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Google Chrome Video [Google]

Using google chrome is an enjoyable experience.  Its simple, clean, quick, and it works.  This video captures some of these feelings.

Chrome Experiments, from Google Creative Labs

via chromeexperiments.com

We think JavaScript is awesome. We also think browsers are awesome. Indeed, when we talk about them, we say they are the cat's meow – which is an American expression meaning AWESOME.

In light of these deeply held beliefs, we created this site to showcase cool experiments for both JavaScript and web browsers.

These experiments were created by designers and programmers from around the world using the latest open standards, including HTML5, Canvas, SVG, and more. Their work is making the web faster, more fun, and more open – the same spirit in which we built Google Chrome.

Here's an awesome JavaScript experiment community from my friends over at Google Creative Labs. They think JS is awesome, and now I do too. Lots of really great art projects/experiments with the browser window as the medium.

Pushing the browser to its technical limits in a non-traditional way is the best method to show what it is capable of. I also like that the barrier to entry is low. Don't have Chrome? Most of the experiments still work in Safari or FFX, and if they don't, they have videos so you can still see what they were meant to do.

Browser Talk is an awesome example. Check it out here.

The VIEW - A quest for the "evolved web browsing experience"

"The evolution of social media depends on the evolution of the browsing experience."

Open Source Collaboration is about Virtual Teams using web tools to manage and communicate asynchronously while still maintaining priorities and quality of communication. The first step on any new project (open or closed) is to define the goal. This post is only part of the challenge, but the goal of FFoFF has morphed into a process I refer to as The Cloud >> The View >> The App. And that process or workflow is the basis for a conversation I am intending to have with other simliar minded seekers.

The goal is not to create the next killer app, or uber browser, the goal is to define what that evolved web experience might look like. And then, using free plugins, apps and browsers (0riginally FFoFF or FriendFeed on FireFox) to get as close to the goal as possible. Through this discussion [preferably not a monologue] the intention is to articulate the needs and challenged of the next generation web experience.

The evolution of social media depends on the evolution of the browsing experience. Things like secure transactions anywhere, on-the-fly translated content, consolidated profile management (across all of your networked sites) and public and private personas are all part of the puzzle that will drive the next generation of social media connections and networks.

THE VIEW (an invitation to dialogue and collaborate to build the requirements and demo of the UBER UI for the "social web.")

1. The project
2. The tools
3. The rationale
4. The solutions
5. The view
6. The team
7. The genesis

1. The project

Defining the Evolved Browser or Uber App for Social Media

2. The tools

• FireFox 3 is the development platform and interface.
• The tools are widgets, social media sites, online apps, clouds of data and on and on.
• And FriendFeed is my current choice for uber aggregator of social content.

3. Rationale

• I believe we can iterate an Uber Interface (a VIEW) that will have amazing flexibility and require a ZERO DOLLAR dev budget.
• My Firefox bookmark bar is already a sort of streamlined UI. It is not good enough, and constantly changing and evolving. But it is FREE.

4. The Solution - Usage models for the solution.

• The uber social master VIEW
• BrainTraining and Teaching VIEW
• The newbie VIEW

5. The VIEW

A view is a design and grouping of FFoFF elements. A view is an iteration. A view is a proof and hypothesis.

6. The team

John McElhenney

7. The genesis

• First I posted a Question on LinkedIN. http://tinyurl.com/firefox-plugin-question
• Read a post by Steve Woodruff on his StickyFigure blog. And posted my comment to his One Interface to Rule Them All post. http://tinyurl.com/uber-search
• Next as I was contemplating Steve's question I was inspired to put together a PPT slide of what I imagined the uber app to be.
• Next, I created a room on FriendFeed http://tinyurl.com/globalsocialmedia
• Next, I built a feed of the GSMC room and invited most of my smart friends to join the room.
• Somewhere along the way, I read someone's post containing a reference to FFoFF as a joke. But in my mind it stuck.

Note: I am searching for that initial FFoFF person and will post the link here poste haste. And if it's you, please jump in and put yourself on the TEAM.

Also please see Socialwiki and Wikisocial for an evolution of this process to an open source directory project.

