Android users can download Chrome Beta from Android Market, where it is available for download. A version of the browser has also been downloaded and made available again by members of the XDA-Developer forum.

Chrome for Android Beta ships with some Chrome desktop features, including the browser’s omnibox to search and navigate directly from the browser’s address bar, a tab driven interface, and the private browsing mode (incognito mode). Other features of the desktop version, like themes and extensions support are currently not available in the beta client.

Chrome for Android furthermore synchronizes bookmarks and open tabs with desktop versions.For synchronization to work, you need to sign in to Chrome on all devices that you want to synchronize.

The mobile version of Chrome introduces several device specific features. This includes options to flip through all open tabs with a swipe, or the new link zooming feature that makes the selection of links more comfortable in the mobile browser.

Google has released a video that introduces the Chrome for Android beta version. The video demonstrates the tab swiping capabilities of the browser among other things.

Most user comments on Android Market, Google Plus and other announcement locations are quite positive. The average rating currently on Android market is 4.3. Critics have pointed out that Chrome for Android does not support Flash, and that it is not possible to switch to the desktop version of a site if available. Positive aspects are speed mainly and the synchronization of tabs and bookmarks.

Google plans to release the mobile browser in other countries in the near future. It is not clear at this point in time if pre-Android 4.0 devices will also be able to download and install the browser. (via Caschy)

Have you played around with Chrome for Android yet? Let me know what you think of this initial release in the comments.

Once verified that Firefox was not playing sound at all I checked if I could hear audio on the local system which worked fine.

I remembered that Windows 7 had audio mixers for every application capable of playing audio. It could have happened that the volume for the Firefox browser was all turned down. Turned out it was not unfortunately.

Next check was the Google Chrome browser, and this is when things got really weird. I could not hear any audio in Chrome either. Checked on YouTube and several other video hosting sites and sound was not playing.

My next guess was a issue with Adobe’s Flash plugin. I switched to HTML5 playback on YouTube, but audio was still not playing. A check on Adobe’s website revealed that the latest Flash version was installed on the system.

My next – and last guess – was that the installed audio driver was corrupt somehow. I did not put to much hope into the solution though as it felt unrealistic as audio was still playing on the desktop.

Still, I went to the Logitech website and downloaded the latest driver version for my G930 wireless headset. I checked playback in Firefox and Chrome after driver installation, and guess what; Audio was playing again.

I have no idea how this happened in first place. Lets take a look at the troubleshooting steps again:

• 1. Restart the browser, play again in same browser.
• 2. Check audio on other sites
• 3. Check Mixer in Windows
• 4. Check audio playback in a second browser
• 5. Check if the Adobe Flash plugin is up to date
• 6. Check another audio playback option, e.g. HTML5
• 7. Reinstall the audio driver

Is there anything else that you can do if those steps do not fix the issue on your end? Nothing comes to mind to be honest. Anyone with additional suggestions?

Salimane Adjao Moustapha recently posted a photo of another place where Google (seemingly) has started to display ads: The Chrome browser. The screenshot shows a new tab page of the Chrome browser. The Apps section is open and at the top of it is an ad for Google’s own Chromebook. It states: Get a Chromebook for the holidays: the computer powered by Chrome.

The first part of the ad is underlined. It is not clear where it leads to as it is not revealed by Salimane, and I was not able to reproduce it.

The post on Google Plus sums up all the different opinions about the ad in Chrome. Some say it is Google’s right to display ads because the browser is free. Others that they should not do so without giving the user control over the ads. A third group is suggesting to switch to Firefox or Chromium. And a last group is angry but not angry enough to switch just yet. It would not make much sense either at the time considering that the majority may not have seen ads in Chrome yet.

I’d like to know your opinion about ads in web browsers. Do you think it is ok for Google to display ads in the browser, especially if it is for other company products? Or would you say that ads in a browser are a no-go, regardless of what they promote?

My personal opinion on the matter is that Chrome has turned adware if Google makes the decision to display these kind of ads to all Chrome users. It does not really matter if the ads promote Google products or third party products, it is still an ad.

Depending on your personal preferences, you may want to enable none or some of the experiments in Google Chrome. The list of available settings is large, which is why I will look at only a handful of experiments that have been added to the flags listing in recent time.

