Chromium Blog
News and developments from the open source browser project
Smarter NPAPI installs from the Chrome Web Store
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Chrome Web Store
developers can create and distribute apps and extensions that use
NPAPI
plug-ins. However, platforms such as ChromeOS and Windows 8 don’t support NPAPI. Today, we’re making the installation of apps and extensions that use NPAPI smarter, to help users avoid installing items that they can’t use on their particular platform.
If a user visits the Chrome Web Store on a platform that doesn’t support NPAPI, the store will filter out all items that use it from the home page and the various category pages. These apps and extensions will still show up in search results, and can be visited from direct URL links, but the Details dialog for each item will display a message that the app or the extension in question cannot be installed and the Install button will be disabled.
If you are a developer whose apps or extensions use NPAPI but can still work without it, we’ve provided a way for you to prevent your items from being filtered out. In your manifest.json file under the
requirements
section, specify the “npapi” flag like this:
"requirements": {
"plugins": {
"npapi": false
}
}
This will allow your apps and extensions to continue to be available to users on platforms that don’t support NPAPI. If your plug-in doesn’t have any explicit dependencies on the underlying OS, then you should really consider porting it to
Native Client
, which provides improved portability and security and runs just great on Windows 8 and ChromeOS.
Have any questions or comments about NPAPI? You can reach us on our
developer forum
for all of your store-related questions.
Posted by Joe Marini, Developer Advocate
Do more with Chrome Developer Tools
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
The
Chrome Developer Tools
team recently launched new features and made several UI changes to improve your development and debugging workflow.
Develop for mobile
Since
we launched
Chrome for Android, you’ve been able to use Chrome Developer Tools to debug and profile mobile web pages and web apps.
Today, we take this feature one step further by introducing device emulation support in Chrome Developer Tools. Device emulation includes, among other things, native
User Agent and dimension overriding
. This allows developers to debug mobile browsers on different devices and operating systems via the Settings Menu. So, now, you can emulate the exact device metrics of devices like the Galaxy Nexus and the iPhone to test your media query-driven design.
Chrome Developer Tools also supports single
touch event
emulation
to make it easier to
debug mobile applications
on the desktop.
Profile rendering performance
The Timeline’s Frame Mode feature now allows you to
profile Chrome’s rendering performance
, remove the jank and deliver the silky smooth performance users expect from your apps. To learn more about this topic, check out the recent
"Jank Busters"
video from Google I/O.
Preview your log items
The console now prints a user-friendly snapshot of the object properties taken at log time, whereas by expanding the object manually, you can still see its live content. This is especially useful when logging an object in a loop and observing its mutation. With this change, we resolved a
longstanding bug
many of you prioritized on
crbug.com
.
Play with experimental features
You can now try new experimental features in Chrome Developer Tools by visiting
chrome:flags
and enabling them there. Once you do that, a new tab called “Experiments” will be visible in the settings menu, allowing you to enable and use any of the following experiments:
Snippets (essentially multi-line console on steroids)
Source mapping support for
SASS
Native memory profiling
Geolocation / orientation override
FileSystem inspection
Canvas inspection
CPU activity in Timeline
CSS Regions support
Some of these experimental features are almost ready while others have just landed and need some more refining. In either case, we’d love your
feedback
before we bake these fully in Chrome Developer Tools. You can also read our recently updated
contribution guide
if you’re interested in helping us make the tools better.
To get more information on all of Chrome Developer Tools features, check out our “
Chrome Developer Tools Evolution
” talk at the I/O 2012. You can also follow
Google Chrome Developers
on Google+ or
@ChromiumDev
on Twitter for more news on changes landing in Chrome Developer Tools.
Posted by Stefano Cazzulani, Product Manager
New site ownership verification option in CWS
Friday, October 19, 2012
To publish an app in the
Chrome Web Store
, developers need to prove they own the domain that hosts their application. Until recently, the only way to do this was through
Google’s Webmaster Tools
. Today, we are simplifying the process further by allowing you use Google's site verification service to prove your association with a verified site.
