Google improves Chrom’s spel checkr
The new stable version of Chrome, 26.0.1410.43 m for those of you still counting, has baked in the spell check tech The Chocolate Factory uses when you type in its search dialog.
The results, depicted below, add an “ask Google for suggestions” option. Google’s blog announcing the feature shows that feature helping to explain when to use “effect” instead of “affect”.
Google says the new feature is "... powered by the same technologies used by Google search".
Yet when Vulture South’s grammar lab gave the new feature a workout we found it’s not very good at figuring out we’d used “its” when the contraction “it’s” is more appropriate. Nor did sentences in which we used “their” incorrectly as a substitute for the contraction “they’re” or the adverb “there” as an indicator of location produce a useful suggestion from Google’s dictionary.
That sound you just heard was therefore almost certainly a sigh of relief from The Reg’s sub-editorial corps, safe in the knowledge their particular skill remains essential to our ongiong operationses.
(Source: theregister.co.uk)
Chrome browser now supports Apple’s Retina display
The latest release of Google's Chrome browser can render webpages with the resolution of Apple's Retina display, the company said on Tuesday, making good on a commitment it made several weeks ago.
This means that users of 15-inch MacBook Pro laptops with Retina displays will be able to view webpages at a 2880-by-1800 resolution with Chrome 21.
In mid-June, Google said in a blog post that the Chrome development team was "off to the races" in enhancing the browser so that it could take advantage of ultra high-resolution Retina screens.
Chrome 21, which runs on the Mac OS, Windows and Linux OSes for laptops and desktops, also features a new API (application programming interface) called getUserMedia that lets users give Web applications access to their computers' cameras and microphones without having to install a plug-in. Read more...
Google to pull Chrome plug on OS X Leopard
Google will pull the plug for Chrome running on OS X 10.5, aka Leopard, after it releases version 21, which is currently in beta and will reach the browser's "stable" channel sometime next month, the company has announced.
Chrome 22, the browser that just landed in the "dev" channel -- Google maintains three primary builds for its browser, with the dev line the roughest-edged -- will not run on OS X 10.5.
"Google Chrome on Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) will stop receiving any updates following Chrome 21," Google said on its support site. "This includes new features, security fixes and stability updates."
Leopard was launched by Apple in October 2007, and according to Web measurement firm Net Applications, accounted for 11.6% of all versions of Apple's OS-powered machines that went online in June.
OS X 10.6, or Snow Leopard, and 10.7, better known as Lion, have a combined share of 84.4%, Net Applications said earlier this month. Read more...
Google makes Opera bloggers an offer they can’t refuse: Use Chrome
Google is warning Opera web browser users they must switch to Chrome in order to use Blogger.com, the search giant's blog-hosting service. No technical incompatibilities have been found to justify the alarm.
After a reader tip-off, El Reg created a Google blog using Opera 12.0 for Mac this morning, and received this message:
Blog off, Google
The site continues to operate just fine and dandy using Opera. However, the Blogger warning message is persistent: dismiss it, and it reappears. The alert box is banished if Opera changes its user-agent string - the line of text the browser sends to a server to identify itself - and pretends to be a build of Chrome. Read more...
Chrome for iOS snatches top spot on App Store
Google Chrome, released yesterday for the iPhone and iPad, has already snatched the top spot in Apple's App Store.As of 11 a.m. ET Friday, Chrome held the No. 1 position on both the iPhone and iPad free app download lists.
Google launched Chrome for iOS on Thursday, first announcing the browser at its Google I/O developers conference early in the day, with the app showing up several hours later on Apple's App Store.
Reviews for Chrome have been overwhelmingly positive, with 80% of the more than 3,700 posted so far giving the browser a five-star rating, the highest possible. The average rating is four-and-a-half stars. Read more...
Google claims Chrome is the world’s most popular browser
Google has been shouting the praises of its newly patched Chrome on the second day of its I/O developer conference, and is claiming that Chrome is undoubtedly the world's most popular browser.
"According to all the metrics and everything we see out there, Chrome most is the most popular browser," said Sundar Pichai, VP of Chrome applications, during his opening keynote presentation.
Pichai said Chrome is now being regularly used by 310 million people, doubling the number of users announced at last year's conference. Over 60 billion words are typed every day on Chrome browsers, he said, with over a terabyte of data saved every 24 hours. Read more...
Update: Metric firm changes numbers, Chrome still behind Firefox
Web analytics company Net Applications today changed its May numbers from those posted overnight, and now has Google's Chrome still in third place, albeit barely behind Mozilla's Firefox.
Earlier today, the California-based firm had published data that showed Chrome had passed Firefox for the first time, fueled by an increase of 1.3 percentage points to 20.2%. Meanwhile, Net Applications' preliminary numbers had Firefox falling six-tenths of a point to 19.6%.
