Chrome 11: Talk to me

Chrome 11 contains some really great improvements including:

HTML5 speech input API
GPU-accelerated 3D CSS
The brand new shiny Chrome icon

Anyone?

 

Thanks!

JR, have you tried the speech thing?

 

I'm using 11, but I cannot imagine what I'd use my mic for in a browser. If Google plans on letting me record my voice to login to youtube, they have another thing coming. Icon... whilst I generally like it, it seems to look really bad on XP machines, which as you know, shrink down the icon into the taskbar. It looks a lot better on 7 machines, which generally have larger icons. I guess what I'm saying is it looks terrible when it's small.

 

I like the most, that they have finally removed that silly Other bookmars menu, but I have recently moved to Stable version, so I have to wait for it a little longer.

 

Same here. The updates were getting quite overwhelming. Even version 10 has been updated three times.

 

There's already an extension to help things along:
http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/23/speak-to-search-chrome-extensio/

 

I kinda understand speech input on a smartphone, but on a computer?
Whatever, guess it could help some people.

 

I have a feeling it means, as the story says, that we will see a Chrome browser on mobile platforms in the not so distant future. It could just be a "show and tell" for Google, as far as putting it in the desktop browser at this point in time. The only thing I don't want them to do is to add things in, just for the sake of adding it in.

 

They're only on version 11 of Chrome? Damn their development team is so slow!

 

Just installed 12.0.712

 

Are you kidding? Comparing to Firefox or IE Chrome is a rocket!

 

Pretty sure he was due to the sarcasm emoticon.

 

True. Guess some people do prefer the glacial pace at Microsoft and Mozilla.

 

The matter of development cycles is sometimes presented in a misleading way. Making the cycle shorter means there will be less change/improvement in the software compared to a longer cycle. I actually prefer a shorter cycle, but it's silly when people say Chrome is moving so much faster than Firefox because it's up to version 10. If you ignore the version numbers and just look at the functionality Chrome, IE 9, and Firefox 4 are all at roughly the same level. Firefox 3 ( unlike IE 8 ) did keep improving through incremental updates, but Mozilla did not choose to change the version number every time they implemented a small improvement.

 

Agreed.

The main benefit of Chrome's development cycle is that new features are pushed out to users as quickly as possible, yet receive adequate testing from 5 separate release channels. The feature count isn't necessarily proportional to the version number, but any misunderstandings regarding this matter certainly isn't coming from Google.

 

Absolutely spot on.

And regarding Chrome's numbering, they keep saying that numbers don't matter but use them all the same

 

You're more than welcome to propose a better way for developers and buildbots to keep track of which fixes and features went into which build.

 

Date versioning, companies like AMD use it for their drivers.

 

Except that date versioning doesn't really allow one to track where/when the build was branched off, is a really bad idea when you maintain 5 different build channels, and release hundreds of test builds across multiple channels every day.

I've never seen a real-life user think that browser X is better than browser Y just because the version number is higher. All I've seen are online trolls trying to make an issue out of it.

 

Yes, it's a good thing and I don't see Google misrepresenting the "numbers" either, but for some reason even some people in the tech world point at the quick version changes as proof of faster progress. I think they're just bored and want new software faster, which I can completely relate to

 

It depends on how you define "progress". If it's the rate of improvement, then not necessarily, no. If it's the rate at which improvements are delivered to users without forcing them to run untested (and possibly crashing) code, then yes.

Personally it's one of the reasons I stick with Chrome, even though I believe Firefox 4 currently has a slight edge over Chrome 10; Google has a predictable and steady schedule that will deliver Chrome 11 in a few weeks, while Mozilla's track record of horrendous project management means we're likely to continue to be stuck at Firefox 4 for a year or so.