WebProNews

Tag: Web Browsers

  • Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich Steps Down Amid Controversy

    Brendan Eich has stepped down as Mozilla’s CEO following controversy about his support of California anti-gay marriage law Proposition 8 in 2008, which recently came to light.

    Executive Chairwoman Mitchell Baker announced the news on the Mozilla blog after a number of interviews Eich gave indicating that he would not be going anywhere.

    “He’s made this decision for Mozilla and our community,” she writes. “Mozilla believes both in equality and freedom of speech. Equality is necessary for meaningful speech. And you need free speech to fight for equality. Figuring out how to stand for both at the same time can be hard. Our organizational culture reflects diversity and inclusiveness. We welcome contributions from everyone regardless of age, culture, ethnicity, gender, gender-identity, language, race, sexual orientation, geographical location and religious views. Mozilla supports equality for all.”

    She continues, “We have employees with a wide diversity of views. Our culture of openness extends to encouraging staff and community to share their beliefs and opinions in public. This is meant to distinguish Mozilla from most organizations and hold us to a higher standard. But this time we failed to listen, to engage, and to be guided by our community. While painful, the events of the last week show exactly why we need the web. So all of us can engage freely in the tough conversations we need to make the world better. We need to put our focus back on protecting that Web. And doing so in a way that will make you proud to support Mozilla.”

    They’re still figuring out what the next move is as far as leadership at Mozilla. Baker says they’ll have more info next week.

    “We will emerge from this with a renewed understanding and humility — our large, global, and diverse community is what makes Mozilla special, and what will help us fulfill our mission. We are stronger with you involved,” she concludes.

    Comments on the blog post are closed.

    According to Re/code, Eich, who also co-founded Mozilla (in addition to creating JavaScript) will also be resigning from the board of the Mozilla foundation (the nonprofit behind the for-profit Mozilla Corporation). Also, according to that report, Baker said Eich had not been forced to resign by her or others on the board.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • Internet Explorer 11 Gets Enterprise Mode

    Microsoft announced that it has launched an update to Internet Explorer 11 with an Enterprise Mode feature aimed at helping businesses keep up to date with software, service, and device releases. It’s available on Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. Microsoft says it provides better compatibility for older versions of IE and tools to manage which Web apps use it.

    “Businesses can benefit from the modern Web standards, better performance, and increased security of our latest browser, while extending existing investments in legacy Web apps. And by decreasing dependencies on older versions, Internet Explorer is helping customers stay up-to-date with Windows 8.1, services like Office 365, and devices like the Surface Pro 2,” say IE program manager lead Kevin Miller and product marketing manager Fred Pullen in a joint blog post.

    “Many businesses are experiencing tension between today’s Web apps and services—which may require modern standards like HTML5 and CSS3—and older Web apps and services, designed for older versions of Internet Explorer,” the add. “Legacy apps often represent a significant investment and have long, multi-year lifecycles, effectively making these customers dependent on an older version of Internet Explorer until they can upgrade these Web apps to modern Web standards.”

    Enterprise Mode

    They note that many businesses are still using Internet Explorer 8, and that IE 11 with Enterprise Mode can provide better backward compatibility. They get into more technical details about how it does this in the post.

    You’ll also learn more about the feature from this session from Microsoft’s Build conference called “Better APp Compat with Enterprise Mode for Internet Explorer 11” when it becomes available.

    A Windows 8.1 update for iE 11 is available for download, with automatic updates starting April 8th for Windows 7 and 8.1. A Windows Phone 8.1 version was also announced. More on the browser itself here.

    Images via Microsoft

  • Google Voice Search Built Into Chrome Beta

    At Google I/O last year, Google showed off conversational search on the desktop, including the now famous “OK Google” command. In November, this functionality became available via a Chrome extension.

    Now, the functionality is coming directly to Chrome. Google announced today that it’s part of the latest Chrome Beta release. It will be rolled out to English (U.S.) users on Windows, Mac and Linux over the next several days. Support for Chrome OS and additional languages will launch soon.

    “If you’ve ever tried to cook and search at the same time—say, when your hands are covered in flour and you need to know how many ounces are in a cup—you know it can be tricky,” =ref=”http://chrome.blogspot.com/2014/02/hands-free-google-voice-search-in-chrome.html”>says Google software engineer Ji Adam Dou. “With the latest Chrome Beta, you can search by voice on Google—no typing, clicking or hand-washing required. Simply open a new tab or visit Google.com in Chrome, say ‘Ok Google,’ and then start speaking your search.”

