by chrome story on September 11, 2009 · 1 comment
google chrome laptop
The first thing firefox users do when they get a new windows computer or laptop is, to open Internet Explorer and download their friendly firefox. IE was the only browser preloaded on windows. For us Google Chrome users, things will be different, very soon.
Next time when you purchase Dell or a Sony Vaio, you may find Google Chrome already installed on your computer. This is because Google has a deal with these companies, to distribute their browser pre- loaded on their laptops or computers.
Is This Really New ?
Not really, at least the strategy is not. Google already have deals with Dell computers to distribute Google Toolbar on their computers, making Google the default search engine for their users. Now that Microsoft is trying similar methods with HP to make Bing the next big thing, Google has started playing their game too.
They already have a deal with Sony, to make Google Chrome default browser for their Vaio series computers. Since Sony vaio series is something with a very small market share, we should expect something bigger very soon. Let’s say, if this deal works out well. Since the deal with Dell for toolbars is due anytime soon, there could be a new deal for chrome .. what you think ?
Was the Sony Deal just an experiment of some sort ? Is something bigger on its way ?
Sources : NYT report and searchenginejournal.com
by chrome story on September 11, 2009 · 0 comments
Google Gview
I love rumors, and rumors with some bit of proof ? …. that will be really cool ! … now, here is one for you. A blogger over here, found out that there is a hidden document viewer in Google Chrome, which can be enabled by adding –enable-viewer to the command line on your Chrome. Confused ? Wait, I will tell you what it is.
How It Works
It works like the document viewer in Gmail. Remember those tiny links, asking you if you want to open documents in Google Docs ? ( spreadsheets, word files and PPTs ) … you click on them, and the document is there on another window for you, without downloading it, and without opening your MS Office program.
I hope you got this far. Now, imagine this, you found a PDF or PPT file online, a link on the website, somewhere … normally, you will need to download the file, and then open it .. right ? ( sometimes yes, pdf files do open in browser ) but with this cool feature, you can open it on your browser itself, perhaps, as a new tab … cool uh ?
What is Gview ?
Gview is a little secret that Google has kept inside their Google Docs thing, where you can view any PDF or PPT document online by putting it through Gview stuff, just like you embed a video from youtube etc. In other words, it makes documents “embeddable”. Well, it works on all browsers .. but for Chrome, it will be in built, … may be we will see something more to this very soon.
The document need not be hosted on Google Docs or anywhere on google. You can upload it anywhere, and just give the URL .
Don’t you think this is cool ?
by chrome story on September 10, 2009 · 0 comments
Chrome Extensions
If you are a google chrome fan, you might have heard people making fun of your for praising google chrome because it had no extensions support. Now, you can laugh back at them. Extensions will be officially available to everyone very soon. What makes me think so ? Read on ..
Chrome team has been testing and developing plugins or extensions for a long time now. But even on the developer version of Google chrome it required you to add a line of code to the command line for launching chrome. This is no longer required. That means, Extensions support is turned on by default on all google chrome dev versions now.
What this means, to me
So, for someone like me, using google chrome dev version, the browser is extension read, and there is a good documentation on how to create extensions, if I want to code my own thing. There is only one thing missing, an official extensions gallery, like they have for themes. We can expect this too, very soon.
What this means, to you
If you are using the stable version of Google chrome, this means, you will have all the awesomeness of google chrome extensions and themes very soon, probably on your next update. We have reasons to believe that this will happen along with the stable releases for Mac and Linux. So, there is a big day ahead, when all these things are rolled out, together …
Wait for a great news ….
photo by ginnerobot
by chrome story on September 8, 2009 · 1 comment
If you are a google chrome extension developer, or planing to be one, you have a good news. The official documentation page for Extension developers, is live. If you are in a hurry, jump that page right now, clicking here.
Okay, I see that you have decided to read more about this before going to the documentation page. Extensions are small software programs that can modify and enhance the functionality of Google Chrome. The best part about Google Chrome extensions is this, if you know how to code web pages, you can create google chrome extensions as well. Because, all you need to know is, HTML, JavaScript, and CSS to start playing with google chrome extensions.
Newbie ? Start Here
If you are really new to google chrome extensions creation, start here. This is the an easy tutorial explaining how to create a google chrome extension. More tutorials will be available on this page, very soon.
Happy Coding .. if you have a good extension to share with my readers, drop me a comment and I will contact you !!
There is a new development about Google Chrome for Linux and Mac. ReadWriteWeb found a change in the Google Chrome privacy policy that hints to the release of Google Chrome for Linux and Mac operating systems.
The Change.
OLD:
The Privacy Policy below applies only to Google Chrome for Windows. For the Developer channel releases on other platforms see the privacy policies for Mac OS X and Linux .
NEW:
The Google Privacy Policy describes how we treat personal information when you use Google’s products and services
On Google Chrome for Windows, You can configure Google Chrome to not send cookies to Google or other sites as explained here. Google Chrome for Mac and Google Chrome for Linux currently do not allow this level of configuration.
So, we have a strong reason to believe that release date for the stable version of Google Chrome for Linux and Mac is near.
Is it a BIG news ?
It is a big news for people who do not use the development version of Google Chrome for Mac and Linux. However, for those who do not use these, will be really excited to see this news. There is another group who can be happy about this. When they released Chrome development version for Linux, it was only for Ubuntu users. So, users on other Linux distributions like Fedora was left out. This time when the stable version of Linux Chrome is out, we should expect Chrome for all distributions on Linux.
PLUS, I believe that Google will bring the Extensions and Theme support for all platforms Windows, Mac and Linux, to the stable versions. It’s going to be REAL BIG !!
