Most of us have a GPU these days, a powerful one that is. GPUs from AMD (previously ATI) and NVIDIA are work horses which offer unparalleled performance in graphical and (specific) computational tasks. Efforts like OpenCL or Direct Compute exist to lend the GPU for normal applications, but it seems that web browsers specifically are taking the lead.

DVD and Blu-ray players from like PowerDVD or WinDVD, but also the recent Adobe Flash Player 10.1 use the GPU to accelerate video playback (MPEG 2, MPEG 4 with H.264). Not only does CPU usage drop, it can also help in battery usage, as GPUs are more optimized for such tasks (and swallow less due to their efficiency).

Web browsers are actually also graphics intensive applications, especially with technologies being added like direct video playback with the video-tag, scalable vector graphics, intense use of the canvas (2D/3D) element, CSS transformations (demo-ed in Safari 5) and of course WebGL (an OpenGL ES stack using JavaScript). Internet Explorer 9 was one of the first to have hardware acceleration (although Opera already made plans with their Vega library, which now is the fastest software renderer), but isn't in beta phase yet. The developers of Firefox are also working on it, but it's disabled by default in Firefox 4 betas due to its immaturity at this time.

But there is also a new contender, Google Chrome 7 is entering the arena, while Chrome 6 is still in beta. Chrome 7 (and probably successors) aim to add more and more GPU support where possible, and the current development build has some parts included already. Continuing the multi-process architecture, the GPU accelerations lives in its own process, which is good for security measurements. As it's quite a big overhaul for the graphics sub-system, it will not be completely accelerated just yet. Some parts are, some parts aren't, but with Google's intentions and quick development, it's exciting to see who'll be king of GPU accelerated browsing this year!

Finally, after a long journey of waiting, releases and looking jealously at all those Windows users, it's here. Google released Chrome 5 for all three major platforms, delivering their promise to support both Mac and Linux as well.

Not only is this the first cross-platform release for Google, but it's also a new major release by itself. One of the new features is actually an extension of the bookmarks sync functionality. In Chrome 5 it's now possible to sync settings. It's also possible to configure extensions to work in Incognito-mode (by default everything is off). Suffice to say that extensions work cross-platform as they are build using the latest web technologies on top of Chrome's public API. Talking about the web, Chrome 5 includes several HTML5 additions, such as: Geolocation APIs, App Cache, Web Sockets, and file drag-and-drop (as demoed at the Google I/O with Gmail). Other features include a revamped bookmark manager (feels more like Opera now, as it works in a tab) as well as a currently disabled integrated Flash Player. Yes, Flash, disabled. In the near future when Flash Player 10.1 is done it will be enabled. The integrated Flash has a big advantage, as it is automatically updated by Chrome itself, instead of manual labour.

You can download this cutting edge web browser from Google from the official Chrome site. It also contains some videos to convince you of its unique features (such as its multi-process architecture and superb rendering speed).

During the first day of the Google I/O conference in San Francisco the good fellows of the search giant announced WebM a new open web media format. Why is this important? Well, it seems that this could be the end game for the HTML5 video element.

Not as in the end of HTML5, but the controversy surrounding the video element itself, which didn't limit the codec used to render video. This led to fragmentation as both Mozilla Firefox and Opera only supported open and patent-free standards like Ogg Theora. The competition, including Apple Safari and Google Chrome did add support for the software patent infested H.264, making it hard to target all browsers at once. The newly announced WebM project is here to end it. With a new standard based on the VP8 codec from the recently purchased On2 Technologies, Google is opening up a new codec that offers better quality than Ogg Theora (while still using Ogg Vorbis for audio), as well as keeping it open and patent-free.

But announcing just a new codec isn't going to help by itself. For it to succeed Google needed friends and here there! On the software side both Mozilla and Opera have joined the league, Microsoft announced that IE9 will enable VP8 if it's installed, making Apple the only one left. But there is more, yes Adobe Flash is there too. Other software parties are: (Google/OHA) Android OS, CoreCodec, Skype and more. But software isn't everything, hardware acceleration would be nice too, so the following hardware companies joined as well: AMD, ARM, Broadcom, freescale, Imagination, Logitech, Marvel, MIPS, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and more. Of course, being Google means that this time all videos on YouTube will be available in an HTML 5 with WebM combination.

Google promises that tonight the new codec will be added to Chromium (and end up somewhat later in the development stream of builds), while both Mozilla and Opera already released the first test builds of their respective browsers. Hopefully the world will adopt this one standard so we can all enjoy the unity.

Last week Apple announced the iPhone OS 4 SDK, but besides receiving multi-tasking capabilities, social gaming, iAds and more, there was also a silent announcement for WebKit2. As you may know WebKit is the core of Apple's Safari (Mobile), but also Google Chrome, and Android browsers.

After a little surprise for the open WebKit world, the new engine seems to be welcomed warmly. The thing is, just like Google did with Chrome, that Apple worked on WebKit2 behind closed doors, without input from the open-source community. WebKit itself was also created by Apple, but was opened up for all to see and use, making it possible to migrate changes from WebKit into the original KHTML.