    As I said when the Chrome extension was launched, the feature is kind of cool in a “wow, look what I can do” kind of way, but I’m not sure it’s entirely useful, considering that you have to go to the Google homepage or new tab page to use it. If you’re on another site, you have to navigate to Google, so you might as well just type in your search in the omnibox.

    Let’s hope you have Google open at all times, especially when you’re cooking. Otherwise, you’re still going to have to do some amount of navigation with flour all over your hands.

    The new Chrome Beta release also comes with some new parental controls.

    “Supervised users makes it easy to help your family members explore the web in a managed environment,” explains Dou. “You can determine sites you want to allow or block, and manage permissions for any sites your family member has requested to view. If you create a supervised user, now you can let that user browse on any device in your home with the new ‘Import’ option. When you import a supervised user, all their permissions will then be synced across devices.”

    To use this, go the Chrome menu, select Settings, click “Add new user” in the “Users” section, then click “Import an existing supervised user”. Select the user, and click “Import supervised user”.

    This is supported on Windows, Mac and Linux with Chromebook support on the way.

    Image via Google

  • Google Adds Search By Image To Chrome

    Google Adds Search By Image To Chrome

    A little over two years ago, Google introduced Search By Image, which essentially brought the mobile Google Goggles functionality to the desktop. To use the feature, you’ve been able to click the camera icon in the search box (from Image Search), and upload a photo or simply drag and drop an image into the search box.

    Now, if you’re a Chrome user, things have gotten even easier. Chrome is getting an update, which allows you to right-click on any image and perform a search by image search.

    Search By Image

    Google has gradually added functionality to Search By Image over the last couple years. Last year, for example, the feature started taking advantage of Google’s Knowledge Graph.

    “Instead of treating webpages as strings of letters like ‘dog’ or ‘kitten,’ we can understand the concepts behind these words,” explained Google software engineer Sean O’Malley at the time. “If you search with an image that we’re able to recognize, you may see an extra panel of information along with your normal search results so you can learn more. This could be a biography of a famous person, information about a plant or animal, or much more.”

    Google Search By Image using Knowledge Graph

    Also new to Chrome, for Android users, is the ability to swipe horizontally across the top toolbar to switch tabs, drag vertically down from the toolbar to enter into the tab switcher view and drag down from the menu to open the menu and select the item you want.

    Chrome for Android - Gestures

    The new updates will be rolling out over the course of the next several days.

  • Google Analytics Is About To Stop Supporting Your Outdated Browser

    Google announced on Monday that Google Analytics will no longer support IE8 after the end of this year as it keeps its focus on modern browsers.

    In a post on the Google Analytics blog, the company said:

    To focus on supporting modern browsers, we are deprecating official compatibility of Google Analytics with Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) at the end of 2013. We decided to do this to both accelerate the pace at which we can innovate new product features, and to facilitate adoption of newer web technologies in the design of the Google Analytics product. Our ultimate goal is to provide a superior user experience for every GA user. As a note, we’ll of course continue to measure traffic from IE8 browsers to your website.

    We will continue to support the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer 9 or higher, Safari and other modern browsers.

    Google says it hopes to minimize disruption by giving users three months to upgrade their browsers. It seems like plenty of time considering that IE9 came out in March of 2011. 10 was released last year. 11 is currently available in developer preview, and will launch with Windows 8.1 next month.

    Image: Microsoft

  • Chrome Omnibox Suggestions Get Recency Tweak, Browser Gets Reset Button

    Google announced a few updates to Chrome, including what the company is calling “smarter” omnibox suggestions.

    All Chrome users will start seeing omnibox suggestions that are based on the recency of sites they have visited. Google says this will resultin “more timely and contextually relevant” suggestions.

    The adjustments were made to the beta channel last month.

    Additionally, they’ve added a new way to reset your browser to how it was before you added a bunch of extensions to it.

    “And for those nostalgic for the new car smell — maybe you, too, got overzealous with fun extensions — we’ve added a new option to the Chrome settings page to let you restore it back to its original state,” says Google software engineer Mark Pearson. “And don’t worry, it won’t affect your themes, bookmarks or apps.”

    To do this, go to the hotdog icon, settings, and “Show advanced settings”. There, you will find the “reset browser settings” button.

    Finally, on Chrome for Android, Google has improved scrolling and startup performance. It also now has WebRTC support, which allows for video conversations.

