There was nothing more excruciating for me as a kid than seeing the presents pile up under the Christmas tree but knowing that I couldn't open them until Christmas morning. On the Google Chrome team, we've had the same feeling as we've been working to get betas ready for Mac, Linux and extensions. It's been a long time coming, but today we can check the top three items off our users' wish lists.

Google Chrome for Mac (Beta)
We've been working hard to deliver a first-class browser for the Mac — it took longer than we expected, but we hope the wait was worth it! We wanted Google Chrome to feel at home on the Mac, so we've focused on uniting our clean, simple design with subtle animations and effects to create a snappy and satisfying browsing experience on OS X. As you might expect, the speed of Google Chrome for Mac is something we're very proud of. If you have a Mac, try installing the beta and see how fast it launches — there's hardly even time for the icon in the dock to bounce!

For more details on this beta release of Google Chrome for Mac, read on in the Google Mac blog or watch this video from one of our engineers, Mike Pinkerton:



Google Chrome for Linux (Beta)
At Google, most engineers use Linux machines, so we certainly heard loud and clear how much they wanted Google Chrome for Linux. Just like Google Chrome for Windows and Mac, we focused on speed, stability and security, but we also wanted a high-performance browser that integrated well with the Linux ecosystem. This includes tight integration with native GTK themes, updates that are managed by the standard system package manager, and many other features that fit in natively with the operating system where possible.

Google Chrome for Linux in various GTK themes

Just as important, we've had quite a bit of help from the open source community. More than 50 open source contributors have worked on Chromium and they've been especially helpful on delivering our Linux version of Google Chrome. For more details on the beta release of Google Chrome for Linux, check out the Chromium blog.

Extensions in Google Chrome for Windows and Linux (Beta)
When we first launched Google Chrome in September 2008, we knew that we wanted to make it easy for you to customize the browser with extensions. We also wanted to make extensions easy to create and maintain, while preserving Google Chrome's speed and stability. Extensions on Google Chrome accomplishes all these goals: they are as easy to create as web pages, easy to install, and each extension runs in its own process to avoid crashing or significantly slowing down the browser.

Extensions installed on Google Chrome (for PC or Linux)

If you're on a PC or a Linux machine, you can check out more than 300 extensions in the gallery, including a few cool, useful and cute extensions . Extensions aren't quite beta-quality on Mac yet, but you will be able to preview them on a developer channel soon. And if you're a web developer, you can learn more about writing extensions for Google Chrome on the Chromium blog.


We hope the betas for Mac, Linux and extensions were some of the things on your wish list this year. We'd like to say thanks to Mac and Linux users who gave our early developer versions of Google Chrome a test drive on these platforms, as well as developers who wrote great extensions for Google Chrome. And in case you're wondering what we'd like for the holidays, we're always eager for feedback — and I wouldn't mind a brand new extension that makes it snow on demand!


Posted by Brian Rakowski, Product Manager

We're always happy to hear that you're enjoying Google Chrome's speed, and we've often been asked what makes Google Chrome so fast -- from its snappy start-up time, and fast page-loading, to the ability to run complex web applications quickly.

For those of you who'd like to dive into the full technical intricacies on what makes Google Chrome a fast and responsive browser, we've put together video interviews to walk through some of the engineering involved. In particular, we take a look at the inner workings of DNS pre-resolution, the V8 JavaScript engine, and DOM bindings. In a future post, we'll also cover other important aspects of Google Chrome's speed, such as WebKit and UI responsiveness.

You can watch these interviews below - or for more details, check out the Chromium blog and the Google Chrome YouTube channel.

Posted by Min Li Chan, Product Marketing Manager

If you've ever wanted to search or navigate without disrupting the page you're currently reading, you've probably opened a new tab to do so. This means either clicking the "new tab" button at the end of the tabstrip, or using the "new tab" menu item or keyboard shortcut (ctrl-t).

A little-known shortcut can help you do this even faster.

If you type something in to the omnibox and hold down the Alt key while you press enter, the resulting page will open as a new tab at the end of your tabstrip, leaving your previous page untouched.

This way you can skip creating a new tab, and go straight to typing in what you want.

Posted by Peter Kasting, Software Engineer

Today we released Chromium OS, the open source project behind Google Chrome OS. Google Chrome OS is an operating system that is intended for people who spend most of their time on the web. It aims to provide a computing experience that is fast, simple and secure. The Chromium OS project as you'll see it today is comprised of the code that has been developed thus far, our early experiments with the user interface, and detailed design docs for many parts that are under active development.

To learn more about what Google Chrome OS is, watch this short video:

To get a feel for the Google Chrome OS user experience, you can watch the demo from this morning's announcement event.

