Chromium Blog: 2012

No more silent extension installs

Friday, December 21, 2012

It’s important for users to know what extensions they have enabled since extensions can sometimes influence Chrome’s functionality and performance. Many users have installed extensions from the Chrome Web Store, but some users have extensions that were silently installed without their knowledge. Until now, it has been possible to silently install extensions into Chrome on Windows using the Windows registry mechanism for extension deployment. This feature was originally intended to allow users to opt-in to adding a useful extension to Chrome as a part of the installation of another application. Unfortunately, this feature has been widely abused by third parties to silently install extensions into Chrome without proper acknowledgment from users. Two new features in Chrome 25 will help users run only the extensions they want to use: Extensions installed by third party programs using external extension deployment options will be disabled by default. When a third party program installs an extension, the Chrome menu will be badged, and users can click through the Chrome menu to see a dialog containing an option to enable the extension or to remove it from their computer. In addition, all extensions previously installed using external deployment options will be automatically disabled. Chrome will show a one-time prompt to allow the re-enabling of any of the extensions. Windows application developers should ask users to install Chrome extensions from within Chrome. A great way to allow users to install a Chrome extension related to your Windows application is to link users to your website and use inline installation. If you have questions, please get in touch with us on the Chromium extensions group. Posted by Peter Ludwig, Product Manager

Dart's Web UI library is ready for testing

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Built on Dart's Web UI library is now ready for testing. This early release of Web UI supports dynamic templates, live one-way and two-way data binding, and custom DOM elements. Web UI also includes a compiler that makes these features available to all modern browsers today. Web UI helps you build declarative apps that have cleaner semantics and structure. You can build and use custom elements like <x-survey> that encapsulate their style, behavior, and structure to hide implementation details like deeply nested HTML tags. Just like HTML tags, these new tags (aka custom elements) can be nested, extended, and shared with other developers. Web UI also automatically keeps the HTML page and data models in sync with one-way and two-way data binding. Simply declare, in the DOM itself, the bindings between Dart objects and page elements and let Web UI take care of the details. Here is a small snippet from a simple TODO app that shows some of these features, including: (1) linking to a custom element
(2) declarative event handling
(3) templates and iteration
(4) data binding with a custom element

To see Dart Web UI in action, we've ported the ubiquitous TodoMVC sample app:

Getting started and installing Web UI is easy with pub, the Dart package manager. Simply add the configure Dart Editor to watch for changes and automatically recompile your Web UI apps for quick and easy edit and reload development cycles. To learn more about Dart's Web UI package, you can read the mailing list. Posted by Siggi Cherem, Software Engineer

Faster, simpler search in Chrome

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

omnibox in ChromeSearchBox APIcrbug.comPosted by David Holloway, Software Engineer

Build Chrome Packaged Apps with the MediaGalleries API

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Media Galleries API

read-only: allows media content to be read, but not modified

read-write: allows media content to be read and modified

add-files: allows media to be added to the galleries but prevents modifying existing media files.

getMediaFilesystems()W3C FileSystem API
NOTEasynchronous versionGoogle+ page
Posted by Joe Marini, Developer Advocate

A safer playground for your Linux and Chrome OS renderers

Monday, November 19, 2012

Sandboxingbroker process modelchrome://sandboxUbuntuherePosted by Julien Tinnes, Software Engineer

Build smoother web apps with Chrome Developer Tools

Friday, November 16, 2012

we’ve addedthe Frame Mode to our Timeline panelSo, what’s a frame

run JavaScript animations and other event handlers

update CSS animations

recalculate styles and lay out the elements in the DOM

re-paint the updated layers of the page

compose them and present to the user

less than 16.6msIf you are not done by then, you’ll miss the frame

network activity and HTML parsing (blue)

running JavaScript (yellow)

performing style recalculation and layout (violet)

painting and compositing (green)

responsive and interactivadded a warning mark on layouts that were forced, by requesting positional propertiesrequestAnimationFrame@ChromiumDev
Posted by Andrey Kosyakov, Software Engineer

Restricting extension APIs in legacy packaged apps

Thursday, November 15, 2012

legacy packaged apps< all urls >" (b) the top-level "content_scripts" key (c) the "debugger", "devtools", "pageCapture", "plugin", "proxy", "tabs'", "history", "webNavigation" permissions (d) the top-level "npapi" key
Existing legacy packaged apps in the Chrome Web Store will not be affected, and those existing apps can continue to be updated without being subject to these new restrictions. Chromium apps
Posted by Peter Ludwig, Product Manager

Backstage at JAM with Chrome

Thursday, November 8, 2012

we launchedJAM with Chromelatest browser technologies

Web Audio for high fidelity playback without resorting to lots of pre-recorded audio samples.