  • Yahoo Has A New Toolbar, And This Time It’s Even Available For Chrome

    Yahoo announced today that it has launched a new version of the Yahoo Toolbar for web browsers. In addition to Firefox and Internet Explorer, for which Yahoo has offered a toolbar in the past, it is also now available for Chrome.

    The update is only for U.S. users.

    “The browser is your window to the world, and it’s your way of navigating the things that you do daily,” says senior product manager Umesh Joshi “The Yahoo! Toolbar helps you get to what matters the most to you – faster and easier.”

    The company recently announced that it was shutting down its other browser/browser extension offering, Yahoo Axis. Axis was launched in the pre-Marissa Mayer Yahoo days, and quickly appeared on the chopping block about a month and a half ago, along with Alta Vista and a handful of other Yahoo offerings. With the new toolbar, Axis would be fairly redundant.

    “Whether you want quick access to search, email, local weather, or world and financial news, the Toolbar gets you there, no matter where you are on the web,” says Joshi. “You can even check in on what your friends on social networks are doing with one simple click.”

    The app provides easy access to your Facebook news feed and lets you leave status updates. You can add apps and subtract apps like those that will allow you to preview or subscribe to RSS feeds, and have easy access to bookmarks.

    I’m not sure how much of the functionality isn’t available from other browser extensions, but some will no doubt find comfort in the Yahoo universe across the web.

  • Google Tests New Touch Features In Chrome

    Google Tests New Touch Features In Chrome

    Google’s Chrome Canary build, which is used for the testing of new features, now includes new touch features, such as slide-to-navigate and the ability to swipe left or right for back/forward while browsing the web.

    The Verge reports:

    Pinch-to-zoom also appears to be something Google is experimenting with too, thanks to an “enable pinch scale” option in the Chrome Canary flags. It’s more experimental than the swipe navigation, but it works as you’d expect by zooming in websites using your fingers. On Windows 8, Google is also supporting the onscreen keyboard fully in the desktop version by displaying it when you tap the address bar or text boxes.

    Obviously enabling more touch features in Chrome will make the browser all the more appealing for mobile devices, including touchscreen Chromebook products like the recently launched Chromebook Pixel, but it also illustrates a growing connection between Google’s two operating systems – Chrome OS and Android.

    Google co-founder Sergey Brin once implied that Chrome and Android would likely converge into one operating system at some point, and over the years Google has added various features overlapping the two.

    A recent example would be the conversational search feature, which originated on Android, but has made its way to Chrome.

    Back in March, Google’s former CEO and current Executive Chairman, Eric Schmidt, said that Android and Chrome would remain separate products, but that we could expect more overlap between them. And with these latest features, Google appears to be making good on Schmidt’s word.

  • Chrome Omnibox Suggestions Get Recency Adjustment

    Google announced some tweaks to Chrome’s beta channel today. The biggest change is to the omnibox, Google’s web address box, which doubles as a web search box.

    Google has made an adjustment to how recency plays into the search suggestions that appear when the user types into the omnibox. This applies to those using Chrome beta on Windows, Mac or Linux, and it starts today. Google says the changes mean you’ll get “more contextually relevant suggestions at the right time.”

    Google is also launching an update for Chrome beta on Android phones and tablets designed to improve web navigation and interaction.

    “You may notice pages loading faster, and the latest implementation of WebRTC technology allows you to chat face-to-face through your browser without installing any plugins,” says Google software engineer Mark Pearson. “Try it out by starting a conversation with a friend.”

    Also included in the main Chrome beta update are a number of of new apps/extension APIs and “lots” of under-the-hood changes for stability and performance. You can see the full list of changes here.

  • Google Now Cards Feature Spotted In Chrome

    It was a little surprising that Google Now coming to Chrome wasn’t one of the Chrome announcements Google made at Google I/O last month, but just because it hasn’t been announced doesn’t mean it’s far off.

    There have been rumors of Google Now coming to Chrome since last year, and now CNET has found notifications in the developer version of Chrome, which say “Enable Google Now Cards”.

    Google Now Notifications

    There has also been talk that Google Now could come to the Google homepage, which certainly fit right along with the recently launched conversational search feature.

    Google did launch some new Google Now features for Android this week, with some TV cards that allow users with Internet-connected televisions to tap and “listen for a TV show” in Google Now. This will show info, like cast credits, and info about people mentioned in the show. More on that here.

    image via CNET

  • Google Kills Chrome Frame, Its IE Chrome-ifying Tool

    Google announced today that it is retiring Chrome Frame, its way of “chrome-ifying Internet Explorer”. It was a way to let developers get around the not-modern-enough IE of 2009. The plug-in left beta in 2011.

