The Google Chrome web browser’s stable release was recently announced. Developers are excited as this release brings with it extensions and APIs that were previously only available to Google’s beta channel testers.
New extensions include a feed reader, a “share by email” function, and “Mappy”, which will bring up a map for the first listed address on any given web page. Web developers will be interested in the new HTML and JavaScript APIs that come with this new release of Chrome.
Ian Fette, product manager for Chrome, stated in his blog that “we now support the Web SQL Database API, which allows you to store data in a structured manner on the user’s computer. If you’re looking for a simpler client-side storage mechanism for relatively small amounts of data, check out the localStorage portion of the Web Storage API. We’re already working on making these new APIs more useful and you should see a couple of improvements on the developer channel soon. In particular, we’re working on Application Cache which gives you the ability to serve HTML and JavaScript that references content in the Web SQL Database. SessionStorage, the little brother of localStorage, is coming soon as well.”
A basic tutorial on how to add extensions to Chrome can be found on the Google Chrome Extensions page, complete with source code. Google has also created a Chromium HTML5 group for web developers interested in exploring the possibilities of this new release.
Additional APIs for developers include a notification API (Windows version only) which enables developers to build event reminders or status updates into their web applications, with the updates showing up in the status bar of the web browser.
For end users, Chrome’s bookmark sync function is now stable, which enables users to synchronise bookmarks with the bookmarks from other computers, and the speed of the browser itself has increased by 400% since the initial stable release of 2009.
A Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page for Chrome-centric web developers can be found at the Google Chrome FAQ page.
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