The first step is to download the Portable Google Chrome installer from this link:

http://stadt-bremerhaven.de/download-manager.php?id=250

After the download is complete, which may take a few minutes, run the installer. The installer is a 7zip extractor. To get Portable Google Chrome set up on a flash drive, click the “…” button and choose the flash drive. Click Extract.

The “…” button is a browse button. You would click on Computer and then the appropriate drive.

The extraction does not take as long as the download. Portable Chrome is being extracted to your flash drive. When the extraction is complete, you may use the portable version of Chrome right away. Browse your flash drive and double-click its icon.

You will see the application immediately. Double-click the “Portable Google Chrome” icon to open the folder with the program files. Double-click the ChromeLoader icon, which is the application.

You will notice that the language is set to German by default. If you speak and read German, that is fantastic. On the other hand, you may not. Click the wrench button in the upper right corner of the screen and select Options. In this demonstration, only a few of the words are in German and everything else is in English. Usually, it is all in German. Select “Under the Hood” and under the Web Content section, click the “Languages and spell-checker settings” box.

You will see the language list and it may already have English (United States) as the default, but some content is still going to come up in German, so click Add at the bottom left of the screen and select the appropriate language.

Click OK. You may be prompted to restart for changes to take effect. Close all browsers, save all files and Restart. When you begin again, your portable Chrome will be in the language you selected. In this case, it is English.

Using Portable Google Chrome

This portable version works exactly the same way as the standard version. The same processes apply, except that you can now run it from any computer. Your favorite sites and web applications are progressively saved on the flash drive as you add them. Your browsing history is saved to the flash drive as well. The browser itself looks and functions normally.

The overall speed is generally slower than the PC non-portable version. This speed varies depending on the speed of the flash drive and its capacity. Use at least a 2GB flash drive. 4GB would be even better and anything higher would be overkill. This will run on Windows 7 and on Windows XP, so there is some versatility along with portability. Enjoy portable Chrome!

This cupcake links to the new multi-profile feature of the Chrome web browser. When you left-click on the icon you get the profile selection menu with options to create a new profile, change the default profile’s icon or to delete a profile.

So what’s the problem with the cupcake icon in the browser? Easy, it cannot be removed. That’s right. Even if you only use one profile you see the profile selector in the upper left corner of the screen.

Google in the past minimized the browser interface up to a point where there is little left to be optimized in this regard. There is no status bar, no title bar. All the UI elements have been basically moved into the tab bar and address bar.

The cupcake icon breaks that pattern big time. So why is it displayed on single profile systems? Why not hidden in the Tools section somewhere for those users.

I looked into the Tools > Options to see if there is a way to disable the cupcake in the tabbar, but there is none. There is one setting under Personal Stuff > Profile that allows you to create a new profile, but that one is blanked out (nice).

I remembered a multi-profile option under about:flags, but that is gone now as well.

As of now, it is not possible to remove the cupcake icon from Google Chrome. Lets hope that Google sees this as a work of progress and that the company will add options to remove the cupcake icon from the browser.

Let me know please if you know of a way to get rid of the cupcake icon in the browser.

Update: Do not try to delete the default profile. If you do you will delete all of your bookmarks and other user related settings. Even worse, a new default profile is generated right afterwards.

Lets take a look at the feature updates and additions first. Chrome Stable now supports 3D CS and launching apps from the Chrome address bar by simply typing in their name. Apps are web apps that are installed at the Chrome web store.

Probably more interesting than those two features is the ability to delete Flash cookies directly from within the browser, by clearing the browsing history. This was previously not possible and improves the privacy of the user significantly.

Another new security related feature is the new safe browsing protection that protects the user better from downloading malicious files.

The data synchronization service Google Sync is now integrated into the Chrome settings page, which users can access by clicking on the wrench icon and selecting options from the context menu.

