Cyber Dimensions....

Google has launches some nice themes for Google Chrome.

Google updated the Beta channel of its open-source browser beyond version 3.0. In this regard, Google Chrome 3.0.193.2 went live on the Beta channel and is now available for download. The Mountain View-based search giant indicated that it introduced a range of enhancements since it released Chrome 2.0.172.37. In this context, users of the Beta releases of Chrome will be able to notice tweaks to the graphical user interface as well as additional horsepower for the browser's JavaScrip engine. Anthony Laforge, Google Chrome program manager, indicated that Google “updated V8 to 1.2.13.2 to improve stability and performance. [Delivered] printing fixes and print selection for Windows. [Introduced] initial support for the video tag. Updated look and feel of the url bar (aka the Omnibox). Improved our Developer Tools by adding the scripts and profiles tabs, plus support for docking the inspector into the main window.”“Minor Tweaks renamed as "Personal Stuff" in the Options menu. Browsing data options added to the Options menu, under Personal Stuff. Default download location and font/language settings moved from Minor Tweaks to the Under the hood tab. Exceptions is a tab in the "Passwords and Exceptions" dialog, rather than a separate button in the Passwords section of the Options menu.”.

“Significant changes include: form suggestions now shrink properly as the list of suggestions gets shorter. Extensions can now auto-update. Set the default minimum font size to 12 for Chinese and 10 for Japanese, Korean, Arabic and Thai. Mac now supports drag and drop of URLs, plain text, and HTML into and out of the content area, as well as within text fields and the thumbnails on the new tab page. URLs can be dragged to and from other apps, the Finder/Desktop, and the Dock,” explained Jonathan Conradt, engineering program manager.

The latest releases of Google Chrome are available for download here

To Bill Gates, Google's Chrome OS looks a lot like a familiar foe: Linux.

"There's many, many forms of Linux operating systems out there and packaged in different ways and booted in different ways," Gates said in aninterview with CNET News this week. "In some ways I am surprised people are acting like there's something new. I mean, you've got Android running on Netbooks. It's got a browser in it."

Gates said it was hard to really say much about Chrome OS, since Google has said so little about how it will actually work.

"The more vague they are, the more interesting it is," he said.

As for the notion that the browser needs to act more like an OS, he noted that the browser has already become an extremely broad concept, with all of the plug-ins and other things that are now done inside a browser.

"It just shows the word browser has become a truly meaningless word," Gates said. "What's a browser? What's not a browser? If you're playing a movie, is that a browser or not a browser? If you're doing annotations, is that a browser? If you're editing text, is that a browser or not a browser? In large part, it's more an abuse of terminology than a real change."

Meanwhile, CEO Steve Ballmer suggested on Tuesday that Windows, rather than a browser-centric OS was the right approach. To bolster his argument, Ballmer noted that half of PC use today is spent doing work outside the browser.

"We don't need a new operating system," Ballmer said Tuesday, as part of his keynote at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans. "What we do need to do is to continue to evolve Windows, Windows Applications, IE (Internet Explorer), the way IE works in totality with Windows and how we build applications like Office...and we need to make sure we can bring our customers and partners with us."

Ballmer and Gates also stressed the fact that Google now has two operating systems--Chrome OS and Android. Ballmer noted that Microsoft learned with the separate Windows 95 for consumers and Windows NT for businesses that having two operating systems isn't necessarily a positive thing.

"The last time I checked you don't need two client operating systems," he said. "It's good to have one."

Ballmer and Gates also echoed the note Business Division President Stephen Elop sounded in an interview with CNET News last week--that Microsoft really doesn't know what Chrome OS will look like.

"Who knows what this thing is?" Ballmer said.

After the release of the Internet giants first web browser, titled Chrome, Google is hard at work on making their next version of Chrome up to standards with other browsers. The team at Google has taken the feedback received from the first official release, and made changes accordingly.