Category Archives: Chrome

Chrome

ChromeOS In VirtualBox – Test Drive It

In a lot of cases you wish to develop to the new Chromebook but don’t have the hardware or just want to be more productive while working on your 8-core linux box… In these cases, there is a good option to run the latest ChromeOS inside Virtualbox (or VMware if you have it). A quick reminder, Chromium OS (which is the open source version of ChromeOS) is a project that aims to build an operating system that provides a fast, simple and more secure computing experience for people who spend most of their time on the web. In our tutorial here we will use Chromium OS images.

 

 

 

The steps to follow

  1. Download VirtualBox.
  2. You can build your own OS if you wish, just go to: chromium-os and read the details.
    However, there is an easy way – just download an image of Chromium OS – I have one for you here or just type http://bit.ly/crOS-16.
    And this guy is creating lots of fresh images of Chromium OS every day. So if you want the real ‘development’ (=alpha) version of it – check it out.
  3. Open the VirtualBox and click on ‘New’ button (upper left corner) – You will get this:

Choose Linux and Ubuntu and click ‘Continue’.

Next you need to set the memory – make sure to set an amount that you can devote to VirtualBox without killing your machine. Something around 1500MB should work. If you have more, even better.

The last part of this wizard is to choose the image file. Click on the radiobox and point to the place you save the image file of ChromeOS.

Next dialog will show you a summary of all the details and after you will click ‘Create’ you are good to go!

Tips

  • Make sure to open ‘Setting’ of your new virtual machine and under ‘Processor’ click the PAE checkbox. If you won’t do that, you will get the ‘black screen of death’ and the machine won’t start.
  • If you getting errors while loading – sometimes it’s due to lack of memory. Try to close some applications and start the virtual box again.
  • Make sure you have something like 100mb of memory to the ‘video memory’ under the display section in the settings.

 

3 Minutes Video Tutorial

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Chrome

A New Release Of Chrome 15 For Chromebooks

A new release of Chrome 15 (on the Stable Channel) is out there for Chromebooks: Acer AC700, Samsung Series 5 and Cr-48.

Release highlights:

  • New Chrome 15 functionality including the new tab page (which you can see a short introduction video in the bottom of this post).
  • New Web UI Login – IMHO, much simpler and nicer.
  • Support playback of key media codecs
  • Improve video decode performance
  • Add concept of preferred networks
  • New ‘Games’ and ‘Music’ apps by default
  • NTFS support
  • Add localized text for recovery
  • Networking improvements
  • Crash fixes & Security updates – because you must have them both in any good product today.
The current version is 15.0.874.117 (Platform version: 1011.118)

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Chrome, life

Great Apps For Your Chromebook

Web-based applications are programs that are designed to be used entirely within the browser. Using apps, you can do anything (well, almost!).

These days, web apps are capable of dynamic functionality that you expect from desktop applications on your computer. If you use services like Gmail or Google Maps, you’re already using apps! Apps have the following advantages over desktop applications:

  • Apps install in seconds, with one click of a button. When you install a web app from the Chrome web store you get some nice new features like: unlimited offline storage, geo information, notifications etc’. So as a web developer, you might want to use this channel to make your users happy (or happier).
  • Apps are always up-to-date. Because apps are hosted on the web where they can be instantly updated, you can be sure you’re always using the latest version of the app that’s available.
  • Apps won’t crash your computer. If one app misbehaves, just close its tab in the browser. Your browser and computer won’t be affected.
Here are three lists with good (to great) web apps to make you (even more) productive.
If you have other suggestions, please let me know.