• [73962] [79746] High CVE-2011-1808: Use-after-free due to integer issues in float handling.
• [75496] Medium CVE-2011-1809: Use-after-free in accessibility support.
• [75643] Low CVE-2011-1810: Visit history information leak in CSS.
• [76034] Low CVE-2011-1811: Browser crash with lots of form submissions.
• [77026] Medium CVE-2011-1812: Extensions permission bypass.
• [78516] High CVE-2011-1813: Stale pointer in extension framework.
• [79362] Medium CVE-2011-1814: Read from uninitialized pointer.
• [79862] Low CVE-2011-1815: Extension script injection into new tab page.
• [80358] Medium CVE-2011-1816: Use-after-free in developer tools.
• [81916] Medium CVE-2011-1817: Browser memory corruption in history deletion.
• [81949] High CVE-2011-1818: Use-after-free in image loader.
• [83010] Medium CVE-2011-1819: Extension injection into chrome:// pages.
• [83275] High CVE-2011-2332: Same origin bypass in v8.
• [83743] High CVE-2011-2342: Same origin bypass in DOM.

All information about the stable channel update is available over at the Chrome blog. Chrome should already pick up the new release. New users can download Chrome 12 from the official Chrome project website.

The update is a security release as it fixes several security vulnerabilities that have been discovered in previous versions of the browser.

The announcement lists a total of 19 security vulnerabilities that have been fixed in the new version. Of these 19, 16 received a severity rating of high, which is the second-highest available rating. The remaining three vulnerabilities have been rated as medium.

The updates will be applied automatically to existing installations of the Google browser. Users who have disabled automatic updates need to download the latest version of the web browser from the official download page over at Google.

Chrome users can verify the version of their browser by clicking on Tools > About Google Chrome.

The Chrome security team mentioned that their rewards program has now given independent security researchers more than $100,000 since its inception. The program is an incentive for independent security researchers to search for security vulnerabilities in the web browser.

The blog post with details about all 19 security vulnerabilities can be accessed here.

The Chrome blog lists 16 different vulnerabilities that have been fixed in the new version of which one received the highest rating critical and 13 of high. The researcher who discovered the critical vulnerability has received the first “elite” Chromium Security Reward which comes with a $3133.7 payment.

The list of fixed vulnerabilities:

• [58053] Medium Browser crash in extensions notification handling. Credit to Eric Roman of the Chromium development community.
• [$1337] [65764] High Bad pointer handling in node iteration. Credit to Sergey Glazunov.
• [66334] High Crashes when printing multi-page PDFs. Credit to Google Chrome Security Team (Chris Evans).
• [$1000] [66560] High Stale pointer with CSS + canvas. Credit to Sergey Glazunov.
• [$500] [66748] High Stale pointer with CSS + cursors. Credit to Jan Tošovský.
• [67100] High Use after free in PDF page handling. Credit to Google Chrome Security Team (Chris Evans).
• [$1000] [67208] High Stack corruption after PDF out-of-memory condition. Credit to Jared Allar of CERT.
• [$1000] [67303] High Bad memory access with mismatched video frame sizes. Credit to Aki Helin of OUSPG; plus independent discovery by Google Chrome Security Team (SkyLined) and David Warren of CERT.
• [$500] [67363] High Stale pointer with SVG use element. Credited anonymously; plus indepdent discovery by miaubiz.
• [$1000] [67393] Medium Uninitialized pointer in the browser triggered by rogue extension. Credit to kuzzcc.
• [$1000] [68115] High Vorbis decoder buffer overflows. Credit to David Warren of CERT.
• [$1000] [68170] High Buffer overflow in PDF shading. Credit to Aki Helin of OUSPG.
• [$1000] [68178] High Bad cast in anchor handling. Credit to Sergey Glazunov.
• [$1000] [68181] High Bad cast in video handling. Credit to Sergey Glazunov.
• [$1000] [68439] High Stale rendering node after DOM node removal. Credit to Martin Barbella; plus independent discovery by Google Chrome Security Team (SkyLined).
• [$3133.7] [68666] Critical Stale pointer in speech handling. Credit to Sergey Glazunov.

It is recommended to update the web browser as soon as possible to protect it and the underlying operating system from possible exploits. Chrome users can either check for updates by clicking on the Wrench icon and selecting About Google Chrome or visit the official download page to download the latest Google Chrome version.

