JQuery, probably one of the best libraries for JavaScript development, is being adopted by Microsoft and Nokia.

Microsoft is going to include JQuery in the future versions of its Visual Studio developer tools. According to C|NET News, the library will continue to adhere to the MIT license. On the other hand, Nokia will be adopting JQuery for use within their WebKit based Web Run-time, a simplified browser rendering engine that makes application development a lot easier.

Both companies will continue to contribute to JQuery through patches, bug reports, and will not actually change the library for implementation within their products.

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Finally got some time to post this. I’ve been using Chrome for about two weeks, so here are my observations (subjective, yes).

First of all, it is very fast. It loads faster, pages load faster (when burdened with lots of JS), things simply work faster. Great, but there are glitches and plenty of them:

- when bookmarks bar is disabled I can’t access my own bookmarks any other way except to re-enable the bar again
- first exploit? (via Dave Naylor’s site)
- erratic behavior especially when quickly closing a few tabs; page goes blank, even though previously loaded the content at the URL given in the address bar; once clicked on the address bar, page loads again
- opening multiple tabs can cause it to freeze temporarily (5 tabs seem to do it for me)
- appears to be faster, but mostly on applications that are JS intensive; not that much difference on “normal” pages
- browser tab switching hangs for a while current tab is still loading (similar to FF behavior)
- mouse scrolling and click-scrolling doesn’t work occasionally, while page is loading (cause probably similar to tab switching behavior)

Then there are page layout rendering differences (mostly regarding CSS), like here (on one of the sites I frequently visit):

These guys found a rendering difference in WordPress 2.6.

Security issues are unavoidable, and Chrome is not immune to them it seems.

Here are a couple of “official” resources, in case you didn’t catch all the introductory info about the new browser initially:

Google Chrome Forum
Google Chrome Developers
Google Chrome Features

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It’s amazing what can be done with SVG and VML. Raphaël is a great example of what can be done with graphics in modern browsers. It’s a JavaScript library that enables users to view vector graphics in their browsers, using SVG and VML as base for graphics creation. This way, every created object is a DOM object which means events and handlers can be attached to them, and the objects themselves modified. Right now the library supports Firefox 3.0+, Safari 3.0+, Opera 9.5+ and Internet Explorer 6.0+, which pretty much covers the largest portion of internet users, except for Google Chrome (already number 4 browser in the world) which has a little trouble rendering the effects (for example Text Rotation). Nevertheless, a great advancement in web graphics.

They’ve got some very cool demos so check them out - Reflection, Image Rotation, Text Rotation (this doesn’t work very well in Google Chrome).

[Via: SitePoint]

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Google is releasing its browser Google Chrome to the public. Starting today, the browser should be available in more than 100 countries. Its an early launch, but like they pointed out on the official G blog - they like to “launch early and iterate.”

The download should be available from this address.

Google has released a document explaining the Chrome browser from top to bottom, and they’ve done it, in their fashion, through a cartoon slide show, which is available here. Basically, among other things, it’s about tabs as separate processes which enables the browser to do parallel processing, reducing memory consumption, and improving reliability of the browser, which is especially important during time, money or communication sensitive activities on the web (browser failure during online payment, or email editing, etc). The interface is meant to be as simple as possible. What’s also interesting is the approach Google has taken on testing the new browser against different pages and content available on the web. Basically, they are using their own search index to access pages that are ranked well, which should produce test results against content that is most viewed by web users everywhere. Chrome will make use of Gears to give it local storage capabilities. The rendering engine used in Chrome is Webkit, and there is advanced support for JavaScript, through the so called V8 Java Virtual Machine.

There is much more about it, so take a look at the Chrome cartoon.

It will be interesting to see how many people will actually use Chrome in the months to come. Apart from Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox (ok, and Safari), it’s good news another browser is available as an alternative, possibly with improvements that will make web browsing a better experience. Google certainly has a large user base, so I expect many people will download and use the new browser. Regarding standards, I expect at least a FF level of standards compliance, if not better.

Update: screenshots and demo videos on TechCrunch.

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Another great idea from Mozilla Labs (Aza Raskin, to be more precise). Like the Aurora I posted about a couple of weeks ago, this is also a nice vision of what web-browsing should be all about. Check it out in the video below:

I like the idea of having everything available through a few clicks in the browser. The fact that we’d stay within the same application interface is good, as I find jumping from window to window tiresome sometimes, so the idea scores big points right there. If you prefer to read, here’s an in-depth blog post about Ubiquity that goes into the details of what the concept is all about and how it works.

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