Google Archive

First Look Through Developer Eyes

Chrome is open source, and there's clearly still some work to be done on it. In this article Neil McAllister decided to take a peek under Chrome's hood and view it through the eyes of the developers who will improve and maintain it in the coming years. And it seems Google's open source browser has much to offer prospective hackers (provided they use Windows).

There’s More Than a Browser War

When Google released its new (and first) browser a few days ago (Chrome), many praised that move or welcomed this new player into the arena, but many others simply were a bit surprised and wondered if a new browser was really needed when this market already features IE, Firefox, Opera, Safari, Konqueror and a plethora of smaller ones. While IE is still leader, those who aren't satisfied with it have a good choice of alternatives, especially in Firefox and Opera. So fasten your seat belt to join me in a ride which will attempt to explain why this browser war could be a threat to Google's very foundation and why Chrome is maybe the most important move Google could have done to protect itself.

‘A Web OS? Are you Dense?’

With all the recent hype surrounding Google's Chrome, it's refreshing to see someone taking a few steps back and looking at the bigger picture. Superlatives were abound about Chrome (I personally really like it), but some people really took it overboard - take TechCrunch for instance: "Chrome is nothing less than a full on desktop operating system that will compete head on with Windows." Seeing my nationality, I know a tulip mania when I see one. So does Ted Dziuba.

Browser Or Cloud Operating System?

Walter Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal, who has been testing Google's Chrome browser for a week next to the latest version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, concludes "With the emergence of Chrome, consumers have a new and innovative browser choice, and with IE8, the new browser war is sure to be a worthy contest." Many cloud computing enthusiasts are overjoyed with Chrome and call it the first cloud browser or even the basis for a cloud operating system.

Process Model Explained

Chrome's process model is extremely sophisticated. The default behavior has been examined before, but you can configure Chrome to manage processes differently: one process per web site, or one process per group of connected tabs, or one process for everything. Marc explains how this all works in Google's new browser. Update: 'Read more' fixed - made a reading comprehension boo-boo there.

Google Gives Back All Your Bases

While Google's new Chrome web browser has been met with a lot of praise and positive responses (well, mostly, at least), there has been one nagging issue that arose quite quickly after people got their hands on Chrome: the End User License Agreement accompanying the browser. It more or less granted Google the rights to everything seen or transmitted through the browser. Google now changed the EULA, saying it was a big case of woopsiedoopsie.

Google Chrome Considered Harmful

It appears that Google scored a PR success with their Chrome browser. In short, the promise is a web experience where web pages are allowed to behave more like desktop applications. This is done by boosting the abilities of common web pages in terms of performance, while also allowing 'plugins' to enrich the user experience of certain other pages. As it seems, the announcement shot at the heads of people who've been holding their breath for the fabled Google Operating System. However in the following text I will demonstrate that Chrome puts strain on the Designer and Developer communities, is not innovative (save for one feature), and copies ideas liberally from Google's worst enemy.

Can Google Apps Move Up Market?

Despite holding grassroots appeal among guerrilla IT workers fed up with IT's sluggish responses to their requests, Google Apps' traction in the enterprise remains overblown. Sure, Google claims more than 500,000 companies have signed up for Google Apps, but according to Gartner, only a handful of employees at each company uses the tools. Comparing that with Microsoft Office's 500 million users, Garnter analyst Tom Austin calls Google Apps' cloud-computing impression on the enterprise 'a raindrop.'

Goosh: a Shell for Google

It's an ever-continuing debate: what is better, a graphical user interface, or a command-line interface? Graphical user interfaces may be easier to learn, but complicated operations may require a lot more user input than with a command line interface, which can perform several complicated operations by using a short sequence of words and characters. However, a CLI has a much steeper learning curve than a GUI. Google has always had a certain CLI-quality to it, and Stefan Grothkopp decided to take this a few steps further: say hello to Goosh.

Google Summer of Code 2008

The various Google Summer of Code slots have been awarded to the participating projects. As most of you will know, the Summer of Code is all about enticing programmers to contribute to open source projects. Students submit their ideas to mentor organisations (these mentors are approved by Google first), and after selecting the ideas the mentors like the most, the programmers work to complete their task. If they succeed, Google will grant them a stipend. Google selected 174 mentor organisations for this year's Summer of Code. Read on for a selection of interesting applications that have been approved.

Google Funds Photoshop-on-Linux Work

Google is funding work to ensure the Windows version of Adobe Systems' Photoshop and other Creative Suite software can run on Linux computers. "We hired CodeWeavers to make Photoshop CS and CS2 work better under Wine," Dan Kegel, of Google's software engineering team and the Wine 1.0 release manager, said on Google's open-source blog. "Photoshop is one of those applications that desktop Linux users are constantly clamoring for, and we're happy to say they work pretty well now... We look forward to further improvements in this area."

Sneak Preview: Google Android

"Google invited developers to its London office for one of three workshops - the others being in Munich and Tel Aviv to spread the word and teach developers how to write for their new OS. Here's what they told us. The mantra for Android is that it's 'a complete and modern embedded OS, with a cutting edge mobile user experience, a world class software stack for building apps and open platform for developers users and industry'."