It got a bit crowded in there, especially with the introduction of the Apps section. Users who do not use the web store or apps may prefer to remove that element from the new tab page of the browser. Other users may prefer to hide the most visited or recently closed site listing instead, or the ad for the Chrome notebook.

Chrome users who want to get rid of one feature or the other need to pay close attention to the page. There are two – light – elements on the new tab page, one next to the module heading which is always visible, and one at the rightmost location on mouse hover.

The left arrow / down arrow at the left of the module name can be used to expand or compress that listing on the new tab page. It reduces the space needed for the module but will not remove it from the new tab page.

The tiny x on the right while hovering on an entry on the other hand allows just that. Just move the mouse over the module that you do not want to see anymore on the new tab page and click it to remove it. But be careful with that, as there does not seem to be an option to restore the new tab page.

Usually, a major leap in version correlates to a big change in a product. Not so with Google Chrome 7, as the first release fixes one issue for all operating systems, one Mac specific issue and stability fixes for the Chrome Frame feature.

google chrome 7

That’s not really anything to get excited about, some would even go so far to state that the only reason Chrome accelerates the versioning is to beat Internet Explorer and Opera who currently sit tight in the first two spots with versions 9 and 10 respectively.

But it is only a matter of time until Google Chrome manages to get ahead of those two browsers. Will the developers top there, or will we see releases of Google Chrome 15 in two year’s time?

Users who want to download the latest dev release of Google Chrome 7 can do so at the official dev channel download page.

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.

This has changed today with the release of Google Chrome 5 stable for all supported operating systems. Windows, Mac and Linux users can now download a faster version of the web browser directly from Google.

Google Chrome 5 Stable comes with many additions compared to the previous versions of the stable channel.

New and improved features include synchronization of bookmarks and browser preferences, HTML5 features such as the geolcation api or web sockets, and a faster rendering engine and better overall performance of the browser.

The internal Flash Player has not been integrated into Google Chrome 5 stable yet but the developers promise to add this feature with the full release of Flash Player 10.1 which will be released soon.

Google Chrome stable users will soon be prompted to auto update the web browser soon. Users who do not want to wait that long can download Google Chrome 5 stable from the official download site.

This could change pretty soon as the latest Chromium version has been raised to version 6. It usually does not take long before the Google Chrome developers are raising the version of their web browser as well which means that we will soon see the first Google Chrome 6 releases appear.

Cutting edge users who want to try the latest Chromium 6 build can download the latest Chromium build from the Chromium build server.

There do not seem to be any major changes in the Chromium 6 builds yet.

What’s your opinion on this obviously accelerated versioning? Jumping to version 6 in less than two years would mean that Google Chrome would be the web browser with the highest version in two years time providing that Opera does not reach version 12 in that time. (via Caschy)

A total of seven security vulnerabilities have been fixed in the release of which four have been classified as high and three as normal.

[$500] [39443] High Type confusion error with forms. Credit: kuzzcc.
[39698] High HTTP request error leading to possible XSRF. Credit: Meder Kydyraliev, Google Security Team.
[40136] Medium Local file reference through developer tools. Credit: Robert Swiecki, Google Security Team; Tavis Ormandy, Google Security Team.
[40137] Medium Cross-site scripting in chrome://net-internals. Credit: Robert Swiecki, Google Security Team; Tavis Ormandy, Google Security Team.
[40138] High Cross-site scripting in chrome://downloads. Credit: Robert Swiecki, Google Security Team; Tavis Ormandy, Google Security Team.
[40575] Medium Pages might load with privileges of the New Tab page.
[$500] [40635] High Memory corruption in V8 bindings. Credit: kuzzcc; Google Chrome Security Team (SkyLined); Michal Zalewski, Google Security Team.

Chrome users running a stable version can update the web browser by checking for updates in the About Google Chrome page after clicking on the tools icon in the browser’s toolbar. Users who want to try out the Chrome browser can download the latest version from the official website.

