If you haven’t received the update yet, you can force a check by clicking the wrench menu and then “About Google Chrome.” Downloads are also available from Google’s early access channels page.

It’s not without bugs, though. @keshav and I have both had a glitch which seems to occur when using win+d to show the desktop where tiny windows will appear along the top of your taskbar (pic after the jump).
I’ve also experienced a problem similar to the one which plagued Firefox when support for this feature was first added: the spinning blue circle. It seems to occur mostly when (wait for it)…an uncooperative Flash embed appears on a web page.

It’s finally here, and while it’s not really a browser the technical preview of Internet Explorer 9 is now available for download from Microsoft. I’ve been curious how it would compare performance-wise with other browsers, and now I’ve got an early answer.

In short: it’s better than IE8, but the IE9 preview still lags well behind its rivals.

In Peacekeeper, the IE9 preview scored 929 — well up from the 580 posted by IE8 on my system. Still, that score is less than 1/3 those from Opera 10.50 and Chrome 5 and half that of Firefox 3.7. You can check out my graph in more detail here (note that Peacekeeper reports IE9 as IE8 on the chart).

The Acid3 result is better than IE8 as well, though the 55/100 is still well short of a respectable score.

It’s important to note that this is a very early look at the upcoming browser, so there’s still plenty of time for improvements to be made. Here’s hoping Microsoft builds on what looks like a good start and delivers a browser that competes with the likes of Chrome, Opera, and Firefox.

Update: Non-scientific timings: IE9 loads Facebook.com in the same amount of time (+/-.05s) as Google Chrome 5. IE9 is 5 seconds slower loading GMail (can’t say that’s a surprise).
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To that end, Mozilla has put together a draft spec (which you can view at Google Docs) which would add new extensions to the HTTP client/server communication process for authentication. They’ve also released an experimental add-on for Firefox called Account Manager which you can use to demo proposed system on a handful of sites. Right now, Facebook, Google, Yahoo! and three Mozilla sites (Addons, Personas, and Bugzilla) should work — Mozilla has hard-coded support for them into the addon itself.

Facebook worked nicely. After logging in, the key icon in my toolbar illuminated and clicking it revealed that, yes, I was logged in to Facebook as myself. I didn’t have the same luck with Google, but that’s to be expected at this point.

Anyone who wants to can code in support for the spec can check out the draft doc and implement support on their sites, and the code for the Account Manager addon is available as well.

Since I’m familiar with the bike routes in my area, I put Google’s biking directions to the test, and they worked well. The biking directions included the most bike-safe bridge in my area, as well as a route to downtown that’s already well-known to area cyclists. Well done, Google! Because the directions are still in beta, Google is asking that you use caution when following them, and report any problems with the suggested routes.
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Today I discovered Planet M.U.L.E., a free remake and tribute to the original game and its designers. And what a remake! Somehow Planet M.U.L.E. has managed to update the game with better graphics and sound, and yet still keep the simple charm of the original.

The game is not a clone, or a take-off on M.U.L.E.; it’s a faithful remake that replicates the fun of the original game while adding in online multiplayer functionality. And amazingly, it’s available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux!

If you remember M.U.L.E. and would like to relive the fun of colonizing planet Irata, you have to drop everything and head over to Planet M.U.L.E. now. And if you don’t remember the original, but are open to playing a classic game that promises great strategic gameplay, give it a try. You won’t be disappointed.

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The gfx.font value above is a new about:config value which toggles GPU accelerated rendering via DirectX 11’s DirectWrite and Direct2D. Like many newly-added features, it’s disabled by default — here’s how to flip the switch:

• head to about:config and search for gfx.font
• double click gfx.font_rendering.directwrite.enabled to enable it
• right-click and create a new integer called mozilla.widget.render-mode
• enter 6 for the value
• restart Firefox

Dotzler notes that certain extensions like Stylish and AdBlock+ can interfere, so you may need to launch Firefox in safe mode to make sure it works. You won’t notice much of a change on the average web page since they either already load in a blink or get bogged down with content Firefox can’t accelerate this way (like Flash or Javascript). I did, however, notice improvements on sites like Compfight and Google’s image search.