The thing is that WebKit2 is more of a name than something like a complete rewrite of every component. The effect of WebKit2's changes are nonetheless significant. The WebKit2 projects aims to deliver a "split process model" and a "non-blocking API".

Of course a split process model must sound familiar. Two years or so back Google announced Chrome which introduced a per tab (or domain) split process for the web browser. This means that some "overhead" would be introduced to have independent renderers of each web site, but would not only mean a much greater stability (if a page crashes, the rest of the browser simply continues to work), but also increased security as everything is separated. Although work on plug-ins is still going on (the plug-in API needs to be adapted for this), they were also separated from the rendering stack, which also found its way in Safari 4 for Snow Leopard and the latest Firefox nightlies. But WebKit2 does it a little different from Chrome, as Chrome actually sits on-top of WebKit to separate everything, WebKit 2 does everything already inside the engine. This approach has one huge benefit that anyone using WebKit2 can use this, think of Safari 5, Safari Mobile (for iPhone, iPod touch, iPad) and others.

Another interesting thing about WebKit2 is the non-blocking API. More and more do web sites make use of technologies like JavaScript through AJAX (or similar with JSON) and HTML5. A lot of processing is done asynchronously and this means that WebKit2 is designed to offer better ways to deal with the problems that arise from this.

As you can see, WebKit2 not only stands on the principles introduced by Google Chrome, but polishes them for Apple's own purposes, where other can benefit from. Hopefully we'll see a Safari 5 build somewhere this year to play with. The only browser that's truly left behind is Opera (IE 8 has some form of process isolation already).

Google Chrome is progressing rapidly and it certainly has been a success. Some even speculate that it was responsible for preventing Firefox the reach a global usage of 25%. Anyway, what's much more important is that Google is working hard on new technologies that may become interesting in the future.

On Chromium, the place where Google Chrome's source code lives, they've announced the ANGLE project, which stands for Almost Native Graphics Layer Engine. Its purpose is to layer WebGL's subset of the OpenGL ES 2.0 API over DirectX 9.0c API calls. As you may know, the last releases of Windows do not come with any OpenGL version bundled, and most GPU manufacturers pore more effort in a good DirectX (games!) driver, than the far less popular OpenGL (AutoCAD?).

WebGL is an effort by the Khronos Group to create a standard for 3D content on the web. You may get flashbacks of VRML or other technologies from the past, but in this case the real intend is to make it hardware accelerated. Imagine playing those Android, iPhone, iPod touch or iPad games right in your web browser without the need for a (Flash Player or Java) plug-in.

By open-sourcing the ANGLE project, Google hopes that other members of the Khronos Group (such as Mozilla and Opera) will join their effort and increase the possibility of WebGL in total as a valid and solid technology of the web. Currently WebGL is present in Mozilla Firefox 3.7 nightly builds, WebKit (not Safari), and Google Chrome developer previews.

Google is streaming the new Chrome 4.1 release towards all Windows clients as we speak. In the coming days you'll be automatically updated if you're running Chrome on Windows. This next version is, as it's number suggests, a minor update, by nice nonetheless.

Still I think this strategy of Google is quite nice and should be adopted by others. Google actually wants you to forget version numbers. In fact you're using Chrome, not really Chrome 4.1 or 5.0. The thing is, if all updates are "forced" to users, you can keep everybody up to date feature wise, as well as stability and most importantly security wise. Reports have suggested that a group of users tend to be slow in updating and may be in danger.

Anyway, back to the real deal today. This next release of Chrome focuses on three major new features: a new translator info-bar (which detects foreign languages and asks to translate it), privacy features (cookies, images, JavaScript, plug-ins, pop-ups), and XSS Auditor (disabled by default).

Of course security and stability issues were also addressed, making Chrome a better experience and place to stay as a web citizen. Do note that Google has published the names and rewards (yes you can earn money) for finding these!

If you have Google Chrome for Windows you'll get the update automatically (within a few days), if you want it right away, go to the about dialog and it should trigger. If you haven't got Chrome yet, you can download it from Google's site.

While the Windows users are enjoying the fourth release of Chrome, and Linux users were happy with extensions support, the Mac users on the beta channel had to be patient, but that is changing now, at least if you dare to use betas.

With Chrome 4.0 for Windows out of the door, it made sense for Google to upgrade all release to version 5.0, even while the Linux and Mac builds haven't seen their 4.0 release. How so? Because Google is still actively working on both releases to get them on par feature wise with the Windows release.

This time the Linux and Mac releases are first, after a beta of Chrome 4.0 there is now a beta of Chrome 5.0, which is basically a step further in maturing it for a final release (for the first time). This release especially puts the Mac platform in the spotlight as most was already available on Linux. First of all the one feature to get excited about is support for extensions. Now you can use the same Windows (and Linux) extensions on your Mac, to enhance your browsing experience, if you want to. Best of all is Google's security architecture, meaning extensions are sand boxed as well as running in separate processes. This in combination with the limitations in the API should prevent malware extensions, which plague Firefox. Another big feature is the bookmarks manager. I know it sounds basic, but it was lagging from 4.0 and has now seen an implementation on the Mac. Oddness is that it's not the same as the Windows version, but native? Other changes include bookmarks sync as well as the task manager and cookie manager.

