Google Chrome causing new MacBook Air to crash

Owners of Apple's newly released MacBook Air have been experiencing persistent kernel panics on their systems, causing the laptop to freeze and crash.

The issue generated a lot of discussion on Apple's support communities among frustrated users and earlier this weekGizmodo reported that the general consensus pointed towards Google’s Chrome browser as the culprit.

Now a spokesperson for Google has finally come forward with an official statement acknowledging that it had found a "leak of graphics resources in the Chrome browser" and this had been causing the new MacBook Airs to crash. The company said it is working to fix the root of the leak, but in the meantime it has issued an auto-update release that will temporarily disable GPU acceleration features in Chrome.

We have identified a leak of graphics resources in the Chrome browser related to the drawing of plugins on Mac OS X. Work is proceeding to find and fix the root cause of the leak. The resource leak is causing a kernel panic on Mac hardware containing the Intel HD 4000 graphics chip (e.g. the new Macbook Airs). Radar bug number 11762608 has been filed with Apple regarding the kernel panics, since it should not be possible for an application to trigger such behavior.

While the root cause of the leak is being fixed, we are temporarily disabling some of Chrome's GPU acceleration features on the affected hardware via an auto-updated release that went out this afternoon (Thursday June 28). We anticipate further fixes in the coming days which will re-enable many or all of these features on this hardware.

Google’s response suggests that while Chrome may be inducing the crash, ultimately is an issue with Apple's drivers that allows for the kernel panic to be triggered. Apple hasn’t officially commented on the matter as far as we know, but according to one poster on Apple's support forums, a store employee told him that the company was aware of the problem and plans to release a patch soon.

Adobe releases Flash-like HTML5 design tool Adobe Edge

Adobe Systems today announced the first public preview release of Adobe Edge, a new HTML5 web motion and interaction design tool available