WebSockets is used to deliver immediate real-time playback across all the members of the band ensuring they stay in sync and playing from the same tab sheet.

Finally, Canvas provide rich visuals and an immersive experience.

+Google Chrome Developerswww.jamwithchrome.comdeveloper tools
Posted by Paul Kinlan, Developer Advocate

A web developer’s guide to the latest Chrome Beta

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Beta channel releaseDatalist support in date and timedatalist

MathMLDave Barton
Other new features in this release

flag. They enable sweet cinematic effects like page flipping with just CSS and HTML. You can turn them on with chrome://flags.

Chromium now parses the according to spec. Use it to specify which type of saved user data the browser should use to prefill input elements. Examples are name and street-address.

A few brand new features landed with a prefix: clip DOM content to an SVG shape.

Un-prefixed APIs

IndexedDB, a client-side storage API offering fast access to large amounts of structured data

Intl, which adds support for JavaScript internationalization of date format, number format, collation and non-standard segmentation, and more time zones

support for fast transferable objects)

requestAnimationFrame for silky smooth JavaScript animations

performance.now() for reliable, high-resolution timing

Experiments removed in this release decided to disableStay in the loop chromestatus.com+Google Chrome Developers
Posted by Peter Beverloo, Software Engineer and Web Platform Enthusiast

Introducing TCP Listen, a new API for Chrome packaged apps

Friday, November 2, 2012

TCP ListenMedia Center applicationDLNA®/UPnPChrome Apps Office Hourschromium-apps
Posted by Renato Mangini, Developer Advocate

Smarter NPAPI installs from the Chrome Web Store

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

NPAPIrequirements"requirements": { "plugins": { "npapi": false } }Native Clientdeveloper forum
Posted by Joe Marini, Developer Advocate

Do more with Chrome Developer Tools

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Chrome Developer ToolsDevelop for mobile we launchedUser Agent and dimension overridingdebug mobile applications on the desktop.

Profile rendering performance

The Timeline’s Frame Mode feature now allows you to profile Chrome’s rendering performance, remove the jank and deliver the silky smooth performance users expect from your apps. To learn more about this topic, check out the recent "Jank Busters" video from Google I/O.

Preview your log items

The console now prints a user-friendly snapshot of the object properties taken at log time, whereas by expanding the object manually, you can still see its live content. This is especially useful when logging an object in a loop and observing its mutation. With this change, we resolved a longstanding bug many of you prioritized on crbug.com.

Play with experimental features

You can now try new experimental features in Chrome Developer Tools by visiting chrome:flags and enabling them there. Once you do that, a new tab called “Experiments” will be visible in the settings menu, allowing you to enable and use any of the following experiments:

Snippets (essentially multi-line console on steroids)
Source mapping support for SASS
Native memory profiling
Geolocation / orientation override
FileSystem inspection
Canvas inspection
CPU activity in Timeline
CSS Regions support

Some of these experimental features are almost ready while others have just landed and need some more refining. In either case, we’d love your feedback before we bake these fully in Chrome Developer Tools. You can also read our recently updated contribution guide if you’re interested in helping us make the tools better.

To get more information on all of Chrome Developer Tools features, check out our “ @ChromiumDev on Twitter for more news on changes landing in Chrome Developer Tools.

Posted by Stefano Cazzulani, Product Manager

New site ownership verification option in CWS

Friday, October 19, 2012

Google’s Webmaster Toolsdeveloper dashboardNoteWebmaster Help forum
Posted by Joe Marini, Developer Advocate

A better developer experience for Native Client

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Native ClientvideoSDKprintfadd-inforum
Posted by Christian Stefansen, Product Manager

Celebrating Dart’s birthday with the first release of the Dart SDK

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Dart

A faster Dart Virtual Machine that on some V8.

A new Dart to JavaScript translator that generates fast and compact output.

An HTML library that works transparently on modern browsers.

A library to interoperate with JavaScript code.

An easy to use editor.

Pub, a new package manager

Dartium, a Chromium build with native Dart support.

A server-side I/O library.

