Ever wanted to have Chrome or Firefox like UI on your iPad? well wish no more as iChromy web browser for iPad is now available in the App Store and its free. As its name suggests, it brings Google Chrome like tabs and address bar to your iPad. iChromy just like Chrome browser places your opened tabs at the top of your screen, so that you can switch between webpages quickly without wasting anytime.

Some features of iChromy browser include:

• Tabs on Top : It’s very easy to open, switch and close tabs.
• Ominibox: Type search keywords or URL in one box.
• Extra space for the web content: The address bar will be hidden automatically when you scroll down the page, so you get the the extra space for web content. To show the address bar, just tap the tab again.
• Read later and Reading list (Offline reading): One click to save a page to reading list, so you can view them offline. One click to remove a page from the reading list. It’s fast to get pages in and out.
• Share to different places: Share the page to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Diigo, Instapaper etc.
• Context search: Search from context menu directly.
• Open link in new tab: Long press a link and choose different open options.

We hope Apple would bring similar functionality to native Safari browser and will also add more features to it in the coming iOS 5 update.

You can get the iChromy browser for iPad for free from the App Store here

iPhone 4 Theme for Chrome is one of the best Chrome skins i have ever came across with. The theme turns the navigation bar into iPhone 4′s side style as you can see in the image below. In the upper area of the browser you can see the official iOS 4 wallpaper image has been used to make it familiar. You can download this skin on your Chrome browser by pointing your browser to this page (link).

According to a report by StatCounter Internet Explorer’s usage share has fallen down up to 49.87 percent. Firefox holds a share of 31.5% whereas Google Chrome’s usage has tripled since last year, and has reached up to 11.54 percent. That is not too long ago when Microsoft’s Internet Explorer used to rule the web with a huge share of 67% worldwide but that has certainly been on decline ever since.

Here is the press release by StatCounter

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer Browser Falls Below 50% of Worldwide Market for First Time – StatCounter

BOSTON & DUBLIN–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) browser has fallen below 50% of the worldwide market for the first time according to StatCounter. The company’s research arm, StatCounter Global Stats finds that Microsoft IE fell to 49.87% in September followed by Firefox with 31.5%. Google’s Chrome continues to increase market share at an impressive rate and has more than tripled from 3.69% in September 2009 to 11.54% in September this year.

“This is certainly a milestone in the Internet browser wars”
“This is certainly a milestone in the Internet browser wars,” commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. “Just two years ago IE dominated the worldwide market with 67%.”

He added that Microsoft’s agreement with European Commission competition authorities to offer EU users a choice and menu of browsers from March may have tipped IE below 50% globally.

In Europe, IE market share has fallen to 40.26% in September this year from 46.44% in September last year. In North America IE is still above 50% at 52.3% followed by Firefox at 27.21% and Chrome at 9.87%.

The rise of Google Chrome in North America has also been impressive and in June it overtook Safari for the first time.

StatCounter Global Stats are based on aggregate data collected by StatCounter on a sample exceeding 15 billion page views per month collected from across the StatCounter network of more than 3 million websites. StatCounter, which provides free website traffic information, publishes browser stats in its StatCounter Global Stats, a free online research tool. It also monitors Internet market share battles including Search Engines, Social Media and Operating Systems including mobile.

For individual country analysis go to:

http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-monthly-200909-201009

Further information on our analysis is available at:

http://gs.statcounter.com/faq

About StatCounter
StatCounter, a free online visitor stats tool, was founded in 1999. It offers its members the chance to grow and improve their online businesses by allowing them to monitor the number of hits to their website; the geographical location of visitors; the various pages a visitor views; keywords used to find the site plus other features. For information on this real-time, user-friendly, and free visitor stats tool, please visit www.statcounter.com.

Engadget

The rumors have resulted to be true as Adobe has announced that its Flash Player will be included with future versions of Google Chrome. That means you don’t have to install Flash player after you install Chrome browser instead it would work as you run the browser for the first time because that would be bundled with the browser itself. So not need for a seperate download for watching flash content on the web such as videos on Youtube.

What more? The updates to Flash Player will be delivered directly via Google Chrome’s updating system, ultimately minimizing security risks that tend to surface when using outdated software and components.

You can download the dev channel build now, and yes, you can easily disable the built-in Flash Player if you like.

Google making it strong with Adobe the same company that does not has very good ties with Apple indicates the plans of the search giant.

You can read the respective announcements regarding the partnership directly from Adobe’s Flash Player team and on the Chromium blog.

[via TechCrunch]

Google Chrome has been quite a successful venture for Google and has been quite popular since its release but it still lacks a very important support that is it does not has extensions (addons as Firefox calls them) at least for now that are already available for its biggest competitor ‘Firefox’ and in thousands.

So i have come up with a list of some extensions (addons) that you can get for your Chrome absolutely free. They are not much in number but can be very useful for those who are regular Chrome users and are seeking for such addons. have a look at them all…

Cleeki

This extension is basically a feature rich search accelerator for Google Chrome. Highlight any keyword on a webpage and a little adjoining icon gives you access to a lot of internet choices from Wikipedia to YouTube to get more information. The information opens up in a little inline window, so you don’t need to browse away. Search can also be done on multiple sites at the same time.

