Chrome Extension Gallery Main Page

One of the most interesting thing about Chrome Extension gallery, when Google unveiled it few months ago, was the fact that they were showing the most popular (read: most downloaded) extension right on the front page. This is interesting because two of the most popular all time extensions are also ad blocking extensions. Google’s main revenue source, as you might know, is online advertisements.

At the end of last year one of those Ad blocking extensions (AdThwart) became the most popular chrome extensions, so naturally it was on the top of the list on the front page. I checked back few days later to see that AdThwart magically went down from number one to number three most downloaded and all the download count was much lower than it originally showed. (Yes, I was actually interested in popular extension download count.)

I can only speculate here than Google was not comfortable with the idea of an ad blocking extension being the most popular extension, so they manually adjusted it. Even so, AdThwart was still in the top six on the front page, until yesterday. I know this because I check the gallery now and then for try out something new and I was there last night and I saw it right in the front page in the same order as they show in the Most Popular list.

Today, after reading about the official support of Greasemonkey scripts (as extensions) for Chrome I wanted to check out if they were also listing those extensions on the extension gallery. I was surprised to see that the popular list on the main page does not show the most downloaded extensions in the correct order. As a matter of fact it doesn’t represent any kind of order in terms of popularity. Every refresh (wait few minutes) shows a new list of extensions. After six tries I got six separate  list of extensions and none of them were any ad blocking extensions (Your mileage may vary).

So what does it all mean? For starters, obviously someone in Google doesn’t think it is a great idea to give such easy access to ad blocking extensions right on the front page. As of this writing, the Most Popular list still shows two ad blocking extensions on the top ten list. Will it still stay the same when Chrome becomes more popular and ad blocking extension user count rolls in to millions? What’s stopping Google from blocking these extensions in the future when user base reaches a critical mass?

These are some of the tough questions Google will need to face in the future as Chrome becomes more popular.

Most Popular Extension Gallery

I will try to give my take on iPad from a neutral point of view. My experience with apple products comes from Macbook, which I extensively use everyday and iPhone, which I have been using for almost 2 years now. But I am not an Apple only product user. Before moving to Macbook for most of my development work, I have been a long time Linux user and I still use Linux based distros quite often. Also I am one of the early adopters on Windows 7 (and used almost every single windows version ever released) since the Release Candidates. The point of sharing my experience with computer products and OS is to let you know that I am not an Apple fanboy by any stretch of imagination. Personally I feel that fanboyism for any consumer product is silly and stupid.

Having said that, I can see a lot of positives of Apple iPad platform and I am hoping to share it with you from a neutral point of view by addressing some of the negatives that have been pointed out by early reviewers.

On Flash.

The absence of flash on iPad has been the biggest cause of concern from all parties. It is important to note that iPhone doesn’t support flash either. Yet, despite all the naysayers about the lack of flash support for iPhone, iPhone is the most successful Apple product since iPod.

The official Apple position against flash support has been the that Flash has very bad performance issues. As a matter of fact one of the biggest cause of Safari browser crash, according to internal Apple report, has been flash. And it is not only with OSX, flash always had performance issues under windows too – perhaps not as much as it is under OSX – but it is still quite significant. The biggest example of how unpopular flash performance is, you just have to look at all the flash blocking extensions available on Firefox and Chrome Extensions gallery. They are also some of the most popular browser extensions out there.

Besides stability and performance concerns, flash also has security concerns. Flash had a role in the recent Google hack (IE also played a big role). The problem is not so much as how unstable and unsafe Flash is, I think all softwares had to go through these issues at some point in their history, but how lazy Adobe has been to address these issues over the years.

It is only recently that Adobe started to address performance issues in a proactive way with flash (as they have with Photoshop CS4). But I think it is too little and too late for Adobe. We have already seen that Google and other video sharing sites has been also offering HTML 5 video streaming along with Flash. Obviously, the transition won’t happen right away, but it is inevitable that the future of online video ( and animation) does not belong to Flash. The only way Flash can survive from here is to open up their technology so that everyone can improve it and not wait for Adobe to fix things (if at all).

Flash is more than just video, a lot of online ads and games rely on flash and this is where the second big reason why Apple is not supporting Flash on iPad.

Apple’s biggest profit source (at least in the long term) is not so much as the iPad or iPhone platform, but the marketplace eco system apple has built up with App Store, iTunes and now iBookstore. If Apple supports flash in its current form, as you are used to on your desktop, than it will make those marketplace almost irrelevant and take out a big chunk of apple’s profit margin. The sheer volume of high quality flash apps (games and traditional online applications) out there, mostly free, will make the whole concept of App Store irrelevant. This is also true for flash based music services and, to some degree, flash based online book readers.

