Session Saver

Google Chrome is always looking for ways to advance their web browser, even more so with their extensions system in order to keep up with Firefox’s ever improving, unique add-ons.

Now, Chrome have released an extension named Session Saver which allows users to save, re-load and manage former sessions on the web browser. The extension’s features are outlined below:

• Saves and remembers every open tab across all Google Chrome Windows
• Saves numerous Sessions and name them as you please
• Re-loads all the webpages from the previously saved session in the current window in different tabs
• View urls in a saved session before opening it.

After installing the extension from here the extension adds a small Save button as seen below:

When you click on the save button, it then directs you to a tiny pop-up window where you are able to load a previous session and save a current session where the next time you open your chrome browser, you will get a new window having all these tabs in. In addition to save/load options, there is also a show url option where you can see all the stored session pages from previous sessions.

This is really a useful tool since many of us do seem to close our browsers by accident, or alternatively forget the site urls you last visited. This extension really helps browsing experience. Thank you Chrome!

Credit: chromeplugins.org

Interviewed by the New York Times, Sundar Pichai (vice president of product management), said “Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS”. The operating system software is to be released later this year, and will be free to download. Although it is geared for powering small netbooks, Google believes that Chrome OS will also run on full-sized PC’s.

And no, the Chrome OS is not going to be a simple rebranding of Google’s Android mobile OS, as Pichai stated, “Android was designed from the beginning to work across a variety of devices from phones to set-top boxes to netbooks. Google Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the web, and is being designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems.”

Google official blog post also goes on to give a brief outline of the Chrome’s OS’ goals:

We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

Tech analysts have been speculating for a while about Google releasing their own operating system. Now that this idea is coming into fruition, Google has a lot of competition to deal with. Windows is the current heavyweight in the OS market, while Mac OS X and Linux are constantly stealing more market share. However, this is Google we are talking about and also it is important to remember that nost netbooks are currently running Windows XP ( which is 8 years ol and runs on Pentium IIIs and Pentium 4s). Chrome OS, however, is also suitable for netbooks and will run on x86 architecture chips and ARM chips, which are more common in netbooks.

Windows 7 is also considered to be potentially useful for notbooks, and will be released later this year (maybe Google will release Chrome OS’ open source code at the same time?) . This means that we are in for an interesting battle between Chrome OS and Windows 7 here.

What are your views on the announcement of Google Chrome OS? Is it a potential Windows-killer? And what do you think Microsoft’s response will be? Please feel free to comment below.

Though very few new features have been added, those that have been integrated make all the difference!

As you all know, Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google with extremely fast loading time. Google have now unveiled a much more improved edition of their highly thought of web browser. The issue many of us had with Version 1 was that it seemed to lack some vital tools, such as a “full screen mode” in order to make the internet surfing  experience as best it can possibly be. However, with the introduction of Chrome 2.0, Google have integrated a few more features into the otherwise minimalistic browser.

New Features

Well, here are a handful of new features introduced:

• From the “new tabs” start page you are now able to delete individual thumbnails to your liking, by deciding on the thumbnails to have, and then clicking “done.” Previously you were not given a choice in removing thumbnails, as Chrome automatically chose the “most visited” sites as your thumbnail. Below, is an example of a customized thumbnail page displaying the “thumbnail page” format.

The disadvantage of this feature is that you are unable to arrange the thumbnails in your preferred order and if you delete one thumbnail, when only having four open, this will be deleted by default.

• Full-screen mode via F11 shortcut- Your screen turns completely into one window excluding all the tabs and bookmarks. Perfect for when watching or streaming videos off somewhere like BBC iplayer or Hulu. Then again, you hardly ever used to notice that Chrome was there anyway, because of the fact that vast majority of the screen space was devoted to the site you were visiting, Chrome has such a simple and streamlined design.

• Last but not least, Google have used their initiative and finally integrated an auto-fill feature requiring you not to remember passwords, for those who are forgetful among us! Thank god! Chrome needed this attribute, especially to get back in the hunt for #1 browser!

• In addition to the fresh features, Chrome has got even faster! Which definitely makes the web browser more useful and likeable. Google says that Chrome 2.0 loads JavaScript-heavy web pages 30% faster than older versions of the browser. This improvement is speed, makes it miles ahead of its competetitors, like Safari.

Our Opinion

Pros

• Many bugs have been fixed as well as the whole perfomance of Chrome.
• Super fast and stable, because of the multiprocess foundation- one slow site won’t drag down the rest of your browsing.
• Easy to use interface.

Cons

• No ad-blocking program making you unprotected straight away.
• Lack of add-ons and extentions, which Firefox seem to have every one.
• Potential for high memory usage given that each tab is its own process

Conclusion

If you are looking to simply surf the internet, then Chrome might be for you. It has a simple, minimilastic interface and very fast loading times. However, if you use your internet for alternate purposes such as gaming, you will quickly spot the problems with Chrome, most notably the lack of extensions and add-ons. If Google were to make a few distinct changes to some of the current features, the browser would attract a more sophisticated audience, and so will be widely used as the No.1 Browser which Firefox currently holds the title for.

Please feel free to comment on the Chrome 2.0 below.

"The time is right for 3D content to move onto the Web," says Associate Product Manager, Henry Bridge

Google, who recently announced their impressive turnover, on Tuesday unveiled an interesting piece of software, O3D to bring accelerated 3D graphics to browsers, though it seems not to be the first time a company has tried to make one of these 3D web applications utulizing the advantages of the PC games played nowadays. The last one was in the 1990s, whow were called Virtual Reality Markup Language (VRML), but it did not work out.

What is O3D?

O3D is a plug-in for web browsers like Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari that is enabled to work with Windows, Mac and astonishingly, Linux. However, analysts say that in the future Google ideally, would like to be in the position where the application is built in to the web browser giving a program that allows developers to use Web-based JavaScript programs on a graphics card, perfect solution for extreme gamers!

This is such a good step forward that even rival web browser giants, Mozilla want to get in on the act in their effort to build a 3D Web interface, though the two companies are offering different strategies to the revolutionary idea.

Engineering Director Matt Papakipos, also made his comments,

“OpenGL tends to be a lot of code to write, even for something simple, but OpenGL gives you a lot of control.Ours is at a higher level. It takes fewer function calls, so it’s easier to get stuff on the screen.”

“Ultimately, there’s going to be at least two.” Suggesting there will be two pieces of technology right now, SVG and Canvas.

For the gaming world, Papakipos also added:

“If you look at how we use 3D hardware, 20 years ago, it was CAD (computer-aided design). Today, it’s for playing games.We can push it to the wall. There’s not really any difference between native performance and our performance.”

This will be a good step forward for the web industry, as we are in the recession, everyone has been hit hard, but it is how far you can keep going forward with determination and drive which Google are demonstrating with this optimistic view of the 3D industry.