Google has introduced the beta version of Chrome for Android, bringing Chrome’s capabilities to smartphones and tablets running Android 4.0 (but not earlier versions).
The key features of Chrome for Android:
- View open tabs: Access the tabs you left open on your computer (also signed into Chrome)—picking up exactly where you left off. Swipe on your mobile device to switch between tabs.
- Get smarter suggestions: If you visit a site often on your computer, you’ll also get an auto-complete suggestion for it on your mobile device, so you can spend less time typing.
- Sync bookmarks: Access your favorite sites no matter which device you are using.
You can watch the teaser video below.
On the technical side, Chrome for Android brings support for many of the latest HTML5 features to the Android platform including hardware-accelerated canvas, overflow scroll support, HTML5 video. Chrome for Android also brings new capabilities such as Indexed DB, WebWorkers and Web Sockets.
Google added remote debugging support to Chrome Developer Tools to make it easier for web developers to debug web sites running on mobile devices.
Chrome for Android shares most of its source code with Chromium, and many new components developed for Chrome for Android will be upstreamed to Chromium, WebKit and other projects.
If you want to follow Android for Chrome software development you can do so via the issue tracker or by joining [email protected] mailing list.
If you want to give it a try, you can download Chrome for Android Beta (Version 0.16.4130.199) on the Android Marketplace. You must have an Android 4.0 device and reside in one of those 12 countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Australia, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Argentina or Brazil.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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