    Apparently Google considers Microsoft’s browser to be modern enough now so that there is no longer a need for Chrome Frame.

    In a post on Google’s Chromium blog, Chrome engineer Robert Shield writes:

    The main goal of the Chromium project has always been to help unlock the potential of the open web. We work closely with the industry to standardize, implement and evangelize web technologies that help enable completely new types of experiences, and push the leading edge of the web platform forward.

    But in 2009, many people were using browsers that lagged behind the leading edge. In order to reach the broadest base of users, developers often had to either build multiple versions of their applications or not use the new capabilities at all. We created Chrome Frame — a secure plug-in that brings a modern engine to old versions of Internet Explorer — to allow developers to bring better experiences to more users, even those who were unable to move to a more capable browser.

    Google says that today most people are using modern browsers that support the latest web technologies, hence, the need for Chrome Frame has essentially evaporated.

    Google will stop supporting and updating the product in January.

  • Apple Adds Yandex As Safari Search Choice In Some Countries

    Apple is giving its users more search choices with its upcoming operating system releases – iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks. Both were unveiled at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday.

    In the iOS 7 demo, it was revealed that Siri has some new features, and among them are Bing web search results, not to mention Twitter search and Wikipedia content. In addition to potentially making Bing more of a factor in users’ search habits, the features also help Apple better compete with Google’s (and Android’s) conversational search and Knowledge Graph.

    But that’s not all that Apple has done with search. While the company didn’t exactly announce it, it has also made Russian search engine Yandex available as an option in Safari in both iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks. This is the case in Russia, Ukraine and Turkey, where that search engine already has a substantial user base.

    Now, Apple hasn’t gone so far as to make Yandex the default search in these countries, at least not in the beta that developers have gotten their hands on.

    Safari adds Yandex

    This signals that Apple isn’t ready to completely abandon Google just yet, despite the increasingly rocky relationship between the two companies. If you’ll recall, Apple recently dropped Google Maps for its own Maps product, and some have speculated that it’s only a matter of time before Google is no longer the default search on Apple products.

    That could still happen, and we could just be in the early stages of Apple phasing it out. TechCrunch reported earlier this year, however, that Google could pay Apple $1 billion next year to remain the default search engine on iOS. How much would Microsoft pay? Or Yandex?

    [via GigaOm]

  • Google Updates Chrome For iOS To 27

    A couple weeks ago, Google updated Chrome for Android with some new features, and indicated that an iOS update would be on the way. Today, Google launched that update.

    Chrome 27 for iPhone and iPad comes with improved voice search, faster page reloading, and some stability/security improvements and bug fixes.

    “Say what you want and get results back without typing,” Google says of the voice search feature, adding that it also includes faster voice recognition with text streamed on the fly, and the ability to et answers spoken back to you with web results tailored to your questions.

    The Android update included the ability to see search queries in the omnibox (as opposed to the long search URL). This is not mentioned in the feature list for the iOS update.

    The update is rolling out in the App Strore.

  • Google Launches ‘Roll It’ Skee Ball Game For Chrome

    Google has introduced a new Chrome Experiment called Roll It. It’s essentially a skee ball game that you can control with your phone as you play on your computer.

    To play, you touch your phone’s screen to aim, and swing it to roll the ball. With one phone, you can have up to three players. You don’t have to have Chrome on your phone, but Google says it works better. Either way, you just go to g.co/rollit, sync your device and you should be good to go.

    Earlier this year, Google launched Super Sync Sports, a similar Chrome experiment, which also lets you use your phone to control a game on your computer.

    Earlier this month, Google showed off another one at Google I/O. That one was called Racer.

    Google is certainly looking to up the cool factor for its browser-gone-operating system, and is quickly launching more and more interesting functionalities, including its new conversational search feature and in-app payments via Google Wallet.

    New notifications have also been added to the beta channel.

    At Google I/O, Google announced that Chrome has over 750 million active users.

  • Google Is Adding In-App Payments To Chrome Via Google Wallet

    The latest Chrome build includes in-app payments for Chrome packaged apps in a move that brings Google Wallet integration right to the browser.

