All posts tagged ‘chrome’

File Under: Browsers
May
16
2012

Chrome Offers Tabs to Go With New Tab-Syncing Features

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Image: Google

Google has released an update for its Chrome web browser that adds tab syncing to Chrome’s list of tricks. Using the latest version of Chrome you can now access the tabs open on your desktop at home while you’re out and about with your Android phone. The syncing should work with any device that can run the latest version of Google Chrome.

Current Chrome users will be automatically updated to the latest version. If you’d like to try out the latest version of Chrome head over to the download page.

The tab-syncing feature was already available to those using the Chrome beta channel, but now it’s available in a more stable form.

As with the rest of Chrome’s syncing features, you’ll need to be signed into your Google account in Chrome for it to work. To give it a try just sign in and look for the Other Devices menu on Chrome’s New Tab page. Click that button and you’ll see a list of every open tab on all the devices signed into that Google account.

While tab syncing is handy if you move between home and work computers, it really shines when going from desktop to mobile. If you’ve got an Android phone with the new Chrome beta installed, you’ll now be able to access any open tab on your desktop machine no matter where you are. The reverse is also very helpful, especially for those times when you encounter a mobile-unfriendly page — just open it later when you get home.

Note that Chrome users will be automatically updated to the latest stable version of the browser over the next few days, but the Chrome Blog reports that the tab-syncing features “will be rolled out more gradually over the coming weeks.” If you don’t have access just yet, you’ll have to get by with this video from Google until tab syncing is enabled for your account.

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File Under: CSS
Apr
24
2012

HTML5 Offers ‘Scoped’ CSS for Precision Styling

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HTML5′s controversial “scoped” style attribute is now supported in the latest Canary builds of Google’s Chrome web browser and Mozilla may eventually add support to Firefox as well.

HTML5 adds an attribute, scoped, to the style element which limits the scope of the styles contained within the tag. Google’s Alex Danilo has a good introduction to scoped over at HTML5Rocks. Essentially scoped allows you to nest styles within HTML and those styles will only apply to any child elements. The easiest way to understand scoped is to see it in action:

<html lang="en">
    <head>
        <style>
            p { color: white; }
        </style>
    </head>
    <body>
        <p>The text in this will be white</p>
        <div>
            <style scoped>
                p { color: red; }
            </style>
            <p>The text in this paragraph will be red</p>
        </div>
        <p>And we're back to white text</p>
    </body>
</html>

In this example the first style declaration applies to all the p tags on the page while the scoped style declaration applies only to the p tags within that scope (in this case all the p tags within our div tag). The scope rule has a higher specificity so it overrides the other rule and makes the middle text red.

It seems handy at first glance, but scoped can be a step backward if you overuse it. It’s akin to using inline styles, a long-frowned-upon practice that means mingling content and presentation. Indeed, scoped should be used sparingly; it will cause you pain if you just start throwing it around.

That said, there are some cases where scoped makes sense and makes developers’ lives easier. If you’re pulling in content from some outside source and displaying it on your page, styles and all, scoped can help you avoid style conflicts. Similarly if you’re building a widget designed to be embedded elsewhere scoped ensures your styles won’t affect the rest of the page.

Another use case that’s worth mentioning is within content management systems. Developer Arley McBlain recently covered the advantages of the scoped attribute for handling CMS content in some depth over at CSS Tricks. McBlain even has a demo WordPress site that uses scoped to style content on a per-post basis.

The big catch to using scoped right now is that it doesn’t work anywhere but Chrome 19+. Worse, because other browsers do understand the style element, they’ll apply your styles, but they’ll apply them globally. In other words, don’t use scoped without a polyfill like the JQuery Scoped CSS Plugin.

Also note that to test out Chrome’s scoped support you’ll need to be using Chrome 19 and then head to chrome://flags. Look for the “Enable <style scoped>” towards the end of the list and click “Enable.” Restart the browser and scoped should work.

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File Under: Browsers
Apr
19
2012

Google Cloud Print, Now With PDF Power

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Printing to Android. Image: Google

Google has updated its Cloud Print service with a couple of new features aimed at making it easier to move documents from your phone or tablet to a dead tree near you.

Cloud Print, which was first introduced in 2010, is designed to make it easy to print files from Android devices (and Chromebooks). The latest version adds support for printing to a local FedEx office as well as integration with some new Canon printers that will natively support Cloud Print.

Near the bottom of Google’s announcement is another feature that’s far more useful: “printing” to your Android device. Provided you’ve installed the latest Chrome for Android Beta on your phone and are signed in to your Google account, your Android device will now appear as a destination printer in the Cloud Print dialog. Select your device and Cloud Print will send a PDF to your phone, which will then automatically open it in Chrome for Android.

While you can accomplish something similar using services like Dropbox to sync PDFs to your phone (or iTunes if you’re an iOS user), Cloud Print’s print to Android is one of the easiest, fastest ways I’ve seen to get just about any file or webpage to a phone.

The only catch is that, as with the Chrome for Android beta, you’ll need to have Android 4 or better installed on your phone or tablet.

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File Under: Browsers, Mobile
Apr
18
2012

Chrome for Android Doesn’t Need No Stinking Mobile Websites

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Chrome for Android. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired.com

Google has released an upgrade for its new Chrome for Android web browser. Chrome for Android — which was released earlier this year — is still a beta release, but the latest version adds several nice new features, including a way to circumvent websites that try to force a mobile version on you.

The latest version of Chrome for Android can be downloaded from the Google Play store. Note that Chrome for Android requires Android 4.0 or better.

This release fixes a number of bugs and adds some new features, like the ability to reload a site that has redirected you to a mobile page. Despite Jakob Nielsen’s recent pronouncement that users want to be auto-redirected to simplified mobile sites, Google’s Chrome for Android developers think otherwise.

Chrome for Android’s new feature subverts websites that automatically redirect you to a mobile version by spoofing Chrome for Android’s user agent string, in this case sending the string for the desktop version of Chrome instead of the mobile (which developers should note has been updated as well).

The new feature means that if a site offers a sub-par mobile experience by default, you can always reload the desktop version with the press of a button.

Also new in this release is the ability to add bookmarks to your home screen for fast access to your favorite sites and web apps.

In addition to the new features, Chrome for Android is now available in 31 more languages and in all countries where Google Play is supported. Chrome for Android is still a beta release and there are plenty of known issues, but the browser is getting closer to a finished product.

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File Under: Browsers
Apr
12
2012

Google Adds Tab Syncing to Chrome’s Bag of Tricks

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Image: Google

Google has added tab syncing to the latest beta release of the company’s Chrome web browser. Using the latest Chrome beta you can now access the tabs open on your desktop at home while you’re out and about with your Android phone. The syncing will work with any device that can run Google Chrome.

If you’d like to test out the new tab syncing, head over to the Chrome beta channel download page and grab a copy.

As with most of Chrome’s syncing features you’ll need to be signed in to your Google account to access the new tab syncing. Once you’re logged into your Google account look for the “Other devices” menu on Chrome’s New Tab page. Click that button and you’ll see a list of every open tab on all the devices signed into that Google account.

While tab syncing is handy if you move between home and work computers, it really shines when going from desktop to mobile. If you’ve got an Android phone with the new Chrome beta installed, you’ll now be able to access any open tab on your desktop machine no matter where you are. The reverse is also very helpful, especially for those times when you encounter a mobile-unfriendly page — just open it later when you get home.

If you don’t want to trust your day-to-day web browsing to a beta release, fear not, the tab syncing features will, barring any unforeseen complications, be part of the next official Chrome release.

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