Mac Chrome release set for first half of 2009

Posted on 12 Jan 2009 at 12:19

Google has promised to release a Mac version of its Chrome web browser in the first half of 2009.

Brian Rakowski, Chrome's product manager, told Cnet that the company has working versions for both OS X and Linux, but that there is still much to be done.

The Mac version “is able to render most Web pages pretty well,” he said. “But in terms of the user experience, it's very basic. We have not spent any time building out features. We're still iterating on making it stable and getting the architecture right."

Google recently outlined a list of new features which they are implementing in the next version of the browser, but its list has annoyed WebKit developer Brent Fulgham.

Like Apple’s Safari, Google uses the WebKit engine to render web pages. But Fulgham says that Google appears to be claiming WebKit advances as its own.

“Among their new features and bug fixes attributed to the Chromium team, they highlight two significant new features that were both provided by the WebKit project: Full page zoom [and] Autoscroll,” he notes on his blog. “There is also a bit of vague hand waving about the great tools in Chrome, including the Web Inspector and Acid 3 compliance, both of which are actually provided by WebKit.”

In other words, those features that Google is extolling for Chrome are just as likely to appear in any other browser based on WebKit, of which there are more than a dozen.

Author: Simon Aughton

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