A language features.

feedbackPosted by Lars Bak, Software Engineer

mod_pagespeed is now out of beta

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

officially out of betadeveloper documentation site
Posted by Ilya Grigorik, Developer Advocate

Pwnium 2: results and wrap-up

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Hack in the Box 2012IPC layerfreshly patchedPosted by Chris Evans, Software Engineer

Pwnium 2 begins

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Pwnium 2Hack in the Box 2012vulnerability rewards programPosted by Chris Evans, Software Engineer

Get a front row seat with GDL Presents

Monday, October 8, 2012

Calling designers, web developers, and the creatively curious! Next week marks the launch of Google Developers Live Presents, a new series of exclusive programming from GDL. Presents kicks off this month with Design Ignites the Web, a family of episodes that takes you on a journey from back-end to front-end, showing you how to create compelling projects in the browser. The series will feature exclusive interviews with the developers behind select Chrome Experiments, Chrome WebLab, Movi.Kanti.Revo, and DevArt.
So, what’s coming up?
Make Web Magic: The Minds Behind the Most Popular Chrome Experiments | Tuesday, October 9 - Part 1, 1:00 PM PDT | 20:00 UTC [Event page] Using the latest open web technologies, the developers creating some of the most inspired Chrome Experiments showcase their latest web experiments and discuss how they are making the web faster, more fun, and open in this 3-episode hangout. Host: Paul Irish, Developer Advocate, Chrome Guests: Hakim: Google+, Website
All the Web’s a Stage: Building a 3D Space in the Browser | Thursday, October 11 - 10:30 AM PDT | 17:30 UTC [Event page] Meet the designers and creative team behind a new sensory Chrome experiment, Movi.Kanti.Revo, in a live, design-focused Q&A. Learn how Cirque du Soleil and Subatomic Systems worked to translate the wonder of Cirque into an environment built entirely with markup and CSS. Host: Pete LePage, Developer Advocate Guests: Gillian Ferrabee, Creative Director, Images & Special Projects, Cirque du Soleil | Nicole McDonald, Director/Creative Director, Subatomic Systems
Van Gogh Meets Alan Turing: The Browser Becomes a Canvas with DevArt | Friday, October 19 - 10:00 AM PDT | 17:00 UTC [Event page]How can art and daily life be joined together? Host Ido Green chats with creators Uri Shaked and Tom Teman about tackling this question with their “Music Room” – a case study in the power of Android – and with Emmanuel Witzthum on his project “Dissolving Realities,” which aims to connect the virtual environment of the Internet using Google Street View. Host: Ido Green, Developer Advocate Guests: Uri Shaked, Tom Teman, and Emmanuel Witzthum
[Event page]The experiments in Chrome Web Lab are pushing the limits of what developers can build in a browser. Explore the design and technical mastery that went into making extraordinary experiences, directly from the experiments’ home, the London Science Museum. Hosts: Paul Kinlan, Developer Advocate Guests: Tellart & B-Reel representatives for Universal Orchestra, Sketchbot, Teleporter, LabTag, DataTracer
If you can’t make the live show, you’ll still be able to see recordings of these and past sessions on our @googledevs on Twitter.
Posted by Peter Lubbers, Program Manager

Teaming up on Web Platform Docs

Monday, October 8, 2012

Cross-posted on the Google Developers BlogWeb Platform Docsexpand and refineTwitterPosted by Alex Komoroske, Product Manager

Supporting new media experiences on the web

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Chrome Betademodemo demo videoChrome BetaPosted by Justin Uberti, Software Engineer and Trained Video Professional

Enabling new classes of applications with Pointer Lock

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

first-person shooter demo WebSocketsPointer Lockgive it a spinPosted by Vincent Scheib, Software Engineer often overheard singing, "And we’re out of Beta. We’re releasing on time."

Announcing Movi.Kanti.Revo, A New Chrome Experiment

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Big Tent event3D transformsgetUserMedia accelerometer8:30am PDT /15:30 UTCwww.movikantirevo.comdeveloper toolsPete LePage, Developer Advocate

Lossless and Transparency Modes in WebP

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Cross-posted on the Google Developers Blog26% smaller filesHuffman codingalpha transparencyfeedbackPosted by Jyrki Alakuijala - Software Engineer

Octane: the JavaScript benchmark suite for the modern web

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Octane

Box2DWeb runs a JavaScript port of a popular 2D physics engine that is behind many well-known simulations and web games.

Mandreel puts a JavaScript port of the 3D Bullet Engine to the test with a twist: The original C++ source code for the engine is translated to JavaScript by Onan Games’ Mandreel compiler, which is also used in countless web-based games.

Pdf.js is based on Mozilla’s PDF reader and shows how Javascript applications can replace complex native browser plug-ins. It measures how fast the browser decodes a sample PDF document.

GB Emulator is derived from an open source emulator of a famous game console running a 3D demo.

CodeLoad measures how quickly a JavaScript engine can bootstrap commonly used JavaScript libraries and start executing code in them. The source for this test is derived from open source libraries (Closure, jQuery).

set of benchmarksFAQ pageBeside glue logic and emulation of canvas / DOM interaction where necessary.
Posted by Stefano Cazzulani, Product Manager

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