Apps For Everyday

If you want to… On a Chromebook, you could use…
Save a file Google Docs (which are working great in offline mode since June 2012) or Box or the Generic solution CrOS Save that will give you Dropbox and many other cloud solutions.
Read my email Gmail or other webmail services like: yahoo, hotmail etc’.
You can also try Offline Gmail to be productive on the times you don’t have an internet connection.
Organize my events on a calendar Google Calendar (which work offline!) or 1Calendar
Write a document Google Docs (which work offline!), Scratchpad or Quick Note
Chat with friends and family Google Talk or IMO
Watch a movie, clip, or tv show Netflix or YouTube
Edit a video or movie Stupeflix or YouTube Video Editor
Listen to music Pandora or MOG
Organize and save my music Google Music or mSpot
Edit or create music Aviary Audio Editor or Beatlab
Play a game Angry Birds, WGT Golf Challenge, or explore more games
Edit, organize, and store photos Picasa Uploader, Aviary or Picnik
Draw a picture Sketchpad or Sumo Paint

Apps At School

If you want to… On a Chromebook you could use…
Take notes or write a document Google Docs, Scratchpad or Quick Note
Create a presentation Google Docs, SlideRocket, or 280 Slides
Create a spreadsheet Google Docs or Zoho Sheet
Keep track of things to do Google Tasks or Springpad
Do research for my project Google Books or Academic Earth
Plan for a project Zoho Projects or SmartSheet
Do some calculations Calculator app or Scientific Calculator
Look up word definitions Google Dictionary
Keep track of time Alarm clock app

Apps At Work

If you want to… On a Chromebook you could use…
If your company uses Citrix to host applications and you wish to work on them in remote. Citrix Receiver
Do your tax (hopefully before April) Turbo Tax
Work on your mail while you don’t have connection (e.g. flight, train etc’) Offline Gmail
If you hungry and want to cook something tasty. Gojee
Write a document Google Docs or Zoho Writer
Create a presentation Google Docs, SlideRocket, or 280 Slides
Create a spreadsheet Google Docs or Zoho Sheet
Manage accounts and taxes Wave Accounting or Zoho Books
Organize personal finances Mint or CashBase
Develop or debug code Cloud9 or Koding
or just go deep with my post on the subject
Here is a good intro to ‘what is a web app’?
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Chrome, HTML5, webdev

Web Workers (Part 3 Out Of 3) – Shared Wrokers

Shared Worker Example

Web Workers - The bookA web worker is a single JavaScript file loaded and executed on a separate thread (=background and not the UI thread). Dedicated web workers are linked to their owner/creator which is the script that called and loaded them. Shared web workers allow any number of scripts to communicate with a single worker.
Btw, if you missed Part1 and/or Part2 of this series, you might want to read them first.
Shared web workers are identified in two ways: either by the URL of the script used to create it or by explicit name. In the code below we will see how it can be done.

<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8" />
<title>Shared Web Workers: Show And Tale</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Shared Web Workers: Show And Tale</h1>
<article>
To create a shared web worker, you pass a JavaScript file name to a
new instance of the SharedWorker object:
<br/>var worker = new SharedWorker("jsworker.js");
<br/>
<output id="result"></output>
</article>
<script>
var worker = new SharedWorker('sharedWorker1.js');
worker.port.addEventListener("message", function(e) {
document.getElementById('result').textContent += " | " + e.data;
}, false);
worker.port.start();
// post a message to the shared web worker
console.log("Calling the worker from script 1");
worker.port.postMessage("script-1");
</script>
<script>
console.log("Calling the worker from script 2");
worker.port.postMessage("script-2");
</script>
</body>
</html>
// This is the code for: 'sharedWorker1.js' file
// Shared workers that handle the connections and Welcome each new script
//
var connections = 0; // count active connections
self.addEventListener("connect", function (e) {
var port = e.ports[0];
connections++;
port.addEventListener("message", function (e) {
port.postMessage("Welcome to " + e.data +
" (On port #" + connections + ")");
}, false);
port.start();
}, false);
view raw shared-worker-ex.html hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Shared web workers can:

  • load further scripts with importScripts()
  • attach error handlers, and
  • run the port.close() method to prevent further communication on a specific port.