Suppose you want to publish an app on the Chrome Web Store and have it associated with your company’s existing site, but you don’t have the ability to use any of the current verification methods e.g. you’re not allowed to upload a verification file to the root directory. The site verification service option in the edit page for each item listed in your Chrome Web Store
developer dashboard
allows you to request association of your app with your organization’s site:
When you choose an existing site from the drop-down menu or click “Add a new site”, the current registered owner for the site will receive a notification of your request to be associated. The owner can see who is making the request, and then approve or deny the request appropriately. That’s all there is to it! (
Note
: if this checkbox isn’t available, it may be because there’s no current owner of the site or you already have an outstanding association request).
We hope that this new feature will further streamline the process for publishing new apps on the Chrome Web Store, and allows you to focus more on developing your app and less on process. Have any questions or comments about using Google’s site verification service? You can reach us on our
developer forum
for store-related questions or head on over to the
Webmaster Help forum
.
Posted by Joe Marini, Developer Advocate
A better developer experience for Native Client
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Native Client
(NaCl) enables you to write high-performance apps that run your C and C++ code in the browser. With the new Native Client add-in for Microsoft Visual Studio and the new Native Client debugger it just got a lot easier.
The Visual Studio add-in makes it easy to set up, build, run, and debug your app as a Pepper plug-in and as a Native Client module. If you are porting an existing application to Native Client, building as a Pepper plug-in is a convenient intermediate stage for development enabling you to gradually rewrite the app to use the Pepper APIs (
video
).
The Native Client debugger, affectionately called
nacl-gdb
, works on Windows, Mac, and Linux and is now available in the
SDK
. So whatever your development platform, you can now spend more time coding features and less time chasing bugs with
printf
.
Following the Native Client philosophy of being OS-independent and open source, nacl-gdb is based on... well...
gdb
! For those of you who are not excited by a text interface, the Visual Studio
add-in
makes interacting with the debugger easier. If you use a different development environment that can interact with gdb, you can point it to nacl-gdb and use the same commands plus some additional NaCl-specific commands.
Whether you’re an existing Native Client developer or thinking about using Native Client for your next project, now is a great time to
grab the SDK
, write an amazing app, and quickly squash any bugs you find. We look forward to questions on
Stack Overflow
and ideas and comments in the discussion
forum
.
Posted by Christian Stefansen, Product Manager
Celebrating Dart’s birthday with the first release of the Dart SDK
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
A year ago we
released
a technology preview of
Dart
, a project that includes a modern language, libraries and tools for building complex web applications. Today, after plowing through thousands of bug reports and feature requests from the web community, a new, more stable and comprehensive version of Dart is now available and ready to use.
With this version of the Dart SDK, we’ve made several improvements and added many features:
A faster Dart Virtual Machine that on some
Octane
tests outperforms even
V8
.
A new Dart to JavaScript translator that generates fast and compact output.
An
HTML library
that works transparently on modern browsers.
A library to
interoperate with JavaScript
code.
An easy to use
editor
.
Pub
, a new package manager
Dartium
, a Chromium build with native Dart support.
A
server-side I/O library
.
A language
specification
describing the Dart semantics, including new
features
.
Over the following months, we will continue to work hard to evolve the SDK, improve Dart’s robustness and performance, and fine-tune the language while maintaining backwards compatibility.
You can download the Dart Editor from
dartlang.org
. It comes with a copy of the open-source SDK and Dartium. Thanks again for all your
feedback
- keep it coming.
Posted by Lars Bak, Software Engineer
mod_pagespeed is now out of beta
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
If you are as obsessed with the speed of your web pages as we are, then you may have heard of mod_pagespeed, an Apache module that automatically optimizes your web pages for performance. Since
we introduced
mod_pagespeed in 2010, we’ve been focused on improving its functionality, to help developers increase the performance of their web pages. Today, after 18 releases, mod_pagespeed is now
officially out of beta
.