    Google’s François Beaufort said in a Google+ post (via TheNextWeb):

    Chrome is about to support In app payments for Chrome Packaged Apps thanks to the newly embed Chrome Wallet App also available in the Chrome WebStore at https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-wallet-service/nmmhkkegccagdldgiimedpiccmgmieda.

    If you want to give it a try, make sure to run Google Chrome Canary and install the Chrome Sample App plainly named “In App Payments” at https://github.com/GoogleChrome/chrome-app-samples/tree/master/in-app-payments.

    At Google I/O earlier this month, Google announced a new way to send money via Gmail using Google Wallet, as the company continues its “one wallet’ approach, which also involves the phasing out of Google Checkout. Google Checkout for Merchants will be retired in six months as Google Wallet takes over. More discussion about that from Google here.

  • Google Updates Search On Chrome For Android

    Chrome didn’t just get a major update on the desktop. Google has also updated Chrome for Android with some new features.

    Users will now see search queries in the omnibox, as opposed to the long search URL. This makes it easier to refine the query and to view more results.

    Chrome for Android omnibox

    “To make browsing the mobile web even easier, web pages also display in fullscreen on phones,” says Google in a blog post. “As you scroll, the top toolbar disappears so you can immerse yourself in the web page content. When you scroll up, the toolbar returns so you can get on to the next thing.”

    An update for Chrome for iPhone and iPad is on the way, which will include the ability to speak searches into the omnibox. This should hit the App Store in the coming days.

    “This update also enables faster reloading of web pages by using the cache more efficiently when the network is slow, which is especially useful when you’re on the go. Finally, other iOS apps can now give you the option to open links in Chrome and then return to the app with just one tap,” says Google.

    Google has a rundown of other features for the Android app here.

  • Google’s New Conversational Voice Search Is Here (Kind Of)

    UPDATE: When asked about the “Okay, Google” feature, Google’s Matt Cutts tells us, “I think that will take a little while longer, but Chrome updates move along quickly.”

    Update 2: While we should be able to expect the “hotwording” functionality in the future, a Google spokesperson only offered, “Conversational search has started rolling out on Google.com in the latest version of Chrome. You can just click the mic in the search box, ask your question in a natural way, and get spoken answers.”

    At Google I/O last week, Google announced that it was bringing conversational search to the desktop. Voice search features available to mobile users are coming to the desktop via Chrome.

    You’re supposed to be able to just talk to Google without clicking any buttons, and ask it questions, and otherwise perform searches. You’ve been able to use Voice Search from the desktop by clicking the microphone icon for some time, but now you shouldn’t have to click.

    Unfortunately, that functionality isn’t quite available, but the Chrome update that is supposed to bring it to users has gone live, along with the makings of said functionality.

    When you update to version 27.0.1453.93, you can click the microphone icon, and it will ask you if you want Google to start listening, so you shouldn’t have to click any longer. The problem is that Google is not responding to queries after that, unless you click the mic icon as usual. It does at least speak answers back to you now. You can also continue the “conversation” in a natural way (at least on some queries), and Google will understand that you’re still talking about the same subject.

    Danny Sullivan uses the example of asking, “How tall is Barack Obama?” then asking, “How tall is he?” Google delivers without missing a step. It understands that “he” is Barack Obama. But you still have to click the mic icon.

    In the demo at Google I/O, Google illustrated that you would be able to say, “Okay, Google,” and conduct your search from there (not unlike the famous “Okay, Glass” command).

    Right now, Google may be listening to what you’re saying, but it’s not quite up to the Star Trek experience just yet.

    In the demo, Google refers to the “Okay, Google” command as “hot wording”. There does not appear to be a setting in Chrome to set a hot word.

    The feature is also a bit buggy, as people are seeing “no internet connection” sometimes even when they have internet connections:

    No Internet Connection

    This is actually happening a lot.

    [via 9to5Google]

  • Chrome Now Has Over 750 Million Active Users [Google I/O]

    Earlier, Google announced that Android has seen over 900 million activations. After talking about Android and Google Play for about an hour, the Google I/O keynote shifted to Chrome.

    Last year Chrome had 450 million monthly active users. Since then, it has added over 350 million new users in last 12 months.Today, it has over 750 million active users.

    Much of the new Chrome use comes through mobile, according to Google’s Sundar Pichai. He also talked up the Chromebooks (coming out from an increasing number of partners) and Chrome OS.

    Google also showed off a new Chrome experiment inspired by The Hobbit.

    More from Google I/O here.