• Smooth Scrolling – Chrome users up until now had to install extensions like Smooth Scroller if they experienced scrolling issues in the Chrome web browser. With the Smooth Scrolling flag, they now can enable the feature natively.
• Lazy Background Pages – All extension background pages are loaded when the browser starts. This setting changes the default behavior so that they are loaded when needed.
• New Apps Install Bubble – When you install a new application in Chrome a new tab page is opened automatically. This can be irritating if you install many apps in the browser. This new flag changes the behavior by showing a bubble pointing at the new tab page instead.

• Enable NTP bookmark features – The new tab page in Chrome currently only lists the most visited sites and apps in its interface. This setting enables a Bookmark page on the new tab page.

• Enable syncing open tabs, syncing search engines – The two options can be used to sync both all open tabs and all custom search engines with all connected Chrome browsers.
• Enable shortcuts in the omnibox – Remembers autocomplete results and offers those the next time the same search term is typed in the Chrome address box

Chrome users find several useful experiments on the flags page that can change the behavior of the Chrome browser noticeable. Are you a Chrome user? If so, are you making use of experimental features in the web browser? (thanks Vineeth)

Sometimes when I search on a website I try to select a search term that includes inflections. Say I’m looking for the terms replace or replacing on the website. For that I would have to enter replac in the search form so that both terms are found on the page. Another example is the search term use which would reveal not only all instances of use on the page but also used, user and using.

With the Chrome extension, you can enter one term and find all occurrences of all matching terms highlighted on the page.

You bring up the advanced search form after installation by either pressing F2 once of the f-key twice in rapid succession.

The extension highlights all occurrences on the page. If you add more than one search term you will notice that each is colored differently. That’s interesting as it allows you to run multiple searches at once on a page.

The program found all occurrences of use and printing on the page. It will furthermore highlight the total result count in the search form. You can use the up and down arrow buttons to scroll to the next or previous occurrence of a search result on the active web page.

The inflection detection works both ways. You can enter use to find using or user, or enter using to find user or use as well on the page.

Advanced Search on Page is a handy Chrome extension for users who want to find related phrases on a website during searches. The free Chrome extension can be installed at the official Chrome Web Store.

There’s a web app for that is a new Google Chrome extension that may help in the discovery of new Chrome apps. While it does not provide access to web store sorting options, it suggests extensions and web apps based on past visits and current visits.

The extension displays a list of suggested web apps based on the history directly after installation.

A click on a link opens a matching extension in the Chrome store. It is not clear how the resulting web app is selected. The extension seems to pick the first search result automatically. This may or may not match the user’s expectations.

Chrome users can open the page at anytime with a click on Wrench > Tools > Extensions and the Options link under the There’s a web app for that listing on the page.

Suggestions based on the past browsing history are fine, but what about suggestions for the active site in the browser? There’s a web app for that supports this as well. It automatically scans for extensions that match the active page. A blue plus icon next to the bookmark star in the address bar indicates that an extension has been found for the page.

A click on the icon loads the discovered extension in a new tab in the browser.

There’s a web app for that is a handy extension for Chrome users who want automatic extension suggestions for sites they visit. It could use some polishing and direct explanations on the suggestion screen though.

Chrome users can download and install There is a web app for that from the Chrome web store. (via)

They praise Internet Explorer’s SmartScreen filter for protecting users against significantly more social malware than any other current browser, and by the looks of the chart below this is by some significant margin.

In their report the firm describe socially-engineered malware as…

Socially-engineered malware attacks pose a significant risk to individuals and organizations by threatening to compromise, damage, or acquire sensitive personal and corporate information; statistics from 2008 – 2010 show that this trend is increasing at a rapid rate. According to a recent study by AVG, users are four times more likely to be tricked into downloading malware than be compromised by an exploit; criminals continue to increase their use of malware as a cybercrime attack vector. Anti-virus researchers report detecting between 15,000 and 50,000 new malicious programs per day, Kaspersky Lab has even reported detecting up to “millions per month.”

