As previously anticipated, Chrome OS is a Linux distribution that includes a custom version of Chrome as the default browser. Google has recently posted a build of the custom Chrome and some people installed the .deb package (it's no longer available officially, but you can download it from other sources).
Chrome for Chrome OS is not very different from the browser you can already install in Windows, Linux or Mac. The main difference is that the browser includes UI elements from a traditional operating system: clock, battery status, network settings.
Since Google Chrome will include most of the features that are necessary to use an operating system, it's obvious that the browser is the only visible component of Chrome OS, a lightweight browser-centric operating system.
There's no reason to anxiously wait for Chrome OS, when you can already use Chrome in your favorite operating system and get the same features. A metaphor has become reality, but the result fails to impress.
Chrome OS, an Extended Google Chrome
Portable Google Chrome
PortableApps.com started to offer a portable version of Google Chrome for Windows. Due to the licensing terms of Google Chrome, the site offers a small application that downloads Google Chrome's installer, extract its files and installs a portable launcher. Copy the resulting folder to a USB drive and you can launch Chrome on multiple computers without leaving traces.
A much better idea would be to run Chrome using "roaming" profiles and save your settings and data online. Hopefully, Google Browser Sync will return in Google Chrome. There's already an experimental feature that synchronizes bookmarks with a Google account.
Google Chrome Converts User Scripts into Extensions
A recent Chromium build added a feature that converts user scripts into extensions. Until now, Google's browser didn't provide an interface for adding and managing user scripts, so you had to manually copy the scripts to a folder.
"Lots of users still complain that Chrome does not support Greasemonkey user scripts. Even though we have had the infrastructure in place to handle user scripts for some time now, it has never been clear how the feature would relate to full extensions, and so it has remained incomplete," explains Aaron Boodman, a Google Chrome developer who created the Greasemonkey extension.
Now you can visit userscripts.org and any other site that links to Greasemonkey scripts and other flavors of user scripts, click on the link to a *.user.js file and install it in one click.
Like any other extensions, user scripts can be disabled or uninstalled by visiting chrome://extensions/ or selecting "Extensions" from the Tools menu.
This feature is only available in the latest Chromium builds, but it will soon be added to Google Chrome's dev channel, which already enables the support for extensions.
This week, Google released the first beta version of Chrome 4 for Windows, so the stable version should be available in the coming weeks. Chrome 4's major selling points should be the support for extensions and the long-awaited Mac & Linux ports.
Google Toolbar's Features in Google Chrome?
Google received many complaints that Google Toolbar is not available for Chrome, so it created a page meant to convince users that "many Toolbar features are already built right into Google Chrome".
The page explains that Google Chrome already includes a search box, a pop-up blocker, a new tab page, a spell checker and it offers a list of bookmarklets that let you create bookmarks, translate web pages or view Sidewiki annotations. Some of the explanations are plain wrong:
"Like Toolbar's 'AutoFill' button, Google Chrome shows you text you've previously entered on websites, to save you time and typing."
Obviosly, Google Toolbar's autofill feature doesn't have anything in common in Google Chrome's autofill, other than the name. Like most browsers, Google Chrome auto-populates the text field with information you've entered when you visited the same pages before. Google Toolbar lets you save personal information (name, email, address, credit card information) and complete web forms with one click.
"Google Chrome's built-in spell-checker, similar to Toolbar's 'Spell check' button, automatically checks your spelling whenever you fill out a web form."
That's true, but Google Toolbar uses an online service for spell-checking and the results are much better. Try typing "Engsh" in Chrome and you'll see that the suggestions are "Eng sh" and "Eng-sh", which Google Toolbar's first suggestion is "English".
"The find bar feature in Google Chrome works like the Toolbar 'Word find' button. Matches to your search term are automatically highlighted on the page. Plus, you can use the yellow markers on the scrollbar to quickly see where all the matches are located on the page."
Google Chrome's find bar doesn't work like the Toolbar's highlighting feature: the keywords don't show up automatically when you perform a search and you can't find the occurrences of the individual keywords.
I think it's a bad idea to claim that Google Chrome has many features from Google Toolbar and to list some features that are available in many browsers, including Internet Explorer.
The reason why Google Toolbar is not available for Google Chrome is that Google's browser doesn't have an extension API, at least not in the stable builds. The extension API is still a work in progress.
"We're working with the Google Chrome team to develop a Toolbar extension, as well as bring some of our most popular features to Google Chrome," says Brian Rose, who works on the Google Toolbar team.
Google Chrome OS Event