More than 120,000 sites are already using mod_pagespeed to take advantage of the latest performance optimization techniques. To learn more about mod_pagespeed and how to incorporate it in your site, watch our recent
Google Developers Live session
or visit the mod_pagespeed
developer documentation site
.
Posted by Ilya Grigorik, Developer Advocate
Pwnium 2: results and wrap-up
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
As part of our ongoing effort to reward exceptional
vulnerability research
in the security community, we hosted the
Pwnium 2
competition at
Hack in the Box 2012
in Kuala Lumpur yesterday.
We’re happy to confirm that we received a valid exploit from
returning pwner
, Pinkie Pie. This pwn relies on a WebKit Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) compromise to exploit the renderer process and a second bug in the
IPC layer
to escape the Chrome sandbox. Since this exploit depends entirely on bugs within Chrome to achieve code execution, it qualifies for our highest award level as a “full Chrome exploit,” a $60,000 prize and free Chromebook.
One of Chrome’s most effective security defenses is our
fast response time
and ability to update users with critical patches, quickly. These bugs were no exception. We started analyzing the exploit as soon as it was submitted, and in fewer than 10 hours after Pwnium 2 concluded we were updating users with a
freshly patched
version of Chrome.
We’d like to thank Pinkie Pie for his hard work in assembling another great Pwnium submission. We’ll post an in-depth look at the bugs used and subsequent mitigations once other platforms have been patched.
Posted by Chris Evans, Software Engineer
Pwnium 2 begins
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Security is one of Chrome’s
core principles
, and we work closely with the security community to continually make the web safer for users. In that spirit, we're hosting
Pwnium 2
at
Hack in the Box 2012
in Kuala Lumpur this week.
Participants will be able to
demonstrate their pwns
against Chrome at 9 a.m. Wednesday local time (1 a.m. GMT for folks keeping track). We’ll be actively analyzing any submissions we receive, and will announce successful exploits and prizes during
our talk
at 5 p.m, Thursday (9 a.m. GMT) on the evolution of Chrome’s
vulnerability rewards program
.
Stay tuned!
Posted by Chris Evans, Software Engineer
Get a front row seat with GDL Presents
Monday, October 8, 2012
Calling designers, web developers, and the creatively curious! Next week marks the launch of
Google Developers Live Presents,
a new series of exclusive programming from
GDL
.
Presents
kicks off this month with
Design Ignites the Web
, a family of episodes that takes you on a journey from back-end to front-end, showing you how to create compelling projects in the browser. The series will feature exclusive interviews with the developers behind select
Chrome Experiments
,
Chrome WebLab
,
Movi.Kanti.Revo
, and DevArt.
So, what’s coming up?
Make Web Magic: The Minds Behind the Most Popular Chrome Experiments |
Tuesday, October 9 - Part 1, 1:00 PM PDT
|
20:00 UTC
[Event page]
| Part II, 2:00 PM PDT
|
21:00 UTC
[Event page]
|
Part III, 3:00 PM PDT
|
22:00 UTC
[Event page]
Using the latest open web technologies, the developers creating some of the most inspired Chrome Experiments showcase their latest web experiments and discuss how they are making the web faster, more fun, and open in this 3-episode hangout.
Host:
Paul Irish
,
Developer Advocate, Chrome
Guests: Hakim:
Google+
,
Website
| Michael Deal:
Google+
,
Website
| Mark Danks:
Google+
,
Website
All the Web’s a Stage: Building a 3D Space in the Browser
|
Thursday, October 11 - 10:30 AM PDT | 17:30 UTC
[Event page]
Meet the designers and creative team behind a new sensory Chrome experiment,
Movi.Kanti.Revo
, in a live, design-focused Q&A. Learn how Cirque du Soleil and Subatomic Systems worked to translate the wonder of Cirque into an environment built entirely with markup and CSS.