They go on to describe IE’s SmartScreen filter as…

The SmartScreen Filter protection offered by Windows Internet Explorer 9 has two components: URL Reputation, which is included in IE8 and Application Reputation, which is new to IE9. IE9 caught an exceptional 92% of the live threats with SmartScreen URL reputation, and an additional 8% with Application Reputation. IE9 with SmartScreen offers the best protection of any browser against socially engineered malware. Protection against malware targeting European users matched our broader findings from the Q3 2010 global test.

The results are quite something, and other browser makers, Apple, Mozilla and Google will no doubt fight back rigorously with strong statements that their browsers are every bit as safe and secure as Internet Explorer, if not more so.

In the tests though, Internet Explorer 8, the previous generation of Microsoft’s browser, caught 90% of all live threats with IE9 catching 92% and reaching 100% of all threats when the known reputation of applications was factored in.

This is compared to the other browsers.  Apple’s Safari caught just 13% of live threats, Mozilla FIrefox 4 also caught 13% which had dropped from the 19% the browser caught in the same tests last year.  Opera 11 caught only 5% of all threats and Google’s Chrome browser caught, again, just 13% of all live threats.

StartScreen is not a widely talked about feature of Microsoft’s browser.  The company describes it as…

a feature in Internet Explorer that helps detect phishing websites. SmartScreen Filter can also help protect you from downloading or installing malware (malicious software).

They say that is “analyses web pages” as you visit them to “determine iof they have any characteristics that might be suspicious”, “checks the sites you visit against a dynamic list of reported phishing sites and malicious software sites” and “checks files you download from the web against a list of reported malicious software sites and programs known to be unsafe.”

This feature though is only as good as the people who keep the information up to date, which means that a 92% success rate today might not mean you’ll get that tomorrow.

Every week, new social malware is being discovered that is trying to trick users into installing it and surrendering personal information such as their credit card details with ever increasing believability.  The recent attacks on Apple Mac users by Mac Defender is an example of just how convincing this software can be.

The weak link with malware and viruses will always be the user, as it will always be this person who has to click or select something in order for malware to infect their PC.  It’s commonly said that the only safe PC is one that’s still in the box and has never been switched on.

Google for instance knows that the majority of search engine users will click on the three first links in the search results, making those results optimal prerendering targets. But this is guesswork, which means that it happens that the wrong pages are prerendered. It should also be clear that usually more pages are prerendered than visited by the user.

Why the introduction? Because Google has added an experimental feature to Chrome Dev that introduces prerendering in the browser. The feature is enabled by default in Chrome Dev.

Chrome Dev users who do not want to use the feature can disable it in the Chrome Options. The easiest way to get there is to load chrome://settings/advanced in the browser.

Locate Predict network actions to improve page load performance and uncheck the preference to disable prerendering in Chrome.

Google notes that prerendering is available to any site, but that it will be only “useful to a handful of sites that have a high degree of certainty of where their users will click next”.

Page loading of prerendered pages is very fast, which should be obvious considering that the page has been loaded already. On Google Search, Google seems to preload the top three results in the majority of cases, with other results occasionally thrown into the mix. This obviously means that some results will load normally, while a few will load faster.

Prerendering could be a problem for low bandwidth users and users who are paying by Megabyte / Gigabyte of traffic considering that multiple pages are prerendered of which some or even none at all may be visited by the Chrome user.

Webmasters may also see an increase in web traffic without increase in visitors. This may be especially true for pages that are listed as the second and third result on Google. For now, it is unlikely that big differences will be noticed. This may change once the feature comes to Chrome stable as turned on by default (via)

Google Chrome comes with a set of shortcuts for many features. These shortcuts are hard coded in the browser and cannot be changed in the preferences or options. Users who want to change existing shortcuts, or add new shortcuts to the browser need to look at third party extensions to do so.

One of the best Chrome shortcut extensions is Shortcut Manager, which has been in development for quite some time.

Shortcut Manager is probably the most versatile shortcut extension for the Google browser currently. It adds an icon to the Chrome address bar, which can be hidden once the initial configuration has been completed.

A right-click on the icon and the selection of Options opens the shortcut configuration screen. Here it is possible to create new shortcuts in the browser. Shortcuts can also be exported and imported which is handy if Chrome is used on multiple systems, or if different editions of the browser are installed on the same system.