Microsoft had announced back in November that Internet Explorer 9 will leverage the technologies, but Mozilla has beaten them to the punch — at least publicly. No telling when the general public will get an IE9 preview.

If you’re up for it, put your GPU to good use — download and install the latest Minefield build, enable DirectWrite, and share your experience in the comments!
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Sure, Opera 10.5 has also got issues, like any beta. Current quirks include potential freezes on page load (although I didn’t run into any of those) and some problems with the newly-added Opera Widgets feature. On the other hand, other crash bugs have been fixed, and Opera feels fast as heck. If you’ve been thinking about trying it out on your Mac, I recommend you take this new beta out for a test drive.

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Since the premise is fairly easy to understand, I’d like to share a short list of pros and cons from my testing tonight.

The good stuff:

• It’s beautiful. Looks matter, and this thing is gorgeous. I know I said it — it bears repeating.
• It has some neat productivity features built in, such as a “waiting for reply” label which is really important.
• Syncs up with just about every service under the sun. GMail (and any POP/IMAP mail server), Facebook, Twitter, Yammer… Check out the screenshot in the gallery to see what I mean.
• It’s easy to switch accounts off and on when you want to focus on what matters.

The bad stuff:

• Wow, what memory hog. Why can’t apps look good and not take up 265MB of RAM?
• It spammed my entire Facebook contact list on installation! What is up that? It just sent out a status update on my behalf! Frankly, that is enough for me to uninstall the whole thing. Really intrusive, imho.
• No RTL (right-to-left, Hebrew/Arabic) support for composing messages. I know most of you don’t care about this one, but I do. It does display RTL messages properly, as you can see in the screenshot.
• There’s no simple conversation view, a-la Gmail. I got so used to the GMail “conversation” paradigm, that seeing separate messages in my inbox was suddenly a bit confusing. It does have a “thread” view, but each thread takes up a lot of vertical space in the list.

Bottom line: I give it 6.5. Nice looks, but functionality needs a bit of work. It loses most points on the over-excited Facebook update it decided to send out on my behalf.

A few more screenshots after the jump.Enthusiastically spamming my Facebook contacts without asking:

Support for tons of services:

Simple (and sparse) options dialog:

As you’d expect with a beta build, the changelog sports a lengthy list of bug and crash fixes and there have also been numerous subtle tweaks to the default skin. The opera:config interface has also been improved — and is simply awesome, if you’re a DIY browser tweaker. Beyond that, widgets and Opera Unite have also been retooled and 10.50 beta ‘feels’ very solid.

After surfing heavily for the entire morning, beta 2 seems to be a big improvement in terms of reliability and stability. I haven’t yet had to click off an Opera crash report window.

You can download Opera 10.50 beta 2 for Windows directly from Opera’s FTP server. Linux and Mac users waiting to check out the browser and its zippy new Carakan Javascript engine will have to wait a bit longer, but Opera assures that test builds will be available soon.

One big change I’m particularly happy about is that Google Reader is now fully functional out-of-the-box. In past versions Opera couldn’t get past loading the header, but that’s a thing of the past with 10.5 beta. Those Windows 7 shell integration features we showed you in December are still included, as is the nifty per-tab private browsing.

In addition to the blazing Javascript processing speed of Carakan, the usual Opera features are still here: Link synchronization, Turbo compression, Unite server, and more customization options than you can shake a stick at.

Opera seems to be most proud of the speed factor, calling 10.5 ‘the fastest browser on Earth.” I suppose they went with that just in case some developers on Coruscant are coding something faster…

Curious to see just how fast Opera 10.5 beta is? Download it and try it out!

ed note: one thing which escaped earlier detection is the new recycle bin icon in the top-right corner. you guessed it, it provides one-click access to your recently closed tabs. nice!Share