GO SPeeDY with Chrome

We all know Google's obsession about speed.It was this obsession which prompted Google to launch its own browser Chrome.Chrome is now considered as the fastest available browser by many.

Then came the announcement of Google Chrome OS this July.This is what Google said in a blog post while announcing the project.

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We're designing the OS to be fast and lightweight,to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

If you thought google will stop with Chrome browser and OS then you are completely wrong.This week it announced the launch of two more exciting projects namely GO and SPDY.
GO is an experimental open source programming language that combines the development speed of Python with the performance and safety of a compiled language like C++.The video below claims that a Go package consisting of about 120,000 lines of code is compiled in just under 10 seconds.That's really great considering the time taken by C++ compilers.



You can find a review about the programming language here.The first project using GO programming language is a twitter client which you can find here.

SPDY ,pronounced as "SPeeDY" is an early stage research project which complements HTTP and is designed for minimizing the latency through various features such as HTTP header compression, request prioritization and multiplexed streams.This is what google has said in a blog post about SPDY.

So far we have only tested SPDY in lab conditions. The initial results are very encouraging: when we download the top 25 websites over simulated home network connections, we see a significant improvement in performance - pages loaded up to 55% faster.

You can find more info about SPDY here.With Chrome OS rumoured to be launched with in a week ,this is going to be interesting.Now combine Chrome browser with OS ,SpeeDY and GO and see where you are headed.

How to get more screen space with Chrome Browser

We all love Google Chrome for its minimalistic design.It helps users in saving a lot of screen space.If you are still looking for some more screen space while using Chrome browser then this post will help you achieve that.

1.How to hide the Chrome bookmark bar ?
Chrome always shows the bookmark bar just below the address bar or the Omnibox.Do you know that you can hide this bookmark bar? Just use the shortcut Ctrl-B to hide the bar.You can again use the same shortcut to show it.You can also right-click on the bookmark bar to hide it.

How to convert the Bookmark bar to a menu ?
Now that you have saved space by hiding the bookmark bar ,Do you have a feeling that you can no longer access the bookmark bar by default ? Well, you can convert the bookmark bar to a menu just to the right of Address bar.You have to use a new command line switch to convert the bookmark bar to a menu bar.you have to activate the feature by giving "--bookmark-menu" in command-line flag.Right click the chrome shortcut and select properties.In the target box add --bookmark-menu after chrome.exe .

The target path on my chrome shortcut looks as given below.Note that there is a space after chrome.exe and you can use multiple switches in your chrome shortcut command line.
"C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --bookmark-menu

Credit for Bookmarkmenu:downloadsquad

2.How to hide the Extensions bar ?
If you have enabled Extensions in Chrome then you will see an extension bar at the bottom just like your bookmark bar.Hide that using the shortcut Ctrl-Alt-B .To display it, again use the same shortcut.It will be nice if we can also convert this to a menu just like we did it for bookmark bar.

3.How to Shrink the tabs to Favicons only ?
Did you know that you can pin the tabs to shrink them down to just the web site's favicons? Well,just right click on any tab and select "Pin Tab" from the menu.The tab has been converted to just a favicon and it is now at the first place.Next time when you want to pin another tab ,just drag the tab to the left of the already pinned tab and it will be automatically converted to a pinned tab.You can still use the right click to pin tabs.This will help you in saving some tab space if you are working with multiple tabs.

How do you revert back the pinned tabs ?
You can do this in two ways.Either right click on the pinned tab and unselect "Pin Tab" or drag the pinned tab to the extreme right till you see the full tab and drop it there.

Hopefully the above tips will help you in giving some more space.

Speed up Internet Explorer(IE) using Chrome Frame

If you are still using IE and looking for ways to speed up your browser then google can help you out.It has recently released a plugin called Chrome Frame to bring Chrome's speedy Javascript engine to Internet Explorer.

You can get the Chrome Frame here and it supports Internet Explorer 6,7 & 8 .If you think your browser will become faster as soon as you download the plugin then you are wrong.
You have to wait till the websites start using Chrome's rendering engine by default.As an end user you can direct the website to use chrome's rendering engine by prefixing "cf:" before "http://" .For example if you use "cf:http://google.com" then it will use the Chrome's rendering engine.



What benefit you get as an end user by using the plugin?
Well ,Your browser speed increases immediately.In future you will also be able to access richer applications in Internet Explorer.

What benefit you get as a Web Developer ?
If you are a web developer then you will be able to deliver richer applications using HTML5.You can write code and expect it to work across both the browsers by forcing the IE users to use Chrome Frame through the addition of a single tag to the top of your page.
Add the following code to start using Google Chrome Frame.
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="chrome=1">
You wont have to spend time for finding work-arounds or making design changes to make it work in IE.You wont have to test your code in two browsers.

Let us look at the disadvantages from end user point of view.
Users will have to wait till the websites start using Chrome Rendering Engine by default.The temporary solution of prefixing "cf:" will not work across all the websites ,because websites will normally rewrite the URL when you start browsing.This is also cumbersome to manually prefix "cf:".

How will Google benefit from this ?
This is quite interesting because Google Wave will be released in few days time .Since Google Wave requires better Java Script support it will create awareness for Chrome by letting the IE users know about it.

A blog post from Google Wave says the following regarding the whole matter.

In the past, the Google Wave team has spent countless hours solely on improving the experience of running Google Wave in Internet Explorer. We could continue in this fashion, but using Google Chrome Frame instead lets us invest all that engineering time in more features for all our users, without leaving Internet Explorer users behind.

It remains to be seen if the Corporate IT departments will allow use of this plugin inside the corporates.

Check the following you tube video to know more about Chrome.

Google joins IE6 war

I am a Chrome User and these days I rarely use other browsers.Today I logged into Orkut from IE6 and was amazed to see a warning .It says We will be phasing out support for your browser version (Internet Explorer 6) soon. Please upgrade to one of these more modern browsers:.

It provides links to IE8 ,Chrome and Firefox.After googling for the same I came to know that mashable had published the news some time back.

If you want to know more about why IE6 must die, then check this article from mashable.If you are a chrome user then you might be interested in Spreading Google Chrome.Google Chrome was released on September 2, 2008.You can check the Chrome market share after one year of launch.