Google Chrome at Google I/O 2010

We kicked off Day 1 of Google I/O this year by highlighting the progress of the web platform.

The Day 1 keynote included a number of exciting announcements and demos from the Chrome Team. To demonstrate the power of building with HTML5, Sundar Pichai invited on stage a number of Chrome partners, including Clicker who demonstrated the power of video and highlighted one of the big open questions for the web: the need for a freely available, high quality video codec for the tag. With the support of Mozilla, Opera, and Adobe, we announced the launch of the WebM Project, which makes a high quality video codec freely available to everyone.

We also announced the upcoming Chrome Web Store, which will launch later this year to help make great web applications more discoverable. We showed how rich web apps and content like Sports Illustrated will be discovered, launched, and even purchased from the Web Store when it launches later this year.

In addition to our keynote announcements, the Chrome Team also led a number of sessions throughout both days of the conference, focusing on Chrome, HTML5, and the web as a platform.

Here’s a recap of what was covered in our sessions:

• Beyond JavaScript: programming the web with native code - Although JavaScript performance is rapidly increasing, there are still applications for which native code is a better choice. Learn about Native Client and how you can use it to build rich applications with all of the advantages and power of the web.

• Chrome Extensions - how-to - Google Chrome shipped an extensions API in version 4.0. Since last year, new capabilites have been added to the extensions framework, and many people have already written powerful extensions with minimal effort. Find out how to write an extension, and what's coming next in Chrome Extensions.

• HTML5 status update - Where is HTML5 today? What new features are now broadly supported, what features are on the horizon, and what features are on the chopping block? How do we decide what to implement, what to propose, and what to drop? Find out.

• Developing web apps for the Chrome Web Store - Google Chrome is a powerful platform for developing web apps. With Chrome web apps, we're making it easier for users to discover and use these apps. Learn how to build and sell apps for the Chrome Web Store.

• WebM Open Video Playback in HTML5 - The new open VP8 codec and WebM file format present exciting opportunities for innovation in HTML5 . In this session, you'll see WebM playback in action while YouTube and Brightcove engineers show you how to support the format in your own HTML5 site.

• Google Chrome's Developer Tools - In this session we'll give an overview of Developer Tools for Google Chrome that is a part of the standard Chrome distribution. Chrome Developer Tools allow inspecting, debugging and tuning the web applications and many more. In addition to this overview we would like to share some implementation details of the Developer Tools features and call for your contribution.

• Developing With HTML5 - This session covers the HTML5 APIs available to Google Chrome and Google Chrome OS applications and Google Chrome extensions. Learn how to design web applications for a Google Chrome OS netbook using the latest web technologies.

• Using Google Chrome Frame - Google Chrome Frame brings the HTML5 platform and fast Javascript performance to IE6, 7 & 8. This session will cover the latest on Google Chrome Frame, what it can do for you and your customers, how it can be used, and a sneak peak into what's planned next.

In case you couldn’t attend in-person, all the links above include videos and slides from each session. You can also find all the Chrome session videos on this YouTube playlist. Thanks to everyone who showed up this year and made Google I/O such a great event.

By Ian Fette, Google Chrome Team

Chrome Extensions for Web Development

The Chrome Developer Tools are great for debugging HTML, JavaScript and CSS in Chrome. If you're writing a webpage or even a web app for the Chrome Web Store, you can inspect elements in the DOM, debug live JavaScript, and edit CSS styles directly in the current page. Extensions can make Google Chrome an even better web development environment by providing additional features that you can easily access in your browser. To help developers like you, we created a page that features extensions for web development. We hope you’ll find them useful in creating applications and sites for the web.

For example, Speed Tracer is an extension to help you identify and fix performance issues in your web applications. With Speed Tracer, you can get a better idea of where time is being spent in your application and troubleshoot problems in JavaScript parsing and execution, CSS style, and more.

Another useful extension is the Resolution Test that changes the size of the browser window, so web developers can preview websites in different screen resolutions. It also includes a list of commonly used resolutions, as well as a custom option to input your own resolution.

With the Web Developer extension, you can access additional developer tools such as validation options, page resizing and a CSS elements viewer; all from an additional button in the toolbar.

Another extension you should check out is the Chrome Editor that allows you to easily code within your browser, so you don’t have to flip between your browser and code editor. You can also save a code reference locally to your computer for later use.

These are just a few of the extensions you can find in our extensions for web development page. You can also look for more in the extensions gallery.

By Koh Kim, Google Chrome Team