You create new shortcuts by clicking in the Shortcut key form and then a shortcut key that you want to use. The extension will display a notification if the shortcut is currently already mapped in the browser. You can still go ahead and override the original mapping or select a different shortcut if you want to keep the original shortcut.

It is possible to set each shortcut to work with specific web addresses only, or globally. Nothing needs to be changed if it should work globally, if not you need to enter an url so that the shortcut is only working on websites that match the pattern. You could for instance create shortcuts that only work on secure sites that begin with https://*, or shortcuts that work on Google, Bing or Ghacks.

The action defines what is done when the keyboard shortcut is activated. Two options are available. It is possible to select one of the predefined browser actions or load a JavaScript file and execute it afterwards.

Most users will likely pick the predefined actions. Here is a short selection of what can be selected out of the box.

• Tab actions – Open tabs, close tabs, select tabs
• Page actions – Go back and forward, reload, view source
• Inner page actions – Focus elements, scroll or print
• Cursor actions – Insert free text, go to the front or back of a text form.
• Window actions – Open or close windows
• Screen capture – Capture the current tab
• Chrome pages – Open Extensions, Downloads, History

One of the things you could do is to use the “open my favorite page in a new tab” action to load websites or Chrome internal pages with shortcuts.

The second option can be used to execute JavaScript code. This opens an interesting option for users who work with bookmarklets as it is possible to add their code directly as shortcuts in the shortcut editor which means that it is no longer necessary to click on the bookmarklets button to execute the code, as it is now possible to use the shortcut instead.

You may need to restart the browser before the shortcuts become available. A left-click on the extensions icon displays the currently configured shortcuts with options to open them in the shortcut editor.

Chrome users who like to work with shortcuts should definitely take a look at the Shortcut Manager extension.

While that may not be a problem for the majority of users, at least if the case studies are to be believed, it may decrease the usability for some users.

The Google Chrome extension Mega Button adds a single button to the Chrome interface after installation that provides quick access to several features of the browser.

The new button is added automatically after installation of the extension. A click on the button opens a small row with nine icons that open different functions of the Chrome browser, they are:

• Downloads – Opens the download tab of the Chrome browser, listing the download history.
• Extensions – Opens the extensions menu that lists all installed extensions.
• History – This icon opens the browsing history of the Chrome browser.
• Bookmarks – Loads the bookmark manager
• About:plugins – Displays the list of installed plugins.
• About:dns – Displays the about:dns page.
• About:memory – Loads the memory overview in the browser.
• About:cache – Displays the cache contents
• About:flags – Opens the experimental flags page where specific experimental features can be activated.

All features are opened in a new tab in the browser. Especially the direct links to extensions, downloads, history and bookmarks should be something that Chrome users may be looking for. If there is something missing it is a link to the options page. Several of the features are accessible via keyboard shortcuts, the history page can for instance be opened with the shortcut Ctrl-h.

The developer has created a small video that demonstrates the functionality of the extension.

Interested users can download Mega Button for Chrome at the official Chrome web store.

Which Chrome features are you using the most that are not directly accessible from the main browser interface?

Both security issues that have been fixed by the developers have received a rating of high, the second highest severity rating available.

• [64046] High CVE-2011-1799: Bad casts in Chromium WebKit glue.
• [80608] High CVE-2011-1800: Integer overflows in SVG filters.

The new Chrome stable version additionally contains Adobe’s Flash Player 10.3, which has been updated to that version. While it is not explicitly mentioned on the Google Chrome Releases blog, it seems as if that version is a final build of Adobe Flash Player 10.3 and not the release candidate.

The final version has not yet been officially released by Adobe. It would not be the first time that Google, thanks to the direct tie-in of Flash Player in Chrome, managed to update Flash Player ahead of time.

The long awaited Flash Player 10.3 adds several new features to the popular software, most noticeably an option to delete so called Flash cookies from within the browser.

Google Chrome Stable users should get update notifications soon, if they have not already. Users who prefer to download Chrome from the official website can do that as well. The browser can be updated by running the installer after the download has finished.

SwiffOut for the Google Chrome browser is an incredible extension, and I’m saying that after testing many different solutions to run flash games in full screen.

