Nicola D'Agostino (.net) - Articoli, traduzioni, grafica, web

The evolution of Chrome/Chromium on Macintosh


» Mac Chromium prints!With Mac Chromium 4.0.222.7 (28915) released on the 13th November 2009 it becomes possible to print web pages.
 

» Chromium 4.0.224.3 (29991), released on 23rd October 2009 allows the user to add links by drag n’ drop into the Bookmarks Bar area.
 

» Chromium 4.0.260.0 (33362), released on 30th November 2009 at 15:26, enables bookmark syncing by default without starting the browser from the Terminal with the --enable-sync flag.
Mac Chromium 4.0.246.0 (31808) - prefs sync bookmarks
 

» On the 8th December 2009 Google released the first Chrome Beta for the Macintosh, bearing version number 4.0.249.30. This version has no bookmark sync (even using the flag) and support for extensions was yanked out just as Google was launching its Chrome Extensions archive.
Get Google Chrome Beta for Mac
 

» On the 9th December 2009 with version 4.0.268.0 (34180) the Mac finally gains the Task Manager. It is available only using the Page Menu button (and then under “Developer” menu) but not yet from “View” where it is still greyed out. The feature was made available in both places with version 4.0.297.0 (36090) of Chromium, released on the 12th of January 2010.
Mac Chromium (December 2009) - Task Manager
 

» Chromiumversion 4.0.291.0 (35546) released on the 5th of January 2010 (at 12:40, to be exact) brings an implementation of the Bookmark Manager to the Macintosh platform. It gives Apple users the option to edit and manage their bookmarks, although only the ones in the Bookmarks Bar.
Chromium for Mac - Bookmark Manager

 

Mac Chrome 4.0.295 dev - Tools menu (detail)» On January 6, 2010, with version 4.0.288.1 of the developer channel of Chrome enables Extensions, Bookmark sync (nearly two months after Chromium), the Task Manager and the ‘Pin Tab’ contextual menu.

 

» The following week the Developer channell of Chrome jumped to version 4.0.295.0 and added the Cookie Manager and a rudimentary version of the Bookmark Manager but disabled the Task Manager (echoing previous changes in Chromium).
Also: exclusive to the Mac is some degree of support for gestures: performing a Cmd+three finger swipe now opens previous/next page in a new tab.

 

» Since version 4.0.300.0 (36432) from 15th January 2010, Chromium sports a more functional Bookmark Manager, more or less on par with the one on Windows and Linux and finally allowing users, among other things, to move bookmarks and to manage subfolders.
Mac Chromium 4.0.300.0 (36432) - a more functional Bookmark Manager

 

» With version 4.0.303.0 (36586) of Chromium, released on the 19th of January 2010, the Bookmark Manager’s ui becomes more Mac-like. The Bookmark Manager also includes other additions like the edit-on-click feature which debuted some hours earlier in build 36571.
Mac Chromium 4.0.303.0 (36586) - Mac-like UI in the Bookmark Manager

 

» A giant step forward for Chrome was made on the 11th of February 2010, when Google made available a new beta for Macintosh. Version 5.0.307.7 added a lot of features missing from the original december release: Extensions (finally!), Bookmark sync, the Bookmark manager, the Cookie manager and the Task manager, making what is the most stable and official channel of Chrome for Apple users almost catch up with the feature list available on Windows.

 

Mac Chromium - Full Screen
» One of the last missing features, the Full Screen view, arrives on the Macintosh on the 16th of February 2010 with the 5.0.330.0 (39154) build of Chromium.

 

» On the 18th of March 2010, with build 5.0.358.0 (42061), the Bookmark Manager was switched to a new version with a different user interface. It’s no more in a separate floating windows and is a web page, which opens in a tab in very a similar way to extensions, downloads and history.

Chromium Mac - New Bookmark Manager (edit)

 

» Some days before the official announcement, Chromium build 6.0.402.0 (47105) from 12th May 2010 brought support for Google’s Installable Web Apps to the Macintosh platform. The support was then added the following week to Chrome with the 6.0.414.0 (48023) release in the dev channel.

Installed Web Apps - Chrome dev for Mac

In both cases the support was hidden and had to be enabled by using the --enable-apps flag when launching from the Terminal.

 

WebM in Chromium for Mac» Chromium 6.0.411.0 (47778) is the first ever version to allow playing of HTML5 videos using Google’s new WebM format, using the VP video codec, Vorbis for audio and Matroska as a format container.

This early version in Chromium was still incomplete, though, and lacked play and volume controls, which were implemented in the following builds.

 

Chromium 6.0.438.0 (49830)» With Chromium 6.0.438.0 build 49830, which was released on the 15th June 2010, the two page and wrench menus which were on the right side of the url/search bar have been unified into one.
After the Omnibox now there is just the wrench menu which contains all of the functions, although some of them are in a submenu.
The new UI look made its debut on Chrome the 24th of June with Chrome dev 6.0.447.0.

For the record, the menu change was done by Mike Pinkerton, of Camino fame, who has been working at Google on the Mac version of Chrome.

 

Chromium toolbar buttons - no more border» At the end of June 2010, Chromium 6.0.452.0 build 51234 added more user interface changes to the toolbar.

The revision was again made by Mike Pinkerton and -among other things- adjusted the size and appearance of the buttons (removing the visible border and making it appear only during a mouseover), modified the gradient and the graphical interaction between the toolbar and bookmark bar on new tab pages.

Note: some release milestones are listed in the “Mac OS X Roadmap” on Chromium.org


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