chrome

Of the two big browsing features of 2008, one seems to run counter to where developers are driving their browsers. The melding of the location bar to the search bar was expected in Firefox and Opera, thanks to beta versions. Chrome has it, too, calling it the Omnibar. What seems to have caught developers off-guard has been the clamor for a universal switch to stop the cache and browsing history from recording anything at all.

Microsoft's InPrivate debuted in Internet Explorer 8 beta 2, and Google Chrome's version is the well-received Incognito feature. So far, in Firefox, the … Read more

Earlier today, Rafe and I hosted a lively Ask the Editors chat about Google Chrome. As is often the case, we both learned a bit while we were answering your questions. Here's a round-up of some of the more interesting answers.

Once you've imported bookmarks, it turns out there is a way to manage them. It's not readily apparent, though. Hit CTRL+B to show and hide the Bookmarks bar. When the bar is showing, at the right end there's a folder icon that you can use to manage those bookmarks.

One reader pointed out that … Read more

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--Google just announced its Chrome Web browser, but Yahoo co-founder David Filo doesn't expect his company will follow suit.

"I don't think you're going to see a browser from us," Filo said in an interview Thursday at the company's headquarters here.

Rather, the company is focusing its attention on improving its current products, for example by opening up the Yahoo home page, the My Yahoo customized start page, Yahoo Mail, and search to others' applications, Filo said. Those are examples of what's enabled by the Yahoo Open Strategy, which the … Read more

Join our live forum from 11 a.m. to noon Pacific Time on Thursday.

Seth Rosenblatt (from CNET's Download.com) and I are co-hosting a CNET Ask the Editors live session, during which we'll be answering questions about Google's Chrome browser. So if you've got any, check in to join our chat forum. We're here to help.

When Google Chrome was released a week ago, I bravely volunteered to use the browser exclusively for the next seven days. That means no Firefox, no IE, no Opera, only Chrome, with no exceptions. I was fully expecting a week of frustrations, incompatibilities, and annoyances. I was ready to criticize all of the fatal flaws that were sure to turn up. I am happy to say that I was wrong. Google Chrome passes the full-time use test with flying colors.

One of the first things that people notice when they load up … Read more

Time for our semi-irregular roundup of Google items:

• Gmail Labs has produced three new features that people can try, according to Google's Gmail blog. One is a keyboard shortcut, "G" then "L," that brings people to a list of labels so they can show a specific category of messages. Another is the ability to move the Gmail control elements around on the left-side navigation bar, so users can reorder instant-messaging contacts, labels, and other items to put their preferred controls at the top. Last is the ability to pick your own colors for labels, … Read more

It's surprising how many people are still asleep at the wheel while Microsoft continues to nurture perhaps its fastest-growing product (in terms of revenue) ever: SharePoint.

The Web has been aflutter with Google Chrome discussions since it was released last week, much of it centering on Google's strategy to drive a stake through the heart of Microsoft's Windows business by shifting the operating system to the cloud, rendered in a browser.

Such talk overlooks the fact that Microsoft has already started to move its own Windows business to the cloud, rendered in SharePoint.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has singled out SharePoint as Microsoft's next operating system. CMS Watch calls out SharePoint as inseparable from Office in its next iteration. Small wonder, then, that SharePoint renders the traditional content-management vendors comparatively obsolete, as a quick Google Trends review of popular search terms suggests:

Microsoft has been moving enterprise data off hard drives and into its proprietary, server-based SharePoint repositories for several years now. It's moving at a blistering pace, "steamrolling" other enterprise 2.0 products (to use Forrester's word).

Google, meanwhile, is also going to need to attract enterprise IT groups to adopt its Chrome browser by making it easy to develop applications to run in Chrome. Guess what? Microsoft is already doing much the same with SharePoint, except that those content-rich applications work better (or only) in Internet Explorer.… Read more

Earlier today, Google was keeping mum about a three-day-old security fix to its Chrome browser, but now the company has revealed details of two critical-risk vulnerabilities and some lesser issues it says are fixed.

The critical patches relate to buffer overrun vulnerabilities that could have let a remote attacker execute arbitrary software on a Chrome user's computer, said Mark Larson, a Google Chrome program manager, in a mailing list posting Monday afternoon. The first patch fixed a vulnerability in handling long file names, called the SaveAs vulnerability, and the second a vulnerability in dealing with the Web site addresses displayed in Chrome's status area when the user hovers over a link. … Read more

Updated 1:44 p.m. PDT with details that Chrome automatically updates itself with no notification or choice for the user.

Google has quietly begun releasing a hastily prepared update to its Chrome browser to fix some security problems.

The new version, 0.2.149.29, replaces the 0.2.149.27 that was released when Google launched the Chrome beta version last week. Google started releasing the update Friday, initially to a small number of users, but didn't make much of an announcement about the change.

"149.29 is a security update and we released it as … Read more