This is the first issue of Google Chrome Update for Web Developers. In these regular updates, we'll inform you about new features enabled in Google Chrome and announce updates of Google Chrome related developer events. We will also be sharing samples and highlighting cool extensions and HTML5 apps written by the developer community.

What's New in Google Chrome?

The Google Chrome Beta channel for Mac and Linux has been updated to 5.0.307.7 and the extensions gallery now offers more than 3000 extensions for users to choose from.

For Google Chrome extensions, we've just released a couple of new experimental APIs, including a history API. Since these are experimental APIs, the extensions gallery won't allow you to upload extensions that use them. However, we'd like to encourage you to read the documentation, give it a try, and send us your feedback.

Last but not least, the new Google Chrome stable release has many new HTML and JavaScript APIs including WebSockets, Notifications, and Web SQL Database. We are interested to hear how you've been using these APIs. Please share with us the cool applications you are building.

Samples and Tutorials

We've been working on creating samples to help you implement certain functionality in your extensions. You may be interested in viewing the source code for extensions that:
  • Merge all of the open tabs into a single window.
  • Use OAuth to connect to web services.
  • Make cross-domain XMLHttpRequests from a content script.
  • Display page actions based on the current URL or the current page's content.
Upcoming Events

We are pleased to announce that we will host a series of Google Chrome developer events over the next month in the following cities (dates in local time):

  • Sydney, AU - Mar 5th
  • Tokyo, Japan - Mar 11th
  • Austin, TX - Mar 14th - Mar 15th
  • London, UK - Mar 16th
    • Meetup, HTML5 and Google Chrome extensions (sign up here)
  • Madrid, ES - Mar 18th
    • Google Chrome hackathon @Universidad Complutense de Madrid (sign up here)
We also plan to hold events in Germany and will be announcing more information about those soon, so stay tuned!

Let Us Know What You Think

This is just the first post of the many Google Chrome developer updates, let us know what you would like to see in future updates and follow us on Twitter at @ChromiumDev.

Posted by Vivian Li, Developer Advocate