TechCrunch reports that Google Analytics included Chrome in the list of detected browsers. It's probably irrelevant that 8.64% of today's visits for this blog were from Google Chrome because a lot of users test the new browser to see if it's better than IE, Firefox, Safari or Opera.
(Find the report in : Visitors > Browser Capabilities > Browsers)
Two days ago, Google Analytics Blog admitted that the web analytics service intentionally concealed the identity of the new browser. "Because Google Chrome was not launched externally until today, we haven't yet changed Google Analytics to recognize it when you segment by browser within reports. However - this will change in the coming weeks (until then, the browser will show as Firefox)." The blog post has been edited and it no longer contains the reference to Firefox, but I can't help wondering if Google Analytics hides other things.
If you want to detect Google Chrome, this user-agent should be helpful:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US) AppleWebKit/XX (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/YY Safari/XX
For now, most services don't detect Chrome, probably because Safari has a very similar user-agent:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US) AppleWebKit/XX (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/ZZ Safari/YY
Here are some not-so-obvious things you can do in Google Chrome, the minimalistic browser launched on Tuesday.
1. Show the list of recently visited pages from the current tab: right-click on the "Back" button. This also works for the "Forward" button.
2. Undo closing a tab: press Ctrl+Shift+T or open a new tab and check the "Recently closed tabs" section.
3. Focus on the default search option in the address bar: type ? before entering your query.
4. Perform simple calculations and unit conversions using Google Calculator by simply typing the expression in Google Chrome's address bar (or "omnibox"). To copy the answer, select the suggestion.
5. If you need more space in a textarea, resize it by dragging the lower right corner.
6. Monitor the resources used by a web page - right click inside the page, select "Inspect element", switch to the "Resources" tab and reload the web page. You'll see a list of images, scripts and objects loaded from the web page and you can sort them by size or by loading time.
7. Detach a tab and open it in a new window - just drag the tab outside the active window. You can also add it back to the original window using drag and drop.
8. After downloading a file, you can copy it to the desktop or to any other folder by using drag and drop directly from Google Chrome.
9. If the search engine of a site supports OpenSearch, you can add it to Google Chrome's search box by simply visiting the site and performing a search. The domain name automatically becomes a keyword and you should only type the first letters from the URL until you see "press Tab to search example.com". Then press Tab and type your query.
You can also manually add search engines, by right-clicking on the address bar and selecting "Edit search engines". Here's one example, where you can see that you need to find the URL for the search results page and replace the query with %s:
Name - Wikipedia Keyword - wiki (that's what you need to type in the address bar) URL - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=%s
You can also use the keywords for other kinds of services: for translating web pages, for bookmarking pages online or simply as aliases for web pages (omit "%s" from the URL).
Name - Google Translate (English) Keyword - trans URL - http://translate.google.com/translate?u=%s
10. Do you want Google Chrome without Google's branding and with an open source license (BSD license)? Check Chromium, the open source project created for Google Chrome. You can install the latest snapshots for Windows or download the code and build it in Windows, Mac, Linux.
To install Chromium in Windows, go to the most recent directory from this page (it should be at the top) and download mini_installer.exe. Note that these snapshots could be less stable than the version available at google.com/chrome and you may need to manually update Chromium.
There's an easy way to upload photos to Picasa Web Albums if you don't want to install Picasa: send your photos by email to a secret address.
First you need visit the Settings page and check "Allow me to upload photos by email." The secret email address where you can send your photos has the following format: username.secretkey@picasaweb.com, where secretkey needs to be defined in the settings.
By default, Picasa Web uploads your photos to the built-in Drop Box albums, but it's a good idea to choose your destination by entering the name of an existing album in the subject of your email.
Make sure you don't share the secret email address with other people, like I did in the screenshot above. And if you do, just choose a different secret key for your address.
You can attach up to 20MB of photos in JPG, GIF and PNG formats, which is a pretty reasonable limitation. Since Picasa Web's mobile site still doesn't support uploading photos, the new option should be really useful when you want to share photos from a phone with email or MMS capabilities.
Like most other browsers, Google Chrome has some special pages that show information about memory usage, cached files, plug-ins and more. Here's a list of the most interesting about: pages available in Google Chrome (you can open them by dragging about:name to the address bar).
1. about:version - Google Chrome shows the version number the browser, WebKit and V8 (JavaScript engine). You can also find the user-agent used by Google Chrome:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US) AppleWebKit/525.19 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1 Safari/525.19
2. about:plugins - the list of plug-ins that are available in Google Chrome: Shockwave Flash, RealPlayer etc.
3. about:cache - a list of all the web pages cached by Google Chrome. The browser doesn't have an option to limit the cache's size, so it's recommended to regularly empty the cache.
