Experimental APIs Extensions for Chrome

A little over a month ago Google announced that their browser, Chrome, would not be able have extensions added to it. Extensions add to the functionality of a browser and allow the user to kind of customize their browser to their needs. Well last week a Google software engineer announced that there are a couple of experimental extension APIs that are being tested.

The first is a history API that allows developers to modify the user's browsing history. When the API is complete, develops will be able to replace the user's history with their own. The second API is more of a processes API. This API gives third party developers access to Chrome's process model, such as information on the CPU usage for each tab.

To me this sounds like it could be a security risk to home users but I know that Google does monitor extensions that attempt to access files from your computer. These APIs are available now in Google's Dev Channel and they encourage people to play with them a bit and then give some feedback.

Post can be found here at The Chromium Blog

Google Chrome

So I was was thinking and wondering what I would talk about this week for my blog and just looking up things about what other people had posted. And somehow I just came to the idea to write about something that I use on everyday basis with things for class, homework or just using it to explore the world wide web and it is Google's web browser called Google chrome.

Google Chrome is one of Google's most prized ideas in my viewpoint. It is the third most used browser with around 4.6% usage share of web browsers.Chromes public official release date was December 11, 2008 and its name comes from the graphical user interface frame of web browsers. It is written in C++ and assembly. It is an open source browser that uses Webkit layout engines and application framework and is powered by Google gears. Its includes features such as default homepage thats displays your most visited sites, tabbed browesers so that each tab gets its own process in which leads to fasting and more stable browsing and malware and phising lists that can automatically update themselves and warns you of bad websites.

Chrome Website and Video of Chrome

Chrome also has a mode called "incognito" that lets the you browse the web in complete privacy because this mode doesn't allow it to record any of your activity. Google advertises its web browser with three words speed, simplicity and style. Speed from quick starting from your desktop, faster loading of web pages and faster with running applications. Simplicity with the organization of the tabs and searching and navigating web pages from the same box. And lastly Style in that you can style the way your browser looks like with different artist themes and looks.

Google Chrome Developer Tools

There happens to be a developer tool built into Google Chrome that helps you debug your javascript, manipulate the DOM, and check the performance of a webpage. Of course at this point, most of us are wrapping up our work on our projects, so the discovery of this tool might not help anybody immediately in this class, but some of the features could help you down the road.

The Google Chrome Developer Tool functions a lot like Firebug does for Firefox. With this tool you can breakdown the code of a webpage, manipulate html, css, and javascript codes, and test the speed/latency of your code. Below you can find a video showcasing how to use the developer tool to manipulate your code.




My favorite feature of the devtool is that you can check the speed of your application. They call this feature "Profiling and Optimizing". It allows you to record a page as it loads and then tells you which part of the code is using the most resources or taking the longest. If your code is taking a long time to load, you can use this tool to troubleshoot the problem. You can also create stops in your javascript code to troubleshoot problems as well. Essentially, it functions just like putting an alert box in your code. The benefit of this tool is that you don't have to keep uploading new iterations to the server. You can perform all of your testing without touching your real code, thus saving you from having to rework a page after over-testing it. The video below demonstrates this functionality.



After a bit of use, I like the Chrome Developer Tool more then Firebug. It is easier to work with then Firebug and I find it runs lighter and faster then Firebug too. I think it would be a very useful tool for us to use in our presentations of our projects, since we can display the functionality of the site as well as the underlying code without any hassle. Anybody else agree?

Google Chrome Coming to Mac

Google Chrome is getting ready to launch a beta version for Mac, according to an article in ComputerWorld. This is not surprising considering the success that Google has had with its Windows version of Chrome. Google states the the beta version "only has 8 bugs left" before it can release the beta version. The downfall of this is that the Mac version will not have as many features as the Windows version. Some of the most popular features that will not be in the beta version are bookmark manager, app mode, task manager, gears, and sync for Mac. There are many other features that will not be available most likely because Google still wants to be able to release their beta version of the browser by the end of the year as planned.

According to the video below by CNET, there are many reasons why some people may not want to try Google Chrome for Mac. Keep in mind, this review was done back in June when all they had was a rough developer version of the browser.



I don't use a Mac and never have so I can't say whether or not this will be a hit with Mac users. Many I presume may have their favorite browser just like Windows users do. I do think that it will become much more popular if they can offer all of the features that are available for Windows and also ones that are available through competitive Mac browsers. If you would like to be notified when the beta version is released, you can sign up at Google and they will email you when it becomes available.