What makes it that incredible? For one, it introduces lag free fullscreen gaming to the Chrome browser. Fullscreen in this regard means that all browser UI elements, like the address bar or title bar, that are normally still displayed are not shown. Only the flash game is shown in full screen on the computer monitor.

That alone makes it superior to comparable solutions. SwiffOut determines the best possible resolution to run the game to improve performance in fullscreen mode. Even better, the Chrome extension works even if flash games do not support scaling.

So how does it work? Chrome users need to install the extension first. It places an icon in the Chrome address bar that switches to full screen mode when Flash contents are embedded on the active page. If no contents are discovered nothing happens. If a Flash element is discovered it will switch automatically to fullscreen mode.

Only the flash content is then displayed on the screen, everything else is hidden and not shown anymore. Take a look at the before and after screenshots of a Kongregate game.

This is a screenshot of the standard browser UI. All browser controls and elements on the page are visible.

This is a screenshot of the full computer desktop (note not the browser window!) after the Swiffout button has been activated. Only the flash game is visible on the screen.

I have tested the Chrome extension on several popular Flash gaming websites, including Armorgames, Kongregate and Addictinggames.

Most games could be played without difficulties, a few were blurry which was probably caused by the selected resolution. The games were still playable though.

The ESC key on the keyboard exits the fullscreen mode. The extension displays an intermediary page at this point with a back button to open the game page at the developer or gaming site again.

Another interesting feature of SwiffOut is the ability to create game shortcuts. These shortcuts are placed on the computer desktop.

A right-click opens the context menu with the option to save the shortcut to the desktop. This opens the save file dialog window. The shortcuts are placed as .lnk files on the computer which indicates that this will only work on Windows.

A double-click on a lnk file starts the flash game immediately in full screen mode which is very comfortable and unique as far as I know.

As a side note, I have tested the extension on popular video portals as well but it did not work with Flash video at all, at least not on portals like Youtube or Gametrailers.

Google Chrome users can install the latest version of the SwiffOut extension directly on the Google Chrome extensions gallery.

Now ConceivablyTech are reporting that Google is now considering its options for future versions of its Chrome browser and they could be going even further than Microsoft.

In an interesting move, one possible option is to remove the address and search boxes altogether and instead allow people to type searches and URLs directly into a browser tab.

This is an approach that makes a large amount of sense in the web 2.0 world. As more and more people use web applications the browser ‘furniture’ is becoming an annoyance that just takes up valuable desktop space. This is especially true on the smaller screen of netbooks, tablets and the like.

Google will have to weigh up this approach though with usability. How obvious will it be / can they make it that people can /should click on the tab title to type searches and addresses? What happens when you have a lot of tabs open at one time?

Thus there are also additional options they are looking at one of which is a one box similar to that now used in Internet Explorer.

You can see their four concepts above. It can reasonably be assumed that the Sidetab concept will probably fail to gain support but the final version could go to either the Classic or Compact views.

It is interesting to note a specific touch version of the browser too with large buttons. This is something that Microsoft won’t be delivering until Windows 8 either in the summer or the autumn of 2012. Google used Chrome to get a significant head start on both Firefox and IE by revolutionizing the browser and including the features that people actually *needed*. By showing what a touch interface could look like now they could solidify this position for the foreseeable future.

In a statement on their website they said…

The Chrome team is happy to announce our latest Stable release, 8.0.552.215.  In addition to the over 800 bug fixes and stability improvements, Chrome 8 now contains a built in PDF viewer that is secured in Chrome’s sandbox.  As always, it also contains our latest security fixes, listed below.  This release will also be posted to the Beta Channel.

The browser is available for download at www.google.com/chrome and is the company’s latest response to Microsoft’s forthcoming Internet Explorer 9 which, so far, is being hailed by some as where the bar for future web browsers will be set.

That said, Google’s Chrome browser is still gaining market share and some people are predicting that it will overtake Mozilla Firefox as the alternative browser of choice some time in 2011 of 2012.  This is a huge achievement for Google and shows just how popular the lightweight and fast browser model is (which is no doubt why Microsoft copied it for IE9).

Bit9′s CEO, Harry Sverdlove said “A variety of vulnerability types – including buffer-overflow and cross-site scripting vulnerabilities – impacted these applications.  Some exploits of vulnerabilities could allow attacks to compromise the user’s desktop entirely and perhaps pose a risk for the entire organization. A list like the annual ‘Dirty Dozen’ highlights trends and the need to make sure software is kept updated.