4. about:memory - this pages compares the memory used by all the active browsers and by Google Chrome's tabs.
5. about:stats - a list of internal counters and timers that has a funny subtitle "Shhh! This page is secret!".
6. about:histograms - a list of histograms for Google Chrome's internal metrics.
7. about:dns - Google Chrome prefetches the DNS records for 10 frequently visited hostnames. This feature can be disabled in Options > Under the Hood by unchecking "Use DNS pre-fetching to improve page load performance".
8. about:network - this page could be used for I/O tracking and it's a partial replacement for the Live HTTP Headers extension. Click on "Start I/O tracking", open a web page in a new tab and you'll get a list of all the images, scripts and objects loaded from that web page.
9. about:crash - crash the active tab. Google Chrome displays the "sad tab" image, followed by this message: "Something went wrong while displaying this webpage. To continue, press Reload or go to another page".
10. about:hang - type this in the address bar of a tab when there's already an active web page to hang the process (this means that the process no longer accepts any signal, but it's still running). The other tabs will continue to work and the active tab can be closed.
11. about:internets - this is an Easter egg that references two popular Internet memes: Internets and Series of tubes. Google Chrome embeds the 3D Pipes screensaver from Windows, so you'll see it only if you have the file sspipes.scr in C:\Windows\System32.
Google Chrome has been released and you can now finally try it. Developed in the past two years, the browser is barely noticeable after you open it. It loads faster than Internet Explorer and it has very few buttons and controls.
In fact, Chrome is an ironic name: Google wanted to create a browser that has a minimal chrome (that's how software developers name the menu and the toolbar of an application). The browser replicates the simplicity of Google's homepage that hides the complexity of the search engine.
Even if it's just a beta, Chrome already supports 43 languages and it automatically detects your language. To change the interface language, just click on the wrench button, click Options, select the "Minor tweaks" tab, click on "Change font and language settings", select the "Languages" tab and change Google Chrome language. That's a lot of clicking, but you won't change the UI language too often.
Google's browser merges the address bar and the search box in a single box that provides suggestions from the local history and from Google search. Google suggests queries and web pages that you are likely to visit, so in many cases you'll not even need to perform a search. Of course, you can change your search engine in the Options and Google provides two great alternatives: Yahoo and Live Search (OK, Live Search is not that great). But the great thing is that you don't need to choose a search engine: just browse the web search, visit your favorite sites and Google automatically detects search engines and saves them for you. Try this: go to amazon.com, search for the title of a book and then type amazon in Google's address box. You'll see an entry that allows you to search on amazon.com using Amazon's search engine. Click on the list item or press Tab to access the search engine.
Google automatically creates keywords for sites that have search engines: the automatically generated keyword for Amazon is amazon.com.
Let's say I want to download an application, like the fabulous Opera browser. Instead of being asked if I truly want to download the file, the location from my computer and other pesky details, Google Chrome just downloads it without opening any dialog. A small bar at the bottom of the window shows the progress and the greatest thing is that I can drag the file to any location directly from the browser. You should definitely try this if you install Chrome.
The browser has a modern JavaScript engine designed for improving the performance of complex applications like Gmail. But to make Gmail feel like a true applications, try this: click on the "New" button, select "Create application shortcuts" and a new chromeless window will open. You'll also create a desktop shortcut for Gmail. That's a feature of Google Gears, which is included in the browser.
In Wired's article about Chrome, the engineers that built the V8 JavaScript engine talk about its performance. "We just did some benchmark runs today, Bak says a couple of weeks before the launch. Indeed, V8 processes JavaScript 10 times faster than Firefox or Safari. And how does it compare in those same benchmarks to the market-share leader, Microsoft's IE 7? Fifty-six times faster."
Like Opera 9.5, Google Chrome fully indexes all the web pages you visit and you can find search results from your browsing history in the address bar. To bookmark a page, click on the star icon and you can choose a folder for your bookmark (that's right, folders in an application created by Google). The browsing history, the recently closed tabs and the most visited pages are used to automatically create a homepage. Try this when you install Chrome: create a new tab, resize the window and notice how the thumbnails adjust to the new size. And another tip: go to Options and select "On startup... restore the pages that were last open".
Developers shouldn't a miss menu created especially for them: Control > Developer. They'll find a JavaScript debugger for the new V8 engine, an element inspector that includes some great charts for monitoring the performance of a page and something truly innovative: a task manager for your tabs. Remember this shortcut: Shift+Esc to instantly open the task manager if one of the tabs slows down your browsing. As you probably know, in Chrome (almost) each tab runs in its own process, which can be killed without crashing the browser.
