Google's Amazing Browser Experiments

Barence writes "On the day that Microsoft launches Internet Explorer 8, Google has unveiled a new site that showcases the Javascript performance of its Chrome browser. Called Chrome Experiments, the site includes 19 extraordinary animated games and widgets that push the browser to its limits. One experiment, called Browser Ball allows you to 'throw' a bouncing ball from one browser window to the next. Google Gravity, on the other hand, collapses the normal Google homepage into a pile at the bottom of the screen. However, you can still enter search terms into the box and watch the results drop from the top of the browser window."

Comments

Works in Safari too

[Wabin]

Most of these work in Safari4, and some even on the iPhone. This kind of stuff, written entirely in HTML5 and javascript, is one of the things Apple is hoping will make the lack of flash on the iPhone a moot point.

Re:Works in Safari too

[Thelasko]

Yeah, the gravity thing seems to work on Firefox 3 as well. Most of these things should work with a browser that is relatively standards compliant.

Re:Works in Safari too

[jalefkowit]

No it doesn't. On FF 3.0.7 the page elements fall to the bottom, but you can't do anything with them. On Chrome once they've fallen you can click an element and "throw" it across the window by dragging & then releasing the mouse button.

Re:Works in Safari too

[Thelasko]

Yep. I guess most video sites will move swiftly to javascript-decoding and rendering their flvs and mp4s.

HTML 5 has <audio> and <video> tags, the actual decoding and rendering is handled by the browser.

Re:Works in Safari too

[gbjbaanb]

we've been playing with that one on Safari and Chrome side-=by-side. Chrome's JS is significantly faster, but it does have a bug in that text (inside the google search bar) only appears if the bar is level. On Safari it appears when the bar is at an angle.

Performance: FF is acceptable, Safari is worse so some are ok, some are not, Couldn't be bothered to try it on IE.

Chrome performs like client desktops used to. I look forward to our new browser-based overlords.

Re:Works in Safari too

[pavon]

Not entirely. In Chrome you can still type in the form and click on the buttons and they actually submit the page giving you search results. When I tried it in Firefox 3.0.7 on Windows and Linux, I could not select the text box once it had fallen, nor did clicking the buttons do anything. If I select the text box before it falls I can keep typing, but hitting enter also does not submit the form.

Re:Obvious user question

[u38cg]

Yeah, they should really consider folk like us that are forced to use IE6 because of "corporate policy"; specifically, corporate policy to be as dumb as possible in all things.

Re:Obvious user question

[nobodylocalhost]

it is a "corporate policy" because most of the HR software works only in IE6, and the reason most of the HR software works only in IE6 is because the HR departments demand IE6 compatibility... get where this one is going?

Re:Obvious user question

[MemoryDragon]

Problem is that not even the end users are the problem anymore it is the corporations which probably will use ie until 2100...

Anyway the good news is, that the market share of this dreck is dropping at the same rate as ie5.5 used to drop when ie6 came out so expect in about 6-8 months the significance of ie6 down to levels where you can really start to ignore it!
The downside is, that most of those now migrating will migrate to ie7 which is also aweful... but at least css positioning works somewhat better, and png works in most cases as expected but not all!

Re:Obvious user question

[mspohr]

Portable Firefox works on my locked down WinXP corp PC.

DUPE

[AKAImBatman]

This was reported on yesterday: http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/18/2128256

Reader Al notes too that "Google has launched Chrome Experiments, a site where Javascript coders can upload projects that make use of Chrome's speed and processing abilities. The site already features a handful of cool 'experiments' including a balls that jump between browser windows, a gravitationally-challenged version of the Google homepage and a game that runs through nine different browsers. It's cool stuff alright, but some experts wonder whether browser security might be a more important thing to focus on."

Here's my comment about real-time Chroma-Key replacement in Firefox.

Re:Hello Slashdot..?

[Anonymous Coward]

Push your MS-branded horns back into your head -- IE8 isn't being released until noon.

Maybe, just maybe, they're waiting to release when you can actually download the browser?

Re:Obvious user question

[nschubach]

Thumb drive.

Opera

[ledow]

And most of them work just fine in Opera 9.64, despite the scary warnings.

And the ones that don't, it seems to be because Opera deliberately disallows that sort of action (e.g. the pages knowing where they are on screen in relation to other pages).

Re:Hello Slashdot..?

[pbhj]

It may be too little, but MSIE has one thing that will have practically everyone installing it ... mandated installation via windows update.

"Your browser [Firefox 3] is not the latest version of MSIE, were updating it in the background and setting IE8 as your default browser, to cancel this update please remove your HDD and smash with a hammer."