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

Obvious user question

[MemoryDragon]

Why does this frecking site do not work in ie6...

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

[mspohr]

Portable Firefox works on my locked down WinXP corp PC.

Re:Obvious user question

[vishbar]

All that and they don't Websense slashdot?

Re:Obvious user question

[Thelasko]

... get where this one is going?

HR is full of morons? Seriously, on the corporate intelligence scale, people in HR rank only slightly above the people that sweep the floor.

Re:Obvious user question

[Anonymous Coward]

I beg to differ. Many people sweeping floors are very intelligent and educated, but through accidents of birth or geography have been forced to flee dangerous conditions in a 3rd world country. Since there is a failaure of western countries to recognize experience or academic credentials of foriegners, these people are forced into low level unskilled jobs to support themselves and their families.

In many cases the people sweeping the floors are more intelligent than the HR people.

Re:Obvious user question

[Thelasko]

In many cases the people sweeping the floors are more intelligent than the HR people.

Note to self:
The janitorial staff gets offended when you compare their intelligence to that of a person in human resources.

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

[dotancohen]

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.

The gravity thing works in Firefox, but it is environment dependent. When I turned the monitor on it's side, nothing happened. You've got to have the monitor perfectly level.

Re:Works in Safari too

[AKAImBatman]

If you have Firefox 3.1:

http://tinyvid.tv/

Real time Chroma-Key replacement: https://developer.mozilla.org/samples/video/chroma-key/index.xhtml

(Let's see you do THAT in Flash!)

Please be gentle with my server, but here's my own Chroma-Key experiments for Firefox 3.1b3:

http://iambatman.homeip.net/html5/index.xhtml

Click "Play", then mess with the "Chroma Key", "Invert", and "Mute" buttons to your heart's delight.

(The video is a random green screen video pulled off of Youtube.)

Note that this should work in Safari 4 with the OGG plugin. Unfortunately, the OGG plugin is out of date for Windows. It would be easy to configure MP4 as a fallback for Safari, but I haven't gotten that far yet. :P

Hello Slashdot..?

[Ancil]

I know we're all supposed to hate Microsoft, but come on.

Here's a story: On the day Microsoft releases IE 8 -- the most popular web browser in the world -- Slashdot doesn't mention it, but posts a trivial article about Google Chrome benchmarks.

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:Hello Slashdot..?

[wfWebber]

Exactly. Shut up and let me play with my balls.

Re:Hello Slashdot..?

[Kifoth]

No. Here's a story. Google releases a site that'll almost certainly show up IE8's substandard Javascript handling, the day before IE8 goes live.
Tinfoil hats... Go!

Re:Hello Slashdot..?

[Thelasko]

On the day Microsoft releases IE 8 -- the most popular web browser in the world -- Slashdot doesn't mention it, but posts a trivial article about Google Chrome benchmarks.

So, there may be no IE 8 story, but this one is hardly trivial. The things Google did in these benchmarks were previously only done in Flash. This is a major breakthrough in developing an alternative to Flash.

Limited platforms

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what it's all about in the demoscene, right? People are in awe when they see what you can do in 64kB on a PC and what a 6502 can do with cycle-exact programming. Yet anyone interested more in results than in technical experiments will simply expand the platform and make these demos look like child's play, because that's what they are: An exercise in testing the limits of a very limited platform. HTML and the javascript browser API should never have become the basis of a UI standard. The privacy problems, performance deficiencies and the baroque API will haunt us for decades. Look ma, I'm using a 2GHz dual-core processor to simulate a couple of 2D balls bouncing around in almost fluid motion.

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:I'll take my Firefox add-ons instead , thanks

[Thelasko]

You don't need Chrome to make these experiments work. This is more of a demonstration of what web standards compliance can do than what Chrome can do. The coolest part is that it pretty much makes most Flash related content obsolete.

Re:so nothing that's actually useful, then?

[hannson]

Seriously though, what exactly is accomplished here?

First and foremost it's a marketing stunt. If you launch an "experiment" in any other browser than Google Chrome they warn you that it might not work (but allow you to "Roll the dice" and try.

Second, it shows that it's possible to do pretty things using the common web standards alone, without proprietary plugins like flash or silverlight.

I'd rather see that time spent getting a proper version for Linux, and extension support.

That's really close minded. The teams working on Chromium/Google Chrome are not the people behind these demos and the lack of Linux and extension support is being worked on - I'd rather wait a little longer than them becoming a major clusterfuck. Besides, these demos are really just a fun prove of concept.

Javascript performance

[Xest]

There's been a lot of stories lately about new browser releases and how they have the fastest Javascript performance yet.

I asked why Javascript performance was such a big deal, and I didn't feel any answers I got were particularly convincing.

These experiments however have answered my question much more convincingly, the answer is not that existing applications need it but that future innovations in Javascript can achieve some pretty amazing things if Javascript implementations are efficient enough.