Google’s intentions are to increase the stability and security of the browser by including Flash natively. The main advantage of this approach is that the plugin can be automatically updated whenever Adobe releases a new version of their Flash player.

Internet users who have installed Adobe Flash externally need to update the software manually whenever an update is released. The Mozilla developers for instance have tried to aid users by checking for outdated plugins whenever a Firefox update is installed on a computer system.

Google’s approach on the other hand is fully automated. There is no need to install Adobe Flash anymore, except if other web browsers are used as well.

Users who do not want to use Adobe Flash in the Chrome browser can disable the plugin by typing about:plugins in the Chrome address bar. This opens a list of all browser plugins that are currently recognized by the web browser. Each plugin can be disabled by clicking on the disable link next to it.

The native Flash plugin is only available in the latest development release of the web browser. It is likely that Google will add the feature in foreseeable time to the release version of the browser as well so that all Chrome users benefit from the integration.

Google Chrome 5 beta fixes two security vulnerabilities making it a recommended update for all beta and dev users of the Chrome browser.

More important than that is a new option in the Google Chrome Options. The developers have added a setting to turn off the offer to translate websites that are not in the default system language.

This feature has caused some controversy in the past due to the missing option to turn it off. Users who do not want the web browser to automatically suggest to translate websites can now turn it off in the Under The Hood section in the web browser.

Internet users who have a developer release of Google Chrome 5 installed can use the update checker in the web browser to download and install the latest version of the web browser. Everyone else can visit the beta channel download pages to download the latest available version for their operating system.

Windows: http://www.google.com/chrome/eula.html?extra=betachannel
Mac: http://www.google.com/chrome?platform=mac
Linux: http://www.google.com/chrome?platform=linux

That’s lots of choices which all vary in how convenient, accessible and speedy they are. Chromepad is an interesting extension for the Google Chrome web browser that can be used to take notes directly in the browser.

The extension places an icon in the Google Chrome address toolbar that, when clicked, will open a text form that can be used to enter notes.

The extension supports text notes; no BBcode, no HTML or any other formatting options. That’s a limitation as it would be more comfortable if there would be an option to format the text so that links become clickable or important text can be emphasized.

Text can either be copied and pasted into the text form or entered manually by the user. The text is saved by the extension so that it is available in future browsing sessions.

Chromepad can be helpful for users who regularly work with the Google browser. The extension does have a few limitations at the moment. This are synchronizing notes, exporting notes into a text document, tabs or another form of dividing notes and the already mentioned formatting options.

Update: The Chromepad extension has been removed from the Chrome Web Store by its developer. A solid alternative is the highly acclaimed Chrome extension Quick Note.

That’s where phantom tabs come into play to help the user reduce the memory used by the web browser. They basically kill the process of the tab so that the computer memory is freed but leave an indicator in the form of the web page’s favicon behind so that the website can be opened again when needed.

Phantom Tabs in Google Chrome have been implemented in the latest developer builds of the web browser. They need to be enabled with the switch –enable-phantom-tabs.

Closing a pinned tab in the Google Chrome browser will close the process of that tab thus freeing memory that the tab occupied. The tab background appears transparent now which indicates to the user that it is a phantom tab.

A left-click on any phantom tab will display the closed tab so that the website can be accessed by the Chrome user again.

Lee Mathews over at Download Squad has created a short video demonstrating the new phantom tabs feature:

Phantom Tabs are a useful feature for Chrome users who make use of the pinned tab feature of the browser to permanently place some websites in the tabbar of the web browser.

Readability Redux is a Google Chrome extension that adds a button to the Chrome address bar by default. Pressing that button on a page will turn that page into a version that is better readable by removing nearly any elements on the page but the text. But even the text is reduced as usually only the title and the main text remain on the website with every other text removed as well.

Before:After:

The extension will by default remove all other elements from the page including images, graphics and flash contents. The text is centered and the font size increased to increase the readability of the text itself. Controls to print or email the page are also provided by the extension.