Posted by Kan Liu, Product Manager

Fresh from a Halloween weekend, we're excited to introduce a brand new beta for Google Chrome, which includes a few new treats and cool tricks for our users.

For those of you who use several computers -- for example, a laptop at work and a desktop at home -- you've asked for a way to keep your Google Chrome bookmarks in sync across multiple computers. Today's new beta release allows you to do just that! You can keep your Google Chrome bookmarks synchronized and up-to-date across the multiple computers you use, without needing to manually recreate your bookmarks every time you use a different computer.

For more on how to use bookmark sync, check out the video below from one of our team members, Anthony LaForge:

Once you've activated Google Chrome bookmark sync on each of your computers, any changes you make to your bookmarks will appear on all synced computers in just a few seconds. (For those of you who are curious, this bit of magic is made possible by the same XMPP-based servers that power Google Talk).

As with every release, this new beta comes with many speed improvements. In particular, as web applications we use every day become increasingly dynamic, browsers like Google Chrome need to be able to construct and change elements on web pages as fast as possible. We've improved performance scores on Google Chrome by 30% since our current stable release, as measured by Mozilla's Dromeao DOM Core Tests, and by 400% since our first stable release.

The beta channel provides a sneak preview of things to come with occasional rough edges and before most users see them, but it's a great way for us to quickly churn out new features and get your feedback. To try out bookmark sync and other beta features, download the beta version of Google Chrome.

Posted by Idan Avraham and Anton Muhin, Software Engineers

It's National Cyber Security Awareness Month, the perfect time to shed some light on a few Google Chrome alerts that are designed to help protect your browsing experience on the web.

You may have run into one of Google Chrome's red alert messages when trying to visit a site and wondered why the browser did not immediately bring up the page you requested. These are messages triggered by the phishing and malware protection feature that's enabled by default in the Options menu. Here's an example:

Whenever you see this warning, Google Chrome has detected that the site you're trying to visit may contain malware. Malware is code that attempts to steal your personal information or download harmful software onto your computer.

Besides the malware warning, Google Chrome also checks the security certificates of sites that claim to be properly encrypted (such as bank sites or shopping sites), but that may also ask you for your personal or financial information under false pretenses. If a site's certificate is suspicious, you may see one of the following messages:

• "This is probably not the site you are looking for!"
  This message comes up when the URL listed in the site's certificate doesn't match the site's actual URL, which means that the site you're trying to visit may be pretending to be another site.
  
  
• "The site's security certificate is not trusted!"
  Since anyone can create a certificate, Google Chrome checks to see whether a site's certificate came from a trusted organization. This message means that the certificate wasn't issued by a recognized third-party organization.

• "The site's security certificate has expired!" or "The server's security certificate is not yet valid!"
  If you see one of these messages, that means the site's certificate is not up-to-date. Therefore, Google Chrome can't verify that the site is secure.
  
  
• "The server's security certificate is revoked!"
  The third-party organization that issued the site's certificate has marked the certificate as invalid. Again, Google Chrome can't verify that the site is secure.

It's a good idea to heed these messages you see, even if the site you're trying to visit is owned by someone you know and trust. Hackers can take advantage of security holes on a site without the site owner's knowledge. So even though you've visited your friend's blog without any problem in the past, the warnings can still show up one day if someone exploits a vulnerability on the site. (And if you're seeing this message for a site you own, we're here to help! Just follow these instructions in the Webmaster Help Center. Also, check out this blog post we've written about detecting and removing malware.)

Google Chrome goes to great lengths to help keep you safe on the web. If you want to learn more about protecting your computer, website, and personal information, check out our security series on the Google blog or visit http://www.staysafeonline.org.

Posted by Fiona Chong, Online Editor

Google Sidewiki was introduced a month ago as a new way of contributing helpful information to any webpage. Google Sidewiki appears as a browser sidebar, where you can read and write entries along the side of the page. A lot of great Sidewiki entries have since been written throughout the web -- a few of my favorite examples include a doctor's entry about flu vaccinations and these tips for tuning bass guitars.

Until now, Sidewiki was available only through Google Toolbar for Firefox and Internet Explorer. Today, we're excited to release the official bookmarklet for Sidewiki, which lets you easily read and write Sidewiki entries in Google Chrome, Safari and others browsers. The bookmarklet is a shortcut you can add to your bookmarks bar: When you click on the shortcut, it opens a window showing Sidewiki entries for the page you're currently viewing.

To add the Sidewiki bookmarklet, all you need to do is click and drag the bookmarklet embedded in the Google Sidewiki Help Center page to your bookmarks bar.

So what's the next step? We're working on a Google Chrome extension for Sidewiki. For more updates on Sidewiki, follow us on Twitter and stay tuned.

Posted by Andrey Adaikin, Engineer, Google Sidewiki