Google Chrome Smartbook

While there has been much talk about smartbooks, they kind of never materialized. While the exact definition can vary, what sets them apart from netbooks is that they use a Linux based OS, and have an ARM chip, rather than the x86 one. And they are supposed to be even cheaper.

Google had promised that their Chrome browser would form the basis of a smartbook, and in fact would release a Chrome OS. While this did not seem too realistic at first, with the increasing acceptance, and even popularity of Google Android in the smartphone space, an Android based Chrome OS, running on a smartbook device could be quite popular.

It is expected that this smartbook will be released later this month, and the device will not be sold in normal retail channels.

Google Chrome 60 times faster

Google says its new Chrome version has some serious speed. Thought the limits of browser speed had already been reached? Perhaps not. Google now claims to have something even better up its sleeve.

According to its Chromium blog the version 7 of the Chrome browser could get a healthy speed boost.
Chrome already holds a strong position when it comes to speedy performance so increasing this even more could leave all other browsers in the dust.

The new technique relies on hardware acceleration and picks the best graphics API (application programming interface) for each
operating system the browser runs on.

The benefit is in significantly. improved speeds for 2D applications, Chrome developers say. Browser hardware acceleration is not entirely new and Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer already incorporate some form of hardware acceleration.

The technique passes off multimedia content on a website to the graphics processor for rendering while the browser renders the text portions of the site.

The Chrome developers say that their current developments are showing significant returns. "These early numbers show up to 60x speed improvement over the current version of Google Chrome," developers wrote on the Chromium blog. "With Google Chrome's fast release cycles, we expect to be able to get these enhancements to users quickly and add new performance
improvements over time."

The Chromium development team says that the current benefits are for 2D graphics but that they are working on 3D graphics acceleration for future releases. 3D
acceleration is the "next big thing" in browser technology. With that in place developers will be able to
create sophisticated games, gallery features, 3D visualisations and virtual environments, all in a web browser.

Chromium 7, the current development version of Chrome, is available for Windows, OS X and
Linux systems.

Google Chrome gives power to users to change the formatting on any site they visit

Ever wished you could change the underlying code for any web page without getting your hands dirty? Chrome users can now do that
thanks to an extension that makes it as simple as possible.

Stylebot was created as part of Google's Summer of Code programme by a student from India. The extension pops up a sidebar for any page a visitor is visiting and allows them to change formatting such as font size, colours and sizes. The changes can be saved so that subsequent visits to the website retain the formatting.

Stylebot is good news for users that would prefer larger font sizes or move elements on the page around. It's also good for web
designers who would like to experiment with styles without committing the changes to file. Naturally Stylebot could also be used for hiding images and removing advertising from pages.

PS: I'm currently using Google Chrome as my default web browser. It's the best!