[Initial wiki page created 7-15-08]

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/theview-exploded

Data sent out to Google by Google Chrome

Google has posted a thorough explanation of the data that Google Chrome sends to Google and others and how to opt out of it. I give Google brownie points for this, but... where is my Chrome for Linux, yo? ;)

Chrome Easter Egg

Easter eggs always make me happy, and while I can run the browser
(except in VMWare, which barely counts), I have to share this one.

Mozilla fights back, while Microsoft plays dead.

The upcoming release of Firefox, version 3.1 would be faster than Google Chrome:



Meanwhile Internet Explorer is still nowhere to be seen on these benchmarks as under 10 times slower than both Chrome and Firefox.

Google Chrome displaces Firefox as the fastest web browser. IE8 is in the dust!

CNET reports speed test between Chrome, Firefox, IE, and Safari:


We'll have to review this with Firefox 3.1 optimized JavaScript engine with trace-based JIT which could get Firefox on par with Chrome:

What about Microsoft Internet Explorer? How long will it take for end-users to find-out they're running their business on the back of a turtle?

Googleshake aims at Microsoft.

Today Google released its Open-Source web browser, Chrome (BETA) for Windows:



Chromium is the Open-Source Browser project powering Chrome.

The first thing we notice is that Chrome does not have a menu bar or a status bar at the bottom. It just has a Tab bar, a search/location bar and a favorites bar. This has two consequences: 1) it leaves more real-estate for applications and most-importantly 2) it looks very much like a desktop environment of its own, especially when the window is maximized. This is really slick!

Chrome shows the direction ahead. Google is aiming at providing a desktop platform for Rich Internet Applications (RIA) that does not really need a desktop environment under it. All this really needs is the kernel of an OS to access the underlying hardware.

So in effect, Google is not initiating a browser war but a desktop war for the web.

Many people think that Microsoft will crush it just like it crushed Netscape but the main difference between Google and Netscape back in 1995 is that Google has comfortable revenues outside the browser to survive forever and can even pay to get its browser preinstalled on PCs and MACs.

Google Office-like applications do not work very well today because of weaknesses and limitations of the current browsers, especially limitations from Internet Explorer that Microsoft is not willing to remove in order to prevent RIA to become a threat to its own Office suite. This is the reason why Google is coming out with Chrome. Google applications on Chrome will work as well as Microsoft-Office on PCs. While offline, our work will be saved on the local PC and will synchronize automatically when the PC comes online again.

The massive adoption of RIA by software vendors, with Google support, will render the underlying Operating System a commodity. The underlying OS will then become irrelevant and could become the free and Open-Source Linux, or at least its kernel.

The execution of this strategy does undermine Microsoft both for the OS and Office. The success of this strategy will require that Google executes well on it and that Microsoft ignores or denies it like IBM denied the power of the PC in 1985 letting the way for Microsoft to become the dominant predator.

Microsoft has no choice but to react by providing on/offline applications using either its proprietary RIA framework (aka Silverlight) or by improving standards support on Internet Explorer. Microsoft will have to provide better applications than Google to keep getting revenues from it. This will depend on Google applications feature set and quality. If Google, and other vendors', applications do get the minimum required feature set and reliability, Microsoft will have no other choice than getting better at generating revenues from advertising to compete against Google.

Mozilla and Firefox can continue to grow if Google Chrome plays with standard which is in Google best interests because Google gets revenues from advertising, not software. By allowing Firefox to continue to exist, and fund it as they do, Google will avoid Microsoft antitrust woes while getting more support from web application and Open Source developers.

At the very least and in the short term this will lead to better web browsers and probably more standard compliant web browsers and hopefully the wide adoption of SVG for which Chrome Beta already has (limited) support. IE should now be pressed to implement SVG.

Chrome is the most serious threat Microsoft has ever faced to its very business model. This is gonna be interesting :)

Google Chrome

Google just released the beta version of a new browser, complete with a neat comic book about it. It sounds neat, and I'd love to play with it, but like everything non web based that Google releases, it currently only runs on Windows (and while you can build the source for Mac OS X, there is no such luck for Linux). This makes me a sad panda. Hopefully they get a GUI working on Linux in the near future.

(And I can't build it on my Mac, since the Mac build is Leopard only, anyways...)