Re: Chrome OS
 

That's fantastic!

I'm working to move my common operations on the web as well. This makes system administration, security, applications, etc, much, much easier.

Care to share what you and what your students will be doing on these?

Re: Chrome OS
 

This is a neat project, for an easy-to-install web SSH terminal for your server!
http://code.google.com/p/shellinabox/

As I understand it, the browser acts as a thin-client in that all processing is done via the server. Communication between client-server is encrypted via SSL.

This is nice in that it doesn't require a separate web server. Something like this is very useful.

I would also like to see a complete client-side SSH client. Something like this could be completely held in an HTML file, or installed as an 'extension' in chrome. In this way, it would be usable for a number of different servers without requiring a dedicated webssh-server on each server you want to connect to.

Re: Chrome OS
 

The Chrome Dev Channel has been updated to version 13.0.761.0

Here is the version information on my system:
Looking good! Here is a link to the changelog.
http://build.chromium.org/f/chromium...4747&mode=html

Chrome's development is incredible. The aggressive 6 week release cycle has proved amazing progress in just one short year.

Re: Chrome OS
 

A Chrome 9+ TLS 'false start' optimization has shown terrific compatibility (0.4% incompatibility -- but shrinking) and a whopping 30% reduction in SSL handshaking latency:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HEDDbzyoGJ...rt%2Bgraph.png
http://blog.chromium.org/2011/05/ssl...e-results.html

Here's a rather dry (though official) read on TLS False Start:
https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-bm...-falsestart-00

Since increasing amount of encrypted traffic is proliferating on the net, this is a great implementation and likely one of the reasons chrome feels so fast.

Re: Chrome OS
 

A rather interesting rumor has 'handwriting recognition' coming to Chromium OS:

http://cdn2.ubergizmo.com/wp-content...andwriting.jpg
http://www.ubergizmo.com/2011/05/exp...ing-chrome-os/

Having an active digitizer in the oversized touch pad of a laptop (ala Wacom Bamboo) would be a dream for artists and annotators alike. This would allow for some very interesting web applications.

Imagine actually signing off on something? Or how about painting a picture? What about a hand written note to a loved one? How about drawing a diagram on some written notes?

Powerful indeed, though niche. I don't think that these capabilities necessarily have to be built into Chrome OS, though it would be nice if a laptop manufacturer had as much foresight. Still it would take a 'standard' to account for pen pressure, tilt, and orientation.

Re: Chrome OS
 

Woah, Chrome 13 is taking minimalism to a new level. Users can now 'hide' the URL bar from the browsing window (available in canary or nightlies).
http://www.conceivablytech.com/wp-co...05/urlbar1.jpg
http://www.conceivablytech.com/7485/...hromes-url-bar

What you're left with is just browser tabs and the web page.

I don't know how well this works, but I'm looking forward to playing around with it!

Re: Chrome OS
 

Here is a great video on accessibility in Chrome via the Chromevox extension (among other things):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAzY2MQxJDQ

I love it! Although I'm not disabled, I could actually see using some of these features on a day-to-day. But this is great for individuals that have challenges accessing the web.

All built in HTML5 and javascript! Amazing!

Re: Chrome OS
 

Really big fan of the minimalistic browser so I just installed Canary build 13.077 for Windows to try this out; looks interesting. Ultra minimalistic/keyboard-only browsers such as UZBL on ArchLinux, ended up to be a little too hardcore for my needs (pretty much everything is customizable, but you end up spending more time tweaking the browser, than actually browsing...). So, with Vimium for Chrome and the option to kill the URL bar, Chrome/ium is coming together nicely indeed. Some debate on the Arch forums that FireFox 4-PGO is still actually faster than the latest Chrome/ium, and with FF's tweakability FF still would be king of the hill. I personally end up dabbling for a week or so with the latest FF or Opera build, yet always end up back on the Chrome side. I'm not a fan of Google, but have to give them the nod for browser design.


edit: after a few minutes with this new hide-URL feature my verdict is: f**king love it! as the article suggests, beware of phishing sites as the complete URL is not obvious at first glance. all i have visible is the tab(s), with show/hide bookmark bar via ctrl+shift+b, great improvement on screen real estate!

Re: Chrome OS
 

Very cool verdict regarding the URL bar. I'm personally a big fan of the get-out-of-my-way-so-I-can-surf, and I really like this idea. Of course, I always check the URL when doing an oauth, openID, or secure transaction, so I suspect that this should be used by 'power' users that don't take phishing lightly.

I'm very curious as to the latest firefox build -- specifically its JS speed comparisons with V8 crankshaft. As you probably know, there are quite a few speed metrics that measure page loading speed, handshaking latency, dom performance, javascript performance, and more than a few sub-categories in each.

Anyway, back to the point:
This hidden URL bar would make surfing on a chromebook an absolute pleasure, or in general, regardless of your OS. There's something about a full screen, yet functional browser that's so enticing.

I would also like to see a Ubuntu 11 style scroller, or at least the option to hide the page scroll bar. With two-finger scrolling on chromebooks (and many notebooks these days), as well as scroll wheels, I would appreciate not looking at the eyesore which is the side scroll bar for a full-screen surfing experience. As it stands, I barely use my scroll bar now (save for really long pages). I just use the mouse scroller instead. But it would be nice to have some functionality -- hence something similar to the Ubuntu scroller.

I could even live without the scroller entirely if there was automatic scaling between scroll speed and distance traversed. So for example, if I make one huge scroll it will take me farther than a small one. This will make it easier to get to the bottom of the page. Again, keep it optional.

Re: Chrome OS
 

ditto on scroll bar. 99% of the time I don't use it. either mouse wheel or touchpad edge scrolling/"j" and "k" under vimium. funny though, until you mentioned it, the scroll bar hogging real estate wasn't bothering me; now I can't stop staring at it. now I want uzbl's max.screen functionality - well, without the config.file tweaking of course :)