Site preferences are missing from the Mac release, so you won't be able to tell which sites are allowed to run scripts like the Windows release, but surely this will be picked up at some point in time. My biggest concern is the use of Keychain Access by Chrome though (see issue 35351). This password manager, which is part of Mac OS X, is used by Safari and other applications to store user names and passwords. In Safari this means that after remembering it, the username and password will be automatically pre-filled in forms that match, but in Chrome it does not work like that. On the Mac you'll need to type the entire user name before Chrome fills in the password, and well, sometimes I have different user names, and typing it completely can be a pain. On Windows this problem does not exist and considering Safari just works flawlessly I hope the Chrome developers fix this for the Mac platform.

Other than that, the release feels solid as before, be sure to check it out if you're using a Mac and want something different than Safari, while using the WebKit engine.

Well, if you though last week's Firefox 3.6 from Mozilla was exciting think again. Today the fine folks at Google released Chrome 4.0 in stable release channel, bringing a whole load of new features and improvements to the normal end user.

First of all you should take notice that we're talking about the Windows release. Linux users who are using builds from the Chrome beta channel have access to most, if not all of the new features. Mac users on the other hand will have to wait a little while longer, although a lot of features are available in the unstable dev channel for the time being. That being said, Google is honestly working on getting all three versions up to speed.

Extensions, extensions, extensions!
So what's so new and great about this release that should get you all excited. Well, you have access to 1500 new features. Yes access, because for the first time Chrome supports extensions. And in the Chrome architecture way, each extension runs as a separate process, increasing stability, security and memory management. Often heard complaints with Firefox that extensions would slow everything down or eat memory can now be monitored from Chrome's task manager (right click in the tab bar). Oh and the nicest thing about them, you don't need to restart, they install in one click and work right away. Of course the extensions range from good to bad, from mature to immature, but just think about it, they've only been available in the dev and beta channels, so a lot of work needs to be done to get those extensions polished. Several extensions to block ads, social networks (Facebook, Twitter) and mail (Gmail, Wave) are available for adoption.

Bookmark synchronization, and alternatives
So is that all, well if it would, it would be one hell of a huge feature to allow features, but there's more! If you have a Gmail account (or Google account if you insist), you can now synchronize your bookmarks. This way you can access them from any computer as long as you use Chrome. The bookmarks are part of your Google Docs account, so you can also access them from there. Of course the support for extensions also allows you to use Xmarks (previously Foxmarks) to synchronize bookmarks between different browsers.

Our beloved others
But what would Chrome be without V8? And so the famous JavaScript engine that ignited with Safari's Nitro the performance war was updated to be even more on the top. Mozilla's Dromeao DOM Core tests by increased 42% in performance over the last stable release and 400% since the first stable release last year.

Support for web standards remains important, and WebKit is leading the way with in HTML 5: notifications, web database, local storage, WebSockets, Ruby support and more. And last but not least full ACID3 pass, due to re-enabled remote font support (with added defense against bugs in operating system font libraries).

Other changes include: enhanced developer tools, Skia performance improvements, HTTP byte range support, "Strict Transport Security" support, and an experimental new anti-reflected-XSS feature called "XSS Auditor".

Conclusion
Google shows that Chrome does not only fly in performance when rendering HTML or executing JavaScript. They litterally throw out new and exciting releases on a regular base using a streamlined process. I believe this release marks the turning point where it can fully compete with the rest of the markt. Mozilla surely will have a tougher opponent now that Chrome support extensions, and for IE, well, that should be a piece of cake. If Google and liverage its own popularity to diminish IE used by the average Joe and Jane, by all means! Of course we all should help open the web and support Google in our own ways. My prediction for this year? Chrome with a (near) 10% market share!

All Windows users will be automatically updated by Chrome (or can go to Tools > About) as all updates are streamed to the end users. Non-Chrome users can switch, of course, easily by downloading the installer.

Google may be the biggest competitor to Microsoft on a whole scale of non traditional ways, but one thing is definitely true, they are pushing new technologies where they can.

Where Apple dominated the new wave of touch-screen mobile devices, Android is opening up the market by exposing a similar OS albeit with multi-tasking and customization. In the same approach not pleased with the slow development of Firefox (hey where is that new update approach coming from Mozilla, and why?) they introduced a new way of browsing the web with the fastest JS performance and multi-processes.

Today is the day that they push technology in another way, though with a sharp edge to it. We already know that HTML 5 comes with the video-tag and that there have been arguments about whether support for the different encoders should be part of the specification. Currently encoders don't play a role, and Google opted for the most superior encoder out there, but with a cost.

H.264 is the new standard to be used for Google's latest HTML 5 experiment for YouTube, but the thing is only Chrome (Frame) and Safari support it. H.264 requires that you pay a certain sum, and although Mozilla must have the money (from the Google search deal), they do not support it, heck they only support the open-source OGG format.

Anyway, if you have Chrome (Frame) or Safari, you can now enjoy the HTML 5 video-tag without the need for Flash, and with perhaps better quality at the new YouTube page. You can opt-in here if you have a supported browser.