By making sure that apple can sustain the marketplace eco system (at the expense of blocking flash), they have been able to offer iPad at a price that was, to most of us, quite unbelievable. As a matter of fact, I think most tablet (that will surely follow soon) will have a hard time matching iPad’s price in compare to the value it offers.

So in defense of iPad, considering the future of Web standard, not having support for flash was the right thing to do. It benefits Apple by opening a new and sustaining proven business model of App Stores. It benefits users in terms of cheaper iPad and stable and secure platform at the cost of flash support and closed environment.

iPad is just a big iPhone. Just another closed environment.

The argument is that iPad OS is the same as iPhone OS, so essentially it is nothing more than  a big iPhone.

Personally I think it is a poor argument. Apple had to make a decision between porting OSX for iPad or using iPhone OS (which is based on OSX with different UI). Apple did neither. Even though iPad at first glance looks like it is using iPhone OS, it is not an exact copy of iPhone OS. It has many enhancements over iPhone OS and will have its own collection of iPad only apps, tailor made for the platform.

As much as most of us would love to have a tablet with OSX – it is not very practical. From Apple’s point of view, it will open up the platform for everyone, thus making all the marketplace that apple is relying on both for making iPad cheap and a source of long time revenue, will be obsolete.

From a user’s point of view, besides getting a reasonably priced tablet, it will also bring all the stability that closed platform brings. A good example that I can think, is all the gaming consoles out there like PS and Xbox. They can maintain the stability of their system mostly because of closed environment the platform is built on. If those gaming consoles had an open platform where you can install virtually everything you could possibly think of, like you do in your desktop computer, it would have also faced all the problems of an open platform. This doesn’t necessarily mean that an open platform is better than a closed platform, as a long time Linux and open source enthusiast, I don’t share that argument or logic. I think a closed platform like gaming consoles and iPad and iPhone would perform better under such circumstances. Besides the small community of hackers who likes to tinker with system setting and customization, the majority of users don’t care about open platforms. At the end of the day – how the majority of the users will use the platform is all that matters.

Another good example of closed system, even in the open source world, is Chrome OS that is under extensive development by Google. Even though the Chrome OS source is free and open, the environment is set up in a way that is inherently closed and restricted in what you can or you cannot do. The OS itself is a browser stack used as a desktop environment and what you will be able to with that Chrome OS is limited to what browser will allow you to do, unlike traditional OS. The benefit is stability and performance – the target is majority of user base out there who spends most of their time on the browser.

So, in defense of iPad. Even though a closed system looks like a bad thing, IMO its advantages, for general users, far outweighs its disadvantages.

Who needs a tablet? I can’t do x with it like in my desktop/laptop.

The short version is that if you can’t see a use of iPad it is not for you. The same way if you can’t see the benefit of notepad, its not for you. Or if you don’t see the benefit of a 27′ monitor its not for you.

Clearly not all consumer product is made for all consumers. Big corporations like Apple spend large amount of time and money doing research on their target audience of their future product. They just don’t wake up one day and decide to built a tablet computer. In all likely iPad is a result of 3-4 years worth of research and development both in the technology and UI and its target audience. So to argue that most people won’t find any use of such a device is a bit pre-mature.

A tablet computer like iPad is not meant to be a replacement or an alternative choice for your desktop/laptop/notebook system. A tablet like iPad seems to fill a void of general purpose system for MOST computer users. I don’t think it is too much of a wild assumption to say that most people care about a device that can be used for email and web surfing and play videos in a form factor that is convenient to use. Also using it as an e-reader or office documents is a plus.

So, in defense of iPad. I see a clear market for such a device – considering the form factor, UI and price range.

Last word.

Obviously, my views and arguments can be considered somewhat biased, since I actually like the device and a sucker for touch screen general purpose computer. However, I don’t have my credit card in hand waiting to buy it whenever it comes out – unlike most Apple fanboys. I will wait for reviews from actual consumers and perhaps even wait for the second iteration to come out. Looking at the history of new apple products, they usually go through some drastic change in its early few iterations before it reaches an equilibrium where changes from one generation to another is much more subtle and incremental.

Most of us know that Opera has been at the forefront of Browser innovation for the longest time, yet remains at the bottom of pile when it comes to desktop browser market share. Its a sad story and even the best of us have a hard time figuring out why this is so. But this doesn’t stop Opera from making major innovations and changes with each new release.

With Opera 10.5 Alpha (Evenes), released today, comes a brand new JavaScript Engine (Carakan) written from scratch, and some major UI changes.

You can read more about the UI changes from Opera Blog, we will focus on the new JavaScript Engine performance.

