Chromium build from the Chromium build server.

There do not seem to be any major changes in the Chromium 6 builds yet.

The developers of the Google Chrome web browser have released an update to the stable channel on Windows. The different release versions of the browser confuse at least some users. The easiest way to distinguish the browsers is to associated version 4.1.x releases with the stable channel and 5.0.x versions with the dev channel.

The browser was updated to Google Chrome 4.1.249.1064 fixing two bugs and three security issues in the process. One bug affected the JavaScript performance of the browser while the other reported an incorrect path for the Java plugin.

The security vulnerabilities have all received a high rating which is the second highest security vulnerability rating.

High Cross-origin bypass in Google URL (GURL).
High Memory corruption in HTML5 Media handling.
High Memory corruption in font handling.

 

Google Chrome users who are still running the stable channel on Windows are encouraged to update the web browser as soon as possible to fix the security issues and bugs.

There is always at least two ways of doing something on a Windows PC. If you've learnt by doing, rather than from a book, you probably only know one way. Watch your mother use a word processor one day -- I bet she uses File > Save rather than hitting Ctrl+S. What about you? Do you know your shortcuts?

Keyboard shortcuts are by far and away the best way to a) speed up your work flow and b) prevent RSI. The single worst thing you can do, as far as your wrist and elbow is concerned, is move your hand to the mouse. The best thing you can do is read this list of shortcuts and be amazed at what you can do with just a couple of keystrokes.

I've sorted these lifefinger-savers into three categories: life-changing, really neat and kinda cool. Some of you will already know most of them, but you won't know all of them. You owe it to yourself to read the first block -- but try and keep going until the end!
Life-changing Keyboard Shortcuts
First, the shortcuts that are so fundamental to computer use that you'll wonder how you ever lived without them. Almost all of these shortcuts should be performed with the LEFT hand, with your thumb on Alt or Ctrl.

• Ctrl+T -- opens a new tab in all major Web browsers.
• Alt+Tab -- cycles through currently-open programs. If you also hold down Shift, it cycles backwards.
• Ctrl+Tab -- cycles through Web browser tabs (you can use Shift to go backwards too).
• Ctrl+W -- closes the current window or tab. Some applications can be closed with Ctrl+W, but Alt+F4 is universal.
• Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V -- copies selected text (you can use Shift and arrow keys to select text!), and then paste it. Use Alt-Tab to switch between source and destination for bonus points.
• Ctrl+Z -- undoes your last action. This works in almost everything except Web browsers. 'Redo' varies from program to program (check the 'Edit' menu to find out!)
• Ctrl+Mouse scroll wheel -- zoom in, zoom out. This works in almost every kind of app, including Web browsers. Great for increasing the size of tiny 'aesthetic' text on normal websites... or tiny thumbnails on nefarious ones. Also scales the size of icons on your desktop, if they're too small for you!
• F5 -- refreshes your current folder/directory or Web page. Yes, you can hammer a button on your keyboard rather than foolishly clicking a button over and over!
• Alt+D -- selects the address bar in your Web browser or folder/directory view! Yes, I know -- how awesome is that?