Posts Tagged ‘Chrome’

CSS 3.0 Maker helps you visually create next-gen CSS

Friday, September 3rd, 2010

Another day, another CSS3 playground. Are you excited yet? Wait for it – this one has wood paneling for a background! (That’s classy!) Even though it’s not exactly the first tool of its kind (or the second, … or the tenth), CSS 3.0 Maker is pretty handy and comprehensive, so I decided it was worth covering. Let me quickly sum it up:

I like:

  • That it provides clear compatibility information for Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Chrome (no IE, of course). You can see exactly which browser versions support your bleeding-edge CSS.
  • That it’s visual and real-time.
  • That it provides code that works across as many browsers as possible, including browser-specific syntax (think -moz-border-radius for Firefox).
  • The wood paneling! It makes me feel like I’m in a sauna.

I don’t like:

  • That it won’t let you set all parameters at once. After altering the style of a
    you can change the border radius — but upon clicking the gradient tab, your change is undone. It’s pretty irritating and almost relegates this to “toy” status.

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Games (including EA’s) to be front and center in Chrome Web Store

Tuesday, August 17th, 2010

Right now, the jury’s out on Chrome Web Apps — but there seems to be more than a little confusion about what they are and how they’ll work. Sure, some of them will be little more than packaged versions of web apps you use right now like Gmail and Seesmic with support for some nifty Chrome features like notifications — but others will make use of Native Client, Pepper, and O3D… And that includes full-on games, baby!

We’re not just talking Plants vs. Zombies or Bejewelled here either (no offense intended). In the top right corner of 1Up’s screenshot you can clearly see FIFA 10 — and you’ve got to think that if EA is on board with one title, they’ll be bringing more to the table as well.

1Up’s post also shows Google demonstrating other in-browser games like the Quake demo their own devs released, Freeciv.net, Google Pac Man, and a Flash version of Lego Star Wars. The page for Plants vs. Zombies is also shown with a price of $3.99 — not to bad for one of the most addictive little games I’ve played in a long time. There’s also a ‘try it free’ button so you can count on being able to test drive at least some of the games and apps in the store prior to plunking down your cash.

I don’t know about you, but the more details that surface the more excited I’m getting about the Chrome Web Store opening its doors. Now, when am I going to get my hands on a shiny piece of Chrome OS hardware….?

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Google Chrome passes Safari to become #3 browser in the U.S.

Monday, June 28th, 2010

Google Chrome continues its charge ahead, and has finally overtaken Safari to become the third most popular browser in the United States. With 8.97% of the total browser market, Chome now sits behind only Firefox and Internet Explorer — both of which will take a little more time to catch.

Globally, Chrome fares better still — with a 9.4% share. That’s a pretty meteoric rise for a relatively young browser — though when you’ve got a Google-sized marketing networking and partners galore, it’s a little bit easier to pull off.

I know it’s not even two years old yet, but frankly I’m amazed that it took this long for Chrome to surpass Safari. What about you?

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Apple posts a new HTML5 demo page — for Safari only

Friday, June 4th, 2010

Whether you’re on Team Apple or Team Adobe in the whole Flash vs. HTML5 brouhaha, you really can’t dispute just how nice some of the new HTML5 and CSS3 features are, and while Microsoft was quick to throw a demo page up to tout IE9’s capabilities, Apple for some reason waited until yesterday to post one for Safari.

…And they locked it down with user-agent detection to allow only people using Safari to view the demos. Anybody using something other than Safari to check the page out will be greeted with a box telling them to download Safari the moment they try to view one.

The ironic part is that Apple felt that people using, say, Chrome shouldn’t be able to use any of the demos shown on the new HTML5 and Web Standards demo page, while any HTML5-capable browser can play with the demos on Apple’s Safari Technology Demo, where all the same demos can be found, along with several others. Using both Chrome 5 and 6, I was able to use every demo except Video, VR, and Movie Trailers (which worked but couldn’t load the actual trailer video). All three of those demos needed Safari to load the H.264 successfully.

I’ll be the first to admit that Safari’s been way ahead of the curve HTML5-wise (it’s been able to do just about everything in these demos since last year, including video), but I think it’s a bit on the daft side for their marketing team to block Chrome users from trying the demos on the page that’s labeled HTML5 and Web Standards. A simple disclaimer saying that Safari may do a bit better would have probably sufficed, and now everyone is going to call them out on it — like this.

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