Before this release Opera had one of the slowest JavaScript engine, after IE8, by a wide margin. Compare to the last release the JavaScript performance improvements done in this release is quite stunning. Webkit (used by Safari and Chrome) has been, for the longest time, de facto JavaScript engine in terms of performance but the latest Opera Alpha JS even beats the webkit nightly builds. But so does the Chrome dev builds. A lot of users might not know this; even though Chrome uses webkit as their rendering engine they have done a lot of JS performance of their own, which is why Chrome outperforms webkit nightly in the latest builds (read more here and here).

Let’s look at the current standing in JS performance according to SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark:

Note: Your mileage may vary depending on the OS and hardware you are using. The above benchmark was done on Windows 7 64bit.

Edit: Typo shows its chrome 2 dev, actually it was Chrome 4 dev (4.0.266.0 to be precise). Will fix it soon. Fixed

You know that the guys at Microsoft has done something right when there is a Mac app to emulate Windows 7 UX. Cinch is an OSX app that emulates Windows 7 application resize feature when you drag an application window to the edge of the screen. Its one of those feature that you didn’t know could be so intuitive and useful before you used it.

You can try Cinch for yourself for free for limited time but will cost you $7 to buy it.

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Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Browser Version Market Share

However, the US internet users don’t share same browser preference as the rest of the world. IE8 still dominates the browser market here in US, but not by much (only ~3%). I think it is fair to say that by the first quarter of next year, Firefox 3.5 should be the leading browser in US.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Browser Version Market Share

We recently added a twitter account and rolled out a face book page. If you haven’t noticed it or following us, we need you to take a minute to follow us on twitter and be a royal fan on face book.

For the survival of mankind and the future of everything that is geeky. Do it.

Have faith, Geeks will prevail.

Such an open access point could be a trap set up by a knowledgeable person with bad intentions, with proper tools they can not only log all your online activities but can also gain access to your email, bank or financial website information that you access to using their internet connection. A smart and capable hacker can hijack your session when you are connected to your bank or email account without actually having username and password for your account. For some sites without proper security measures username and password can be viewed in plain text using a sniffer, as shown below.

In the above demonstration as you can see with the correct tools (in this Cane and Abel) anyone can sniff out critical access informations to websites you visit. Please note that the above example  is just a demonstration and banks usually don’t pass plaintext username and password like shown here.

To protect yourself, avoid connecting to open Wi-Fi access point, whether you know the source or not. If you absolutely have to connect to an open relay, try to avoid logging to password protected websites.

Chrome Browser dev channel user-agent string under Windows 7:

Operating System:    Macintosh WinNT

Browser:             Safari 1.3

                     Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US) AppleWebKit/532.5 

                     (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/4.0.249.11 Safari/532.5

Chrome OS user-agent string:

Operating System:    Macintosh UNIX

Browser:             Safari 1.3

                     Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; CrOS i686 9.10.0; en-US) AppleWebKit/532.5 

                     (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/4.0.253.0 Safari/532.5

Even though the Chrome browser running on Chrome OS seems to be dev builds of the browser, the underlying OS identifies itself as CrOS i686 9.10.0, or more specifically version 9.10. This might have something to do with the fact that Ubuntu developers have been privately working with Google on Chrome OS way before it was officially announced in July 2009.

Taking these information into consideration I think it is safe to conclude that, under the hood, Chrome OS is nothing more than a stripped and dumbed down version of Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic koala with Chrome browser acting as a light-weight desktop environment (similar to XFCE or xubuntu).

Chrome OS is a lightweight Linux distribution based on Debian that depends on a lot of open-source software like Host AP Linux drivers, PAM, Syslinux, IBus, ConnMan, XScreenSaver.

The only thing that was stopping me from making a full migration to Chrome was the excellent Firefox web developer’s add-on Firebug. Any decent web designer/developer will tell how powerful and time saver Firebug is. Webkit powered browser’s like Safari and Chrome also comes with a built-in web developer’s tool called Web Inspector, which is decent but lacks a lot of great features available with Firebug.

With the recent Web Inspector update, available on webkit nightlies, they just might have one-upped firebug with some great new features. Since both Chrome and Safari runs on webkit, its only a matter of time before this becomes officially available to your webkit powered browser, in the meantime you can use the nightlies to get a taste of the new Web Inspector.

Some of the new features includes:

- Editing Element and Style Properties.
- Custom CSS Rules and Selector
- CSS Color Representations
- DOM Storage
- Keyboard Shortcuts
- View Cookies information
- Event Listeners
- Syntax Highlighting
- Debugging Ajax

Get a complete list of new features here.