Google Chrome

LifeHacker: Chrome 17 is out with a new pre-rendering feature designed to make your pages load faster, and both Firefox and Opera have also released speedy new versions since our last round of speed tests. So, we’ve once again pitted the four most popular web browsers against each other in a battle of startup times, tab loading times, and more, with more surprising results. Continue Reading: http://lifehacker.com/5884941/browser-speed-tests-chrome-17-firefox-10-internet-explorer-9-and-opera-1161 (Hint: As always Chrome is winner, no doubt!)

LifeHacker: Google is releasing a major update to Chrome today that will make browsing the web seem faster and also add security protections. Chrome 17 (17.0.963.46) pre-renders pages in the background when you type in the URL in the omnibox address bar so the site will appear to come up almost instantaneously. Chrome also now scans download executable-s (e.g., “.exe” and “.msi” files) and warns you if it thinks the file is malicious. ...

Google Chrome Wrote: In 2008, we launched Google Chrome to help make the web better. We’re excited that millions of people around the world use Chrome as their primary browser and we want to keep improving that experience. Today, we’re introducing Chrome for Android Beta, which brings many of the things you’ve come to love about Chrome to your Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich phone or tablet. Like the desktop version, Chrome for Android Beta is focused on speed and simplicity, but it also features seamless sign-in and sync so you can take your personalized web browsing experience with you wherever you go, across devices. ...

The H-Online: Google plans to turn off online checks for SSL certificate validity in its Chrome browser soon, according to a blog post by Adam Langley, the developer in charge of that element of the browser. Instead, the browser will use the update mechanism to receive lists of revoked certificates. When browsers make a connection, they check whether the certificate presented by the server has already been blocked by the certificate authority, using either the certificate authority’s certificate revocation lists (CRLs) or, directly and interactively, the Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP). But that whole process has never been completely reliable, since, if the browser isn’t certain of the validity – if, say, an OCSP request doesn’t work – it simply “looks the other way”. Otherwise, there would be too many false alarms. ...

The H-Online: The German Federal Office of Information Security (BSI (German), BSI English) has compiled security recommendations for Windows PCs that will probably sound familiar to regular readers of The H: Anti-virus software – including free solutions –, backups, security updates, an alternative browser such as Google Chrome and “a healthy level of mistrust” are the main components of its proposal for a secure Windows PC. As the UK lacks a governmental organization that makes such recommendations, as usually such organizations recommend policy for public projects, it is worth seeing what Germany’s BSI suggests. ...

H-Security: Version 17 of Chrome has been released into the WebKit-based browser’s Beta channel. Its developers say that the new Chrome beta, version 17.0.963.26, is focused on improving two of the browser’s core principles: speed and security. To make Chrome “go even faster”, some web pages will start loading in the background before a user has even finished typing a URL into the Omnibox address and search bar. To reduce the time between a user pressing enter and the page being fully loaded, Chrome will pre-render some pages if the URL auto-completes to a site a user is likely to visit. According to Google Software Engineer Dominic Hamon, this will, in some cases, cause pages to appear “instantly”. ...

Mashable: Internet Explorer can no longer claim more than half of the web’s traffic, as of October, ending more than a decade of the default Microsoft browser’s reign. Safari’s hold on 62.17% of mobile traffic has reduced IE’s overall share of web browsing, despite still claiming 52.63% of desktop traffic, according to Netmarketshare.com. The Microsoft browser’s diminishing share (49.6%) reflects its near absence from the realms of mobile and tablet, which now make up 6% of web traffic. However, chances are, you gave up on IE long enough ago that this milestone makes you more curious as to who actually still uses the browser. ...

gHacks.net: If you are a heavy user of Google’s Google+ social networking product you are probably keeping the site running in a tab all the time to never miss new messages. But even if you do, you need to switch back to the tab regularly to see if there are any new notifications on Google+. Notifier extensions make sure that users stay informed even if they close the Google+ browser window. Up until now Chrome users could make use of third party notifiers which, will working perfectly, were not official which may have kept some users from installing and using those extensions. ...

Google Chrome Blog: It’s that time of the year again for the Chrome team, when we pause on our anniversary to reflect on the amazing life and times of the web. It’s hard to believe that it’s already been three years since we launched our open source web browser, Chrome. In that time, the web community has continued to inspire us, bringing the power of the web into all kinds of apps and experiences, with all modern browsers making great strides in speed, simplicity and security. To pay homage to the goodness of the web, we’ve put together an interactive infographic, built in HTML5, which details the evolution of major web technologies and browsers: ...

The Google Chrome team announced the arrival of Chrome 13.0.782.107 to the Stable Channel for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Chrome Frame. Spanning 5200+ revisions, Chrome 13, contains some exciting new features like Instant Page rendering. To find out about other new features, check out the Official Chrome Blog. Change log is available here: Google Chrome Releases: Stable Channel Update

Google Operation System Blog wrote: Chrome 12, the upcoming version of Google’s browser which is likely to be released today, removes a useful feature: the built-in Gears plugin. While most Google services dropped support for Gears and removed offline access, Gears is still being used in Gmail. Google no longer maintains Gears, which is now legacy software, and focuses on implementing offline support using HTML5. Read the whole story in: Google Operation System Blog

The Google Chrome team is happy to announce the arrival of Chrome 11.0.696.57 to the Stable Channel for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Chrome Frame. Chrome 11 contains some really great improvements including speech input through HTML. Read More at Google Chrome Release Blog.

Avira TechBlog: Today some updates need attention – they fix critical security issues and should be installed immediately! The update reign starts off with Apple. Critical security vulnerabilities are closed within the Safari web browser 5.0.5 – they allowed cyber criminals to smuggle in malware. For Mac users, additionally a security update is available for the Snow Leopard operating system. It fixes an issue with stolen certificates which arose a three weeks ago at Comodo and is amazingly tiny for an Apple security update, only 4 MByte. And then for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users the update to iOS 4.3.2 is available which basically closes the same security holes for the mobile devices as well. ...

Google Operation System: Until recently, Google Bookmarks and Chrome Bookmarks were two separate features that didn’t speak the same language. Even if you could save your Chrome bookmarks to a Google account, they weren’t saved to Google Bookmarks. For some reason, your bookmarks are available in a special Google Docs folder. Chrome bookmarks have a web interface, but it’s likely that the obvious will happen: Chrome bookmarks could be saved to Google Bookmarks. Jérôme Flipo noticed that the Google Bookmarks OneBox already includes Chrome bookmarks. I’ve tried to find SmallNetBuilder.com and Google’s OneBox returned it even if it was starred in Chrome, not in Google Bookmarks. ...

Avira TechBlog: It looks like new Chrome releases aren’t due every six weeks as Google announced a few weeks ago, but once a week now – the company just released Chrome 10.0.648.204 and fixes 6 highly critical security vulnerabilities with it. Those security vulnerabilities allow attackers to smuggle in malware like Trojans without the user noticing. That is why the automatic update mechanism is so important: When clicking on the tool symbol and choosing the “About Google Chrome” menu entry, the version check should show that Chrome is already on the current release – or offer to download and install the update in case that didn’t happen yet. ...