  • Google Penalizes Mozilla For Web Spam [Updated]

    Update: It turns out that Google only penalized a single page from Mozilla. Matt Cutts weighed in on the “penalty” in that same forum thread (hat tip: Search Engine Land).

    Google has penalized Mozilla.org, the nonprofit site of the organization that provides the Firefox browser. This doesn’t appear to be an accident like what recently happened with Digg. This was a real manual web spam penalty.

    Mozilla Web Production Manager Christopher More posted about it in Google’s Webmaster Help forum (hat tip to Barry Schwartz), where he shared the message he got from Google:

    Google has detected user-generated spam on your site. Typically, this kind of spam is found on forum pages, guestbook pages, or in user profiles. As a result, Google has applied a manual spam action to your site.

    “I am unable to find any spam on http://www.mozilla.org,” said More. “I have tried a site:www.mozilla.org [spam terms] and nothing is showing up on the domain. I did find a spammy page on a old version of the website, but that is 301 redirected to an archive website.”

    Google Webmaster Trends analyst John Mueller responded:

    To some extent, we will manually remove any particularly egregious spam from our search results that we find, so some of those pages may not be directly visible in Google’s web-search anymore. Looking at the whole domain, I see some pages similar to those that Pelagic (thanks!) mentioned: https://www.google.com/search?q=site:mozilla.org+cheap+payday+seo (you’ll usually also find them with pharmaceutical brand-names among other terms).

    In addition to the add-ons, there are a few blogs hosted on mozilla.org that appear to have little or no moderation on the comments, for example http://blog.mozilla.org/respindola/about/ looks particularly bad. For these kinds of sites, it may make sense to allow the community to help with comment moderation (eg. allow them to flag or vote-down spam), and to use the rel=nofollow link microformat to let search engines know that you don’t endorse the links in those unmoderated comments.

    For more tips on handling UGC (and I realize you all probably have a lot of experience in this already) are at http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=81749

    Also keep in mind that we work to be as granular as possible with our manual actions. Personally, I think it’s good to react to a message like that by looking into ways of catching and resolving the cases that get through your existing UGC infrastructure, but in this particular case, this message does not mean that your site on a whole is critically negatively affected in our search results.

    Let this be a lesson to all webmasters and bloggers. Keep your comments cleaned up.

    Mozilla still appears to be showing up in key search results like for “mozilla” and for “web browser”. It’s not as bad as when Google had to penalize its own Chrome browser for paid links.

  • Chrome For Business Gets Legacy Browser Support, Cloud-Based Management

    Google announced a couple of new Chrome for Business features including Legacy Browser Support and cloud-based management of Chrome for Google Apps for Business and Education customers.

    With Legacy Browser Support, businesses that have custom web apps that were built for older browsers will be able to use them with Chrome.

    “When companies use browsers that are two or more versions old, employees and developers are unable to benefit from the incredible web innovations of the past four, or even ten years,” writes Chrome for Business & Education Senior Product Manager Cyrus Mistry. “Deploying a modern browser can help IT bolster security, reduce support costs, and improve browser speed and usability for employees.”

    “With Legacy Browser Support, employees on Chrome are automatically switched to a legacy browser when they begin using an older app,” he explains. “IT managers simply define which sites should launch from Chrome into an alternate browser, and then set this Chrome policy for all employees. And while Chrome Frame helps developers build apps for older browsers, Legacy Browser Support lets IT admins of organizations embrace the modern web.”

    With the cloud-based management feature, employees will be able to access default apps, custom themes, and curated app web stores when they sign into Chrome with their work account, whether they’re on their work computer or their personal computer.

    Admins can customize over a hundred Chrome policies and preferences for employees.

  • Spell Check Improvements Come To Chrome Stable

    A month ago, Google announced Chrome 26 Beta with improved spell check capabilities as it refreshed the dictionaries the browser’s default spell check uses, and started supporting proper nouns. It also started supporting Korean, Tamil and Albanian.

    Spell Check

    Google announced the improvements to the stable release today.

    “In addition, users who add custom words to the dictionary can now sync their settings to bring those changes to all the devices where they use Chrome,” says Google software engineer Rachel Petterson.

    The ‘Ask Google for suggestions’ spell checking feature, powered by the same technologies used by Google search, now supports grammar checking, proper nouns, homonyms, and context-sensitive spell checking in English,” she adds.

    Windows, Linux and Chrome OS users will get the enhancements in the coming weeks, as Google continues to work on Mac support.