YouTube Cosmic Panda

YouTube tests a new border code-named Cosmic Panda. There are many cosmetic changes: videos are centered, player's wheel are now black, video thumbnails are a lot bigger, suggestions are displayed below the video, profile photos are displayed next to the comments, channels and playlists have a totally new layout.

Probably the most attractive thing about the new interface is a Chrome-only feature that lets you play a video in the background while you visit a channel. YouTube is more fluid and I wait for to see a similar feature when you perform a search and when you click "view all comments".

The new border can be enabled and disabled at youtube.com/cosmicpanda.

Chrome Shifts Into a New Gear

Chrome 12 is now obtainable in the stable channel and all the Chrome users can try the new features.

1. App search in the address bar.

2. Clear Flash cookies (or Local Shared Objects) using the "Clear browsing data" dialog, in its place of visiting a webpage.

3. Chrome Sync no longer uses a modal dialog and it's now properly included with the tabbed settings page.

4. Safe Browsing borrowed a feature from Internet Explorer 8: checking downloaded files for malware. Right now, this characteristic only works for Windows executables and shows a small message in the download bar.

5. No more Gears in Google Chrome. You'll no longer be able to use any app that relies on Gears to give skin like offline storage or web workers. The only Google repair that still used Gears was Gmail.

6. Hardware accelerated 3D CSS (or 3D transforms). Chrome's blog suggests to try "Shaun the Sheep", an experiment that uses WebM video and 3D CSS to create an immersive app.

7. Chrome for Mac asks for substantiation when using Cmd+Q to quit the application. "When you press Cmd+Q, it brings up the floaty panel telling you to hold the key combo. When you do, it quits after 1.5 seconds." That sounds irritating.

8. Print and Save buttons in the PDF viewer.

9. A better border for adding start pages.

No More Offline Gmail in Google Chrome

Chrome 12, the upcoming version of Google's browser which is likely to be free today, removes a useful feature: the built-in Gears plugin. While most Google services dropped support for Gears and detached offline way in, Gears is still being used in Gmail. Google no longer maintains Gears, which is now legacy software, and focuses on implementing offline hold up using HTML5.

But why remove Gears hold up without implementing the features using HTML5 first? Google says that you'll only need to wait for a few weeks or you can still older versions of Firefox, Internet Explorer and mail client such as Thunderbird or Outlook.

"The new Gmail Offline ability is targeted for delivery as a Chrome browser web app this summer. As we move the Gmail Offline capability to a Chrome web app, we will denounce the Google Gears-based Gmail Offline. This coincides with the version 12 release of the Google Chrome browser which no longer supports Gears. As a result, Google Gears-based Gmail Offline will no longer work with the Chrome browser as of Tuesday May 24, 2011. Google Gears-based Gmail Offline will carry on to work in Internet Explorer 8 and Mozilla Firefox 3.6," explains Google.

It's not the best thing to do after believable users to switch to Chrome and use Web apps, but it's just a temporary issue. If the HTML5 offline Gmail wasn't ready to be free, removing Gears from Chrome could have been delayed.

7 Chrome Annoyances and How to attach Them

Google Chrome was free more than two years ago and it's the browser of choice for many people. Despite having won hearts for its speed and grace, Google Chrome does have some slight flaws that you might want to fix. Here are some of them:

1. No confirmation when closing multiple tabs

Google Chrome does't show a caution when you close a window with multiple tabs. If you by chance close Chrome windows, you can install Chrome Toolbox. The next time you close many tabs, you'll at least get a caution.

2. Basic history page

Google Chrome's history page is pretty basic and you can't limit the list to a certain time interval.

The History 2 extension comes to the release by allowing you to sort web pages based on the day/week you visited them. History 2 allows you to delete numerous items from your history page at the click of a button – something that's not probable by default.

3. Missing image properties

There's no way to quickly examine an image when you're in Chrome. Luckily, you can install Image Properties Context Menu, an addition that lets you right-click on an image and find in order about the image size, location, dimensions and more.

4. No support for feeds

Chrome simply doesn't distinguish RSS feeds and all you get is a page with gibberish text. If you install the RSS Subscription addition developed by Google, you can quickly subscribe to any feed using Google Reader, iGoogle, Bloglines or My Yahoo.

5. You can't send a web page by email

While other popular browsers allow you to rapidly send any web page you're viewing by email, such an alternative is nowhere to be found in Google Chrome.

Worry not, because you can make a simple Javascript bookmarklet to open your default email program with the current URL. If Gmail is what you use, you can otherwise install the Send from Gmail extension to send the web page to Gmail.

6. No session manger

Closing Google Chrome and reopening it does not reinstate previously opened tabs. In order to do that, go to the Options dialog and enable Reopen tabs that were open last.

If you want higher session saving options like the ability to create multiple sessions, try the Session Buddy addon for Google Chrome.

7. You can't switch to a tab from the Omnibox

Firefox 4 lets you switch to any open tab by typing applicable words into the address bar. If you'd like to see a similar feature in Chrome, install the Switch To Tab extension.

The next time you contain too many open tabs, just type sw followed by some words from the page. Hitting Enter switches to the tab that's listed as the first match.

Have you ever wanted to switch from Chrome to another browser because of a missing feature? Did you mange to find a workaround or an addition that adds the missing feature?

Block Domains from Google's Search Results

Google has released a Chrome addition that lets you block domains and sun domains from Google's results. If you not at all find the results from experts-exchange.com useful, you can now click "Block experts-exchange.com" next to a search result from this site and you'll add the field to your personal blacklist.

Unfortunately, the extension does little more than storing a list of domains on your computer and beating the results from those domains. It's not tied to a web service and the blacklist is not saved to your Google account, so that you could use it from a different computer or another browser.

Matt Cutts says that the list of domains you've infertile is sent to Google. "We will study the resulting feedback and explore using it as a potential ranking signal for our search results."

Google Search Wiki used to offer a similar feature, but you could only use it to hide from view certain results. Blocking domains is more influential and it will be interesting to see if it will become a regular Google search feature. I think it's too influential and it might lead to unintended consequences: for example, some users might hide a domain just since a web page is not very helpful.

Voice Search for Google Chrome

Voice Search is a Google Chrome addition that lets you search using your voice. It's not urbanized by Google, but it uses an untried Chrome feature called form speech input. The feature is enabled by default in the dev channel builds, but it can be physically enabled by adding a command-line flag.

"Voice Search comes pre-loaded with the subsequent default services: Google, Wikipedia, YouTube, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo and Wolfram|Alpha. You can also add your own user-defined search engines. It also integrates a speech input button for all websites using HTML5 search boxes. This addition requires a microphone. Speech input is very experimental, so don't be astonished if it doesn't work. Also, try to speak clearly for best speech credit results," suggests the author.

Speech gratitude is limited to English and it doesn't work very well, but this addition is a good way to test a feature that will be enabled in the prospect Chrome releases. If you have a website, it's quite easy to add support for speech input, but it may take a while until Google's Speech Input API requirement becomes a standard and all browsers apply it.