File Under: Browsers
Mar
5
2013

Google Chrome Speeds Up the Small Screen

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Webmonkey.com in the latest Chrome for Android Image: Screenshot/Webmonkey.

Google has released a major update to its Chrome for Android web browser.

The latest version of Chrome for Android — available in the Google Play Store — features an updated version of Google’s V8 JavaScript engine, which has finally been optimized for mobile devices. That means Chrome for Android should now be faster than the old, stock Android web browser.

According to Google, the latest version of Chrome for Android improves on Google’s Octane benchmark tests by 25 percent on average. While benchmarks aren’t always the best indicators of real-world performance gains, the speed boost should mean that JavaScript-heavy pages like Gmail or Facebook load a bit faster.

Our friends over at Ars Technica put the latest version of Chrome for Android through the paces using not just Google’s own Octane test, but the Sunspider and Kraken benchmarks as well. The results don’t always feature quite the speed improvement that Google claims, but this is without a doubt the fastest version of Chrome for Android yet.

The performance improvements aren’t just in JavaScript either. Scrolling webpages is much smoother and, most noticeable in my testing, pinch-to-zoom is much more responsive with none of the stuttering and lag that marred previous releases.

Other nice improvements include the ability to keep web audio playing even if you switch to another app (handy for music streaming sites), and support for coming web standards like CSS Filters.

Google has also released an update for Chrome on iOS, though the changes on the iOS side are largely cosmetic. Apple’s App Store policies prevent Google from including the V8 engine in Chrome, so iOS users won’t see any speed improvements. There are however a few design tweaks, like a unified search/URL bar and a quick way to see the entire history of a tab by holding down the back button.

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File Under: Web Standards
Mar
1
2013

W3Conf Videos Showcase the Latest in Web Standards

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Image: W3C

The W3C, the group that oversees web standards like HTML and CSS, recently held W3Conf, an annual conference for web developers. If, like me, you couldn’t make it this year, fear not, videos of all of the talks are now available online.

Among the highlights are Eric Meyer’s talk on Flexbox, and the future of sane layout tools — what Meyer calls “the Era of Intentional Layout.” Meyer’s talk is also notable for the reminder that, in Mosaic, styling a webpage was something users did, not page creators.

Another highly recommended talk is Lea Verou’s “Another 10 things you didn’t know about CSS.” The “Another” bit in the title refers to a talk Verou gave last year entitled “10 things you might not know about CSS 3.” Also be sure to read our recent interview with Verou for more on the W3C and web standards.

There are quite a few more videos available over on the W3Conf YouTube page, including Jacob Rossi’s talk on Pointer Events, which we linked to in yesterday’s Pointer Events coverage.

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File Under: Browsers
Mar
1
2013

What Makes WebKit, WebKit?

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WebKit, the rendering engine that powers web browsers like Google’s Chrome, Apple’s Safari, and soon Opera as well, has become a developer favorite thanks to its support for web standards and near-ubiquity in the mobile world.

Unfortunately for developers, WebKit isn’t always WebKit. While WebKit-based browsers share some code, not every WebKit-based browser behaves exactly the same way.

WebKit is an open source project with dozens of browsers based off the core code. But WebKit doesn’t have everything you need to build a graphical web browser, which means there’s considerable variation even among the two biggest WebKit users — Google and Apple.

To clear up just what WebKit is, and why there’s sometimes quite a bit of difference between WebKit browsers, Google’s Paul Irish — who is part of Chrome’s Developer Relations team — has put together a comprehensive guide to WebKit. Irish covers exactly what WebKit is, what it isn’t, how WebKit is used by WebKit-based browsers and why not all “WebKits” are the same.

Irish’s write-up should be required reading for all developers, but especially anyone who’s ever wondered why something works in Chrome, but not Safari; or why 3D transforms that fly in one WebKit-based browser crawl in another (short answer: GPU code is not shared among WebKit browsers).

When you’ve finished with Irish’s overview, be sure to follow the links at the bottom of his post for more details — particularly worth your time is Eric Seidel’s talk on how WebKit renders a webpage.

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File Under: Browsers, Web Standards
Feb
28
2013

Give the Web the Finger With Microsoft’s Proposed ‘Pointer Events’

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The proposed Pointer Events spec makes it easier to handle input from fingers, pens. Image: W3C.

The W3C recently moved Microsoft’s proposed Pointer Events spec to Last Call Working Draft. To help developers get up to speed, the IEBlog has published an overview of Pointer Events.

Microsoft has even helped to create a build of WebKit with experimental support for Pointer Events (for those not using Windows 8 or who’d prefer not to test in IE 10).

The goal of the Pointer Events spec is to provide a unified model for dealing with all the various input devices on today’s web, namely, the mouse, the stylus and the finger.

Pointer Events handle the various ways a user might be interacting with your site without requiring you to write unique code for each input method.

Currently most browsers register any input as a mouse event, even when it obviously is not (as is the case for most mobile browsers). It works, but it’s what you might call a blunt approach. Pointer Events adds some finesse to the equation, including details like the touch contact geometry size, the pressure applied or the tilt angle of a pen.

If you’d like to get your hands dirty with Pointer Events, either fire up IE 10 or download the experimental WebKit build and head on over to the W3C’s Web Platform docs. Microsoft’s Rob Dolin has a great overview tutorial with basic examples on how to get started. Also be sure to watch the video below from the recent W3Conf; Jacob Rossi, IE Program Manager gives a nice overview of Pointer Events and what you can do with them.

Right now only IE 10 supports Pointer Events, but Microsoft’s David Catuhe has developed a JavaScript polyfill, called HandJS, to support Pointer Events in browsers that don’t yet offer native support. Kudos to Microsoft for not just bringing pointer events to the W3C, but for working to add support to a competing browser and creating a polyfill for the rest.

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File Under: Web Services
Feb
28
2013

Google Expands Universal Search to Include Your Calendar

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Your calendar, now part of your search results. Image: Google

Google has expanded the personalized search “field trial” it initiated last year, pulling in additional results from Google Calendar. Your Google Calendar appointments join your Gmail and Google Drive documents alongside traditional Google search results for an all-in-one Google search experience.

If you’d like to participate, head on over to the signup page and add your account.

Once that’s done, just log in to your Google account. You’ll then be able to search Gmail, your Google Drive documents and now your Google Calendar appointments directly from the Google search page (or from within Gmail).

The Google Calendar integration doesn’t just add appointments, it also features support for natural language queries. For example, type “what is on my calendar today” and you’ll see the day’s agenda. More specific queries work as well; to find out when you’re meeting someone, just type “when am I meeting” and the person’s name.

Note that the personalized search trial is still only available to U.S. users with @gmail.com addresses (Google Apps accounts are out of luck for now). If you opt in and decide you hate it, you can always go back to the sign up page and turn universal search off.

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