A right-click on the extension’s button in the address bar of the Google browser will display a context menu with an option to change some of the preferences of the add-on. It is possible to switch the overall style of the layout from the default newspaper style to novel, book or terminal styles. The only other options that are provided define the font size of the text and the margin on the page.

Readability Redux is a straightforward extension for the Google Chrome browser that works fine on most websites. Several other options exist to increase the readability including bookmarklets like Readability which seems to have been the inspiration for this extension. The extension can be downloaded from the official Google Chrome extension gallery.

The concept is simple. The extension displays a number next to each link on the active web page which, when pressed, will load the url of the link in the browser. This can mean digits in the hundreds on some websites like Wikipedia who use automatic internal link placements.

The corresponding numbers can be pressed on the numeric pad or standard keyboard. Google Chrome will start loading the website immediately after pressing one of the links. The links are displayed and hidden with the ALT G keyboard shortcut. The extension can be configured to open tabs in a new foreground or background tab (by pressing g or b).

It does however seem to have slight problems with JavaScript links which can be observed on a Google Search page for instance. This is more of a display problem than a usability problem though. Internet Chrome users who want to install Keyboard Navigation need a Chrome 4 developer version to do so. The extension can be downloaded from the Chrome Extensions website.

The keyboard shortcut Shift Esc will open the Google chrome task manager that will display the memory usage of the plugins, tabs and core browser. The task manager displays the page or plugin, the memory usage and cpu usage. Initially Google Chrome users had only the option to end a process listed but the latest Chromium builds outline an improvement.

The developers have added a purge memory button to Chromium which will eventually be included into Google Chrome builds as well. For now it has to be activated with the startup parameter –purge-memory-button.

A click on the button will free up memory in Chromium which can be very interesting for users who work with the web browser all the time. Firefox users have a similar option with the third party program Firefox ultimate Optimizer which can drop the memory usage of the web browser significantly.

Users who are interested in this new feature have to download a Chromium build for now as this is the only version that supports the purge memory startup parameter currently. (via Download Squad)

A unique Client ID is assigned to every installation of Google Chrome which theoretically makes it possible to create user profiles and identify users.

But what exactly is the Client ID for? The privacy policy of the Google Chrome browser states:

The client ID is used for the user metrics service. This is an opt-in service that lets users send usage statistics to Google so that we can learn how Google Chrome is being used for the sake of making improvements. It helps us answer questions like, “Are people using the back button?” and “How common is it that people click the back button repeatedly?” Users can always update their preference about sending usage statistics.

The Client ID is therefor not needed to run the Google Chrome web browser. It is also likely that the majority of Google Chrome users is not making use of the metrics service.

Chrome users have two options to deal with the Client ID: They can switch to a compiled version of Google Chrome that does not come with a unique Client ID (see SRWare Iron) or by using a program like Google Chrome Anonymizer which removes the Client ID from the program.

Another program that was recently reviewed over at Life Rocks 2.0 is the Google Chrome Privacy Protector.

The program will scan the computer system for a Google Chrome installation and display whether the Client ID of the web browser has been anonymized yet. A click on the Remove unique ID now button will do that if it has not been done already. All instances of Google Chrome need to be closed for that operation.

Chrome Privacy Protector is available at the developer’s website where it can be downloaded for all Windows operating systems.

Chrome Cache Viewer is a portable software program for Windows that will list the contents of the Google Chrome browser’s cache in the application interface. The program uses the standard Nirsoft layout that displays the data in sortable columns. It is for instance possible to sort the data by name, size, content type, url or server time.

The cache viewer has options to copy the selected cache files to another directory. This makes it easy to copy files like images or videos from the cache to another location on the hard drive to access them at a later time.

It is furthermore possible to create html or text reports for further analysis and open links in the default web browser. Chrome Cache View is available for most Windows operating systems at the Nirsoft website.

Update: The program detects the cache location automatically if Chrome is installed in the default location. It won’t detect cache directories of browsers that use Chrome as their core though if those browsers change the default directories.

Several keyboard shortcuts are available, like Ctrl-U to copy the url list to the Windows Clipboard, or Ctrl-C to copy the table of files to later paste them into a spreadsheet or other application.