The spot swapping came as a surprise: Earlier projections by Computerworld had pointed to a delay in Chrome's capture of second place, perhaps to as late as August.
Later Friday, Net Applications revised its numbers. Read more...
Google Chrome 21 gears up for gaming
Google’s Chrome 21 will be on its way to the stable channel in about three months. When it finally arrives, Google’s ambitions to make Chrome the browser of choice for web-based gaming will be crystal clear.
There’s not much to see so far in the list of feature additions, but two items stand out. First, support for the mouse pointer lock spec has been switched on by default and it can now operate both in and out of full screen mode. It’s one of those seemingly minor tweaks that will make a big difference down the road, as pointer lock gives developers one more easy-to-implement feature that makes standards-based web gaming more like traditional desktop PC gaming. Read more...
Chrome to take world’s top browser spot for May
Google's Chrome is about to grab the top browser spot for a full month for the first time from Microsoft's Internet Explorer, data from a Web analytics company showed.
For the month through Monday, Chrome had an average usage share of 32.5%, slightly higher than Internet Explorer's (IE) 32.1%, according to Irish company StatCounter.
If the remaining three days of May play out as did the previous 28, Chrome will take the browser crown from IE for a full month for the first time since Chrome's September 2008 launch.
Previously, Chrome had edged IE on weekends, and then earlier this month topped Microsoft's combined browser usage share for the week ending May 20. That trend continued in the month's fourth week as Chrome beat IE 32.9% to 31.4% for the seven days ending May 27. Read more...
Chrome trumps IE as world’s top browser
Chrome's average usage share for the week of May 14-20 was 32.8%, said StatCounter, an analytics company that tracks browser and operating system trends. For the same week, IE's share was 31.9%.
Although Chrome has beaten IE in StatCounter's tally before -- a day here, another there, this was the first time that Google's browser took the top spot for an entire week.
Mozilla's Firefox placed third with a share of 25.5%, while Apple's Safari and Opera Software's Opera brought up the rear with 7.1% and 1.7%, respectively. Read more...
Chrome beats IE for a weekend
Fresh from knocking off Microsoft's Internet Explorer as the web's most-used browser for a single day in March, Google's Chrome browser has now claimed more users than Redmond's HTML-cruncher for a whole weekend.
Data gathered by StatCounter shows Chrome has enjoyed a day of dominance on most weekends since its March ascendancy. On May 5th and 6th, however, it opened a gap over IE. Sunday the 6th even saw Chrome take a lead of nearly three percent. Read more...
Mozilla delivers silent updating with Firefox 12 release
Mozilla today released Firefox 12, patching 14 security bugs in the browser and moving it one step closer to matching rival Chrome in silent updating.
The latest in the line of updates that have rolled off the Mozilla development line every six weeks since mid-2011, Firefox 12 fixed seven vulnerabilities labeled "critical," the highest threat ranking in Mozilla's four-step scoring, four bugs tagged "high" and three pegged "moderate." Read more...
Google patches Chrome for second time in eight days
Google on Thursday patched 12 Chrome vulnerabilities, the second time in eight days that the search company has updated its browser.
Most of the vulnerabilities -- eight of the dozen -- were identified as "use-after-free" bugs, a common type of memory vulnerability that researchers have found in large numbers within Chrome using Google's own AddressSanitizer detection tool.
Seven of the 12 bugs were rated "high," the second-most-serious ranking in Google's scoring system. Four were marked "medium" and one was labeled "low."
Google paid $6,000 in bounties to three researchers for reporting seven of the vulnerabilities. The others were unearthed by Google's own security team or were ineligible for a finder's fee. Read more...
Google ships Chrome 18, patches bugs and boosts hardware acceleration
Google yesterday patched nine vulnerabilities in Chrome and boosted the speed and reach of the browser's hardware acceleration with the launch of version 18.
According to the company, Chrome 18 enables accelerated Canvas 2D on Windows and Mac machines with compatible graphics processor units (GPUs), and expands support for the WebGL 3D standard to older systems.
Canvas 2D acceleration has been part of earlier builds of Chrome, but this is the first time that Google has turned it on in a "stable" version of the browser. Read more...
Facebook scammers host Trojan horse extensions on the Chrome Web Store
Cybercriminals are uploading malicious Chrome browser extensions to the official Chrome Web Store and use them to hijack Facebook accounts, according to security researchers from Kaspersky Lab.
The rogue extensions are advertised on Facebook by scammers and claim to allow changing the color of profile pages, tracking profile visitors or even removing social media viruses, said Kaspersky Lab expert Fabio Assolini in a blog post on Friday.
Assolini has recently observed an increase in the number of Facebook scams that use malicious Chrome extensions and originate in Brazil.
Once installed in the browser, these extensions give attackers complete control over the victim's Facebook account and can be used to spam their friends or to Like pages without authorization. Read more...