Those who want to find more about memory usage, including a comparison with other browsers that are currently opened, should click on "Stats for nerds" in the task manger or type about:memory in the address bar. Here's a comparison between Chrome 0.2, IE8 Beta 2, Opera 9.52 and Firefox 3.0.1 when only three web pages are loaded after a restart: google.com, yahoo.com and youtube.com.
Google Chrome borrowed many features from other browsers: Opera's speed dial used to show thumbnails of the most frequently visited pages, Safari's inline find feature, Internet Explorer's private browsing mode, Firefox's spell checker. Google hopes that other browsers will borrow features or even code from Chrome. Sergey Brin said that what Google truly wants is a diverse and vibrant ecosystem of browsers and Chrome is just another option.
Google's browser might never become popular, even if it's fast, stable and more secure than other browsers. The most important thing is that Google Chrome will certainly have an impact on the next versions of IE, Firefox, Opera, Safari. Even if you don't have a Gmail account and you use Yahoo Mail or Hotmail, you benefited indirectly from Gmail's breakthroughs. If Gmail is the invisible feature of Yahoo Mail and Hotmail, Google Chrome could be the signal that browsers need to become platforms for web applications.
The new version of Picasa Web Albums added a simple game called "Where in the World". Your mission is to find the correct location for some photos that are already geolocated. To find the game, go to the Explore section and click on "Start Game".
Inspired by Flickr, Google created a new section that displays features photos, recent photos, popular tags and locations.
(As you can see, the screenshots show Google Chrome, which has been released less than an hour ago. The browser is promoted on Google's homepage and you can install it at google.com/chrome, but only if you use Windows XP or Vista. It has a very simple interface and it's incredibly fast.)
CNet reports that Picasa Web Albums will add some interesting features today. After implementing face detection in the image search engine, Google adds face recognition in Picasa Web Albums to facilitate photo tagging.
"The problem with tagging is that it's a chore, so most people don't bother. But Picasa's name tag feature automates the process enough--and provides enough reason to use it--that I believe many users will take the tagging plunge. (...) The most impressive moments are when Picasa presents a large array of photos with the same face, and you can label them all with a single click," says Stephen Shankland from CNet.
The technology comes from the NevenVision acquisition and I'm sure we'll see more features that depend on image analysis in the future. Other new features in Picasa Web Albums: new views for exploring photos uploaded to Picasa Web Albums, Creative Commons licensing and an option to add photos by email.
Interestingly, the people tagging feature will not be available in Picasa 3, which will also be released today. The software will finally synchronize photos with Picasa Web Albums, but the synchronization is unidirectional. You'll be able to create videos from photo albums and export them to YouTube. There's also an improved collage maker that lets you control how pictures are arranged.
Picasa 3 and the updated Picasa Web Albums are set to be available today at 12 pm PDT.
Google Blogoscoped posts an interesting comic book (update: a better version) created by Scott McCloud that illustrates the features of Google Chrome, an open source browser based on WebKit. As usually, all the rumors related to Google are true and "Google Browser" is no exception.
Google Chrome has been built in a time when browsers no longer render mostly web pages, but full-blown web applications. That's why browsers need to be more powerful, more stable and more secure. One of the problems of the existing browsers is that a web page can lock the browser and there's no way to isolate that tab and close it. Google Chrome uses a new process for each tab. "We're applying the same isolation you find in modern operating systems," says Arnaud Weber. Each process is sandboxed to prevent malware from affecting your computer.
The new browser has a JavaScript virtual machine built by the V8 team from Denmark that generates code dynamically and has a better garbage collector.
Google Chrome's UI is inspired by Opera: tabs are displayed above the address bar, the address bar combines previously typed URLs with search results and suggestions and there's a homepage that includes frequently visited sites, recently closed tabs, bookmarks and searches.
Web applications can be opened in chromeless windows, without menus and toolbars, much like in Mozilla Prism. The browser will also include Gears, a set of APIs already available for IE, Firefox and Safari.
Some people will say that Google wants to compete with Microsoft's Internet Explorer or Mozilla's Firefox, but I think there's something more important about the new offering: an open source browser that is prepared for running applications and that diminishes the role of existing operating systems. The browser won't become very popular, but the ideas behind it will influence the next versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari.
The browser is not yet available for downloading, but the launch seems imminent.
Update: Google announces that a Windows version of the browser will be launched tomorrow. "We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build. (...) By keeping each tab in an isolated sandbox, we were able to prevent one tab from crashing another and provide improved protection from rogue sites. We improved speed and responsiveness across the board. We also built a more powerful JavaScript engine, V8, to power the next generation of web applications that aren't even possible in today's browsers."