The biggest surprise is that Google’s Chrome browser tops the vulnerabilities list with 76.  Safari and Firefox also scored badly with 60 and 51 respectively.  Conversely, Internet Explorer had only 32.  The complete list is below.

1. Google Chrome – 76
2. Apple Safari – 60
3. Microsoft Office – 57
4. Adobe Acrobat – 54
5. Mozilla Firefox – 51
6. Sun JDK – 36
7. Adobe Shockwave Player – 35
8. Microsoft Internet Explorer – 32
9. RealNetworks RealPlayer – 14
10. Apple Webkit – 9
11. Adobe Flash Player – 8
12. Apple Quicktime and Opera Web browser (tied) – 6

This will obviously be inflammatory news to anyone who doesn’t like Internet Explorer (though recently versions of the browser cannot be compared to IE6) and there will people who will point to all the ‘undiscovered’ vulnerabilities in the browser.

However it pans out over time, it’s clear that Microsoft’s recent strategies are paying dividends for the company in terms of helping increase their reputation around the world.  It will be interesting to see how IE9 stacks up against the other browsers in 12 months time.

And with compatible we do not mean that users can open a Google Search page and search there. No, the instant search functionality has been integrated into the browser’s omnibar.

It is however not activated by default, and users need to start Chrome with the parameter --enable-match-preview to enable Instant Search in the Omnibar.

Once started with the parameter, the browser will automatically display search results for characters that are entered into the address bar of the browser. The behavior is different from that on Google’s search page though, as results can be divided into two groups.

google chrome instant search

The first result group is the typical Google search result listing, the second a matching page for the search term. Entering gh for instance in the address bar will load ghacks directly, while g will load the Google homepage. This may be linked to bookmarks in the browser.

There is obviously a problem with that, especially for users who type moderately. It could mean that they accidentally open a lot of pages while typing.

The search page looks different though, as the developers have decided to add the blank tab page information on top of the search results. A click with the mouse on the page that has been loaded removes those information immediately, while pressing return loads the page again without the information on top.

The developers should consider adding configuration options to the new search option, for instance an option to increase the time it takes before search results are displayed.

Engadget are reportingthat smartphone maker HTC are building the device which will sport a 1280×720 multi-touch screen, 2Gb of RAM and a minimum of 32Gb hard disk storage.  It’s also possible that the tablet will also sport a webcam, GPS, 3G and Wireless G and N.

What’s not clear is if the device will be hardware crippled in any way that would prevent a user from installing another operating system, Windows 7, Ubuntu or Android for instance, as the main OS or in a dual-boot configuration.  Certainly a minimum of 32Gb of storage would allow for this.  It would also make the tablet much improved because the main problem with a cloud-based OS is that it’s only usable if you have an active and stable net connection.

This, presumably, is why Google have partnered with Verizon as a distributor.  It can only serve to put yet more strain on the mobile phone networks though, who have already been complaining that their infrastructure is creaking under the bandwidth-hungry data plans for other tablets such as the iPad.  A completely cloud-based OS can only make this situation worse.

The price?  It’s possible that the device could come completely free on a monthly data plan, though there is no confirmation of this at this time.  Certainly this is where HTC’s expertise would come in, in building the tablet down to a price.

The device is rumoured to launch on November 26th in the US.

See, Firefox for instance installs itself on a system wide level, e.g. program files in Windows. The user profiles on the other hand are stored in the user directory, which makes sense, considering that they are directly linked to each user.

Up until now Chrome did not offer an option to install in the program files folder directly. The only available workaround was to install Google Chrome via Google Pack.

This has changed with the addition of a new MSI installer. The new installer is available for download at this url: http://www.google.com/chrome/eula.html?msi=true. This downloads the file GoogleChromeStandaloneEnterprise.msi to the PC.

It is obviously only available for Windows, and will install the core program files in the windows program folder and not the user directory. The installation does require elevated rights, and will install the latest Chrome dev release only. Google seems to aim with this new release at Enterprise environments.