Host:
Pete LePage
,
Developer Advocate
Guests:
Gillian Ferrabee,
Creative Director, Images & Special Projects,
Cirque du Soleil | Nicole McDonald,
Director/Creative Director,
Subatomic Systems
Van Gogh Meets Alan Turing: The Browser Becomes a Canvas with DevArt
|
Friday, October 19 - 10:00 AM PDT
|
17:00 UTC
[Event page]
How can art and daily life be joined together? Host Ido Green chats with creators Uri Shaked and Tom Teman about tackling this question with their “Music Room” – a case study in the power of Android – and with Emmanuel Witzthum on his project “Dissolving Realities,” which aims to connect the virtual environment of the Internet using Google Street View.
Host:
Ido Green
,
Developer Advocate
Guests: Uri Shaked, Tom Teman, and
Emmanuel Witzthum
Push the Limits: Building Extraordinary Experiences with Chrome
|
Week of October 29
[Event page]
The experiments in
Chrome Web Lab
are pushing the limits of what developers can build in a browser. Explore the design and technical mastery that went into making extraordinary experiences, directly from the experiments’ home, the London Science Museum.
Hosts:
Pete LePage
,
Developer Advocate
|
Paul Kinlan
,
Developer Advocate
Guests:
Tellart
&
B-Reel
representatives for
Universal Orchestra, Sketchbot, Teleporter, LabTag, DataTracer
If you can’t make the live show, you’ll still be able to see recordings of these and past sessions on our
YouTube channel
. For more information on our monthly schedule, add
+Google Developers
to your circles and follow
@googledevs
on Twitter.
Posted by Peter Lubbers, Program Manager
Teaming up on Web Platform Docs
Monday, October 8, 2012
Cross-posted on the
Google Developers Blog
When you want to build something for the web, it's surprisingly difficult to find out how you can implement your vision across all browsers and operating systems. You often need to search across various websites and blogs to learn how certain technologies can be used. It's kind of like a scavenger hunt, except it's not any fun.
This scavenger hunt is soon coming to an end. Google along with the W3C and several
leading internet and technology companies
just
announced
the alpha release of
Web Platform Docs
. Web Platform Docs is a community-driven site that aims to become the comprehensive and authoritative source for web developer documentation.
The founding members of Web Platforms Docs have all already provided a lot of content for the site to help get this effort off to a strong start. However, collectively, we’ve barely scratched the surface. We decided that it would be better to open up Web Platform Docs to the community as early as possible, so that everyone--including you--can help
expand and refine
the documentation, and ultimately define the direction of the site.
If you have more questions about Web Platform Docs, you can find us on
Twitter
.
Posted by Alex Komoroske, Product Manager
Supporting new media experiences on the web
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
In recent years, video has taken a central role on the web. Developers are using the latest web technologies to make it easier for users to access, watch, and create video content. Today’s
Chrome Beta
update includes more tools for developers to take video engagement to the next level.
Chrome now includes the
PeerConnection API
, which allows developers to create web apps with real-time audio and video calling without the need for a plug-in. Together, PeerConnection and the
getUserMedia API
represent the next steps in
WebRTC
, a new standard which aims to allow high quality video, audio, and data communications on the web. Check out this funky video chat
demo
to see how the PeerConnection API can be combined with other web technologies to create fun new video chat experiences. To start the video chat demo, send the url to a friend.
Today’s Chrome Beta update also includes
track
support for HTML5 video. Track support provides an easy, standard way to add subtitles, captions, descriptions, chapters, and metadata to videos. It can be used to make videos accessible, split videos into sections, and create new unique video experiences. Track provides developers with a unified, programmatic mechanism for doing all these things in the HTML DOM and Javascript. In the following
demo
, track is used to enhance a video of a bike ride with metadata including a Google Map showing the biker’s route and Google Street View from the biker’s location.
Last but not least, we’ve added the
MediaSource API
. It provides a video playback solution that adapts video quality based on changing computer and network conditions to prevent excessive buffering and startup delays for videos -- in other words, your video will play silky smooth for users with no annoying stutters. Watch how smooth this
demo video
plays despite fluctuations in your network speed.
To get your hands on all this tasty video goodness, download
Chrome Beta
.
Posted by Justin Uberti, Software Engineer and Trained Video Professional
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