Continue reading →

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Business, Chrome, HTML5, webdev

HTML5 Live London – Trip Report

The conference took place on Oct, 19 2011 in the Barbican Conference Centre London. My two goals where to expose enterprise web developer to the new features that HTML5 provide today and to show them how they can leverage these features when they are building enterprises web apps. The other part was to talk with CIO/CTOs about Chrome OS and to ‘bind the dots’ on: how chrome OS harnessing business and developers with more power. Overall, it was a great event in terms of the quality of the audience. Lots of enterprise web developers from financial institution, health care and other big organizations. Some of them are still struggling with IE and the Chrome Frame was a big exciting news for them. Other points I’ve took with me:

  • The Chromebooks were a big hit – everyone love them! I got lots of questions and the major points where around:

    • Security

    • Total cost of ownership (70% reduction)

    • Battery life (8.5h)

  • In the future, I should bring few Chromebook and have a table in the main show so people could ‘play’ with them between sessions.

Here are some of the presentations from the event:

Lastly, I would like to thank the amazing crew of Kaazing – They organized a great event with lots of interesting talks.

I hope to see you there next year…

Be strong.

 

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Chrome

How To Make Your Chromebook (Even) Faster?

Here are few tips to get your Chromebook to run (even) faster:

  • First, check if you don’t have too many tabs open – after all, if you open 217 tabs it might be ‘a bit’ too much for the memory. It’s like in any other computer, the memory got its limitations.
  • Go to: chrome://flags/ and disable all experimental flags – just to be on the safe side. Lots of them are not taking any ‘extra’ CPU cycles, but I like to keep things as trim and simple as possible.
  • Make sure you remove (or at least disable) unused extensions. You can go to chrome://extensions/ in order to remove them or just right click on their buttons.
    Of course, that some extensions like: LastPass and others here (on your browser) to stay. After all, there are some extensions that give certain users a lot of power that ‘worth’ the tiny bit of power they are consuming from the device.
  • Sometimes click on Shift-Esc to open the processes list. There you can remove/kill processes that are consuming too much CPU/memory.
If you got some other tips – please let me know with the comments here or on @greenido
chromebook 5
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Chrome, webdev

Why Chromebook Is Perfect For Schools?

All the main reasons in less then 133 seconds.

For teachers, you might want to check the section of ‘Education’ tools in the chrome web store. It’s full of powerful apps.

For students, Chromebooks are fast, simple, and secure, and these benefits can be quite powerful in the classroom. Chromebooks increase time spent learning with a super-fast bootup, protect against viruses with built-in security features, and provide seamless access to all the great educational apps on the web. Plus, regular updates from Google mean that Chromebooks actually get better over time, saving thousands of dollars on maintenance and software upgrades.

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Chrome, HTML5, webdev

ChromeOS In 5min Video



In this short screencast I’ve touched on:

  • What is ChromeOS?
  • Why it’s great for users, business and developers.
  • How a good web apps look like.
Until next time, please be strong and happy.
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Chrome, webdev

Want To Test Drive Chrome OS On Your Laptop?

Here is a place with nightly builds for VMWare, VirtualBox and your USB. If you wish to see the magic on your netbook… why don’t you start with a USB build and see how it’s working for you?

Good luck & be strong.

P.S
(!) Important tip… go to the virtual box setting pane and under CPU make sure the ‘PAE’ is checked. This will save you a lot of white hair.

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Chrome, HTML5

How Easy Is To Use A Chromebook?

Very easy and if you are a (happy) user of gmail your life will get better from the first minute you are logged in. If you have other email service it’s also cool. I’m using both yahoo and gmail on it and it’s working great with both of them.

The ability to run gmail in offline mode is also a doable on a Chromebook. It’s very useful, specially, to people the travel a lot and can’t count that their favorite airline will have wi-fi. I’m writing this post from a Chromebook… but since wordpress don’t have a good webapp with some offline capabilities – I’m using ‘Write Space’. Write Space is a customizable full-screen text-editor that lives in your web-browser. It is designed to minimize the distractions that come between you and your writing and the offline capabilities are really working.

If you are a new to Chromebook – check this one and a half minute demo:

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