LastPass

LastPass is an online form filler and password manager which got some high marks from us in a previous post. For error free performance, switch off Chrome’s inbuilt password manager (Wrench Icon – Options – Personal Stuff) and Form Autofill under the same tab.

AdSweep

A simple ad blocker extension that modifies the CSS rules on a webpage to hide the advertisements. The small javascript code recognizes ads (especially banner ads) based on specific patterns and blocks them. The extension may not work on all webpages because some ads may escape the recognition patterns used by AdSweep.

Session Saver

Something I really like because it harks back to the Save sessions and Manage sessions feature of Opera. It’s useful if you have to switch off and need to come back to the same tabs at some point later. This extension can save  multiple sessions each with its own name. You can also save all saved sessions as bookmarks.

Bubble Translate

This Google Chrome extension enables you to do inline translations of a webpage into any language supported by Google Translate with a single click. You can set all language choices from its settings.

Smoothscroll

This extension simply adds the smooth scrolling behavior to Google Chrome. Smooth scrolling auto-scrolls the browser at a constant speed. Click the middle mouse button/scroll wheel and drag the mouse down to set the scroll speed.

Web of Trust

WOT is a free browser add-on that protects the user from online scams and risky websites. A pop-up opens from the bottom of the screen and indicates not only the trustworthiness of a website but also how things stand with a site’s vendor reliability, child safety and privacy. You can also contribute your own ratings and select the ratings you want to get alerts on.

TPGoogleReader

This is a Google Reader extension for Chrome. The extension makes reading and managing feeds a one click job. It installs as two little icons on the toolstrip and shows the number of unread feeds. In the normal mode, clicking on the items counter opens the first unread item and marks it as read. In the auto-mode, one click on the checkbox opens the unread items in background tabs and marks them as read.

Google Chrome Backup

If the first thing you savor is peace of mind then the Google Chrome Backup is a must install. This is a small tool to create, backup, restore and manage Google Chrome profiles that holds all your bookmarks, history, saved passwords etc. This is not an extension in the strictest sense as it does not run within the browser but as a separate install. Nevertheless, it’s an important tool to have.

Greasemetal

Familiar with Greasemonkey userscripts for Firefox? Those little pieces of code that help you customize your Firefox browser. Greasemetal is the Chrome incarnation of those handy javascripts which let you modify its behavior. It’s a good extension to have because a lot of userscripts continue o be developed and are made available from sites like Userscripts.org.

Google has released the new version of its browser Chorme just just minutes ago. The new version includes a lot of cool features which were not seen in the previous ones. Google has focused on its visual appearance largely. The homepage or the new tab page has been also customized. The new version allows users to change themes that totally changes the physical appearance of the browser. The main page offers the same updates as the previous version but in a whole new way. As i said the whole new way you can customize your browser as no other browser has the feature to being able to change themes etc so this has introduced a new thing of its kind. Now we must wait and watch what other browsers such as Mozilla, IE and Opera have to bring forward against this . As  Opera has already been offering to customize the themes and installing new ones available on the internet that are user made. Now it has a competition and it has to come up with a new strategy as for as the appearance is concerned. You can update your Chrome bu just upgrading it.

The news and rumours have been circulating every where about the new operating system that would be launched by Google to challenge the monopoly of the Microsoft’s Windows as Google has always been a rival and tough competitor it was thought that Google would also try its luck in the operating system market.

Apart from the rumours Google officially anounnced that it is working on a OS that it call Google Chrome OS and is expected to release in the later half of 2010.   It is said to be open source and will initially be releasing for net books. We should keep in mind that any new OS will attract the developers who produce the applications for it and developers who make their hardwares in accord to them. The trouble Google will have to face is the large number of softwares available for the windows platform.That software includes mainstream titles such as Microsoft Office, Quicken, Adobe Photoshop, games, and much more.

But what gives Google a bit upper hand is the internet as nowdays Google is the undisputed silent king of the internet and definately it would come up with alot of such apps that are supported by its vast presence on the web.Like any other commercial company, Google is trying to make money.  But Google doesn’t make money the way other computer software companies do like Apple gets its money from iPhones, iPods, Macs or i should simply say hardware on other hand Microsoft earns from its softwares. But Google does something else it earns itself just from the internet no hardware nor software.

But one thing we should keep in mind is that there will inevitably be less to do on a Chrome OS computer than on a  Mac or Windows machine. Buying a Chrome-based Netbook means giving up the chance to run most Windows games, Apple’s iLife suite, and other popular software.But for Google, the key is this: once you’ve got a Chrome system, Google’s in charge of ALL the time you spend with it. If its on internet or just your computer it would just be ‘GOOGLE’.

And releaing OS for netbooks is not a good idea in my opinion. Because they have such small screens and may not be enough for Google’s big plans for instance.The Chrome operating system is “lightweight,” a term that Google uses, meaning the OS runs fine on less hardware. Will this provide some importance and value to people having older and slower machines as Microsoft’s latest OS Vista and now Windows Seven do not work on older machines and have upsetted  those who own such machines will they switch to Google Chrome OS or they will stick to Windows XP.We see the future being cloud computing really these days. Now we have to just wait and watch.

By Zaib Ali

ZJTechlive