It is puzzling that Google is only offering the dev version, considering that most enterprise environments have strict policies regarding beta and alpha software installations.

google chrome program files

It is likely that the developer’s will add an option in the future to install stable and beta channel releases on a system wide level as well. For now, the only available options are to use Google Packs to install Chrome on a system wide level, or the new dev-release-only MSI installer.

Users who have Chrome installed in the user folder, and opt to install it on a system wide level will lose many account specific settings, including installed extensions, browsing history, plugin settings and the last browsing session.

It is therefor recommended to backup all Chrome profiles prior to installing the browser on a system wide level. Check out the Google Chrome backup guide for a detailed walkthrough. (via Google OS)

The description of Rekonq is simple: the Konqueror browser using the WebKit engine. But it’s not quite that simple. Rekonq will be the new default browser for Kubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat). This is a new project that will, hopefully, overcome some ofthe shortcomings of the current Konqueror browser. And in this article we will take a look at this new browser so all the Ghacks readers will be prepared when it lands on the new KDE desktop.

Features

Like any good browser, Rekonq has plenty of features. You won’t, however, find this browser getting bogged down in too many features which wind up being nothing more than bloat. This should keep Rekonq fast and responsive. The current feature set includes:

• Simplified interface.
• Tabs.
• Bookmarks.
• WebKit engine (which is, ironically, a derivative of the Konqueror KHTML engine).
• Tab previews.
• Shared bookmarks.
• Proxy support.
• Anonymous browsing,
• Web page inspection.

Installation

Of course you are going to want to install this browser, so you can see for yourself how it performs. Since Rekonq is already in the standard repositories you should be able to install with the following steps:

1. Open up either the Ubuntu Software Center or Synaptic.
2. Search for “rekonq” (no quotes).
3. Mark Rekonq for installation.
4. click Apply to install.

1. Open up either the Ubuntu Software Center or Synaptic.
2. Search for “rekonq” (no quotes).
3. Mark Rekonq for installation.
4. click Apply to install.

That’s it. You will now find this browser in Start > Applications > Internet > WebKit KDE Browser. I will warn you: Rekonq is not ready for prime time. This browser is still very much in beta. So if you rely on your browser for work, avoid using this for nothing more than testing purposes (and make sure you report bugs to the developer as you find them). Although I am currently writing this article in Rekonq, I do not dare do any general browsing.

Figure 1

When you open Rekonq you will be treated to a very clean interface (see Figure 1) that includes thumbnails of your favorite sites.

There really are no tricks or features that you will have any difficulty with. The only challenge you will have (in its current state) is finding web sites that won’t crash the browser. But when you do come across web sites that work fine, the first thing you will notice is how quickly Rekonq renders pages. Rekonq is one of the faster browsers you will find on Linux. For example, loading Ghacks.net took Rekonq half the time that it took both Konqueror and Firefox. Rekonq rendered Ghacks.net in around a 1/2 a second faster than Chrome. Unfortunately the over all end result is that Rekonq is just not stable enough to compete on solid grounds.  But when it is able to compete, it is lightning fast.

Final verdict

I am excited to see where this project is going to go. Even in its infancy it shows plenty of signs it will have a lot to offer the Linux desktop. Rekonq just might make the choice to have a “fringe” browser as the default a smart choice for KDE.

Google Chrome Stable is the official Google browser offered to the public, while Google Chrome Beta and Google Chrome Dev are offered to tech enthusiasts and developers.

The update raises the stable version of Google Chrome to 5.0.375.70.

A total of eleven security issues have been fixed of which nine have received a severity rating of high and two of medium.

• Medium Cross-origin keystroke redirection.
• High Cross-origin bypass in DOM methods.
• High Memory error in table layout.
• [Linux only] High Linux sandbox escape.
• High Bitmap stale pointer.
• High Memory corruption in DOM node normalization.
• High Memory corruption in text transforms.
• Medium XSS in innerHTML property of textarea.
• High Memory corruption in font handling.
• High Geolocation events fire after document deletion.
• High Memory corruption in rendering of list

markers.

Chrome users who are working with the stable version of the web browser are asked to update their browser immediately to protect it against exploits targeting the security issues. The update can be started by clicking on Tools > About Google Chrome.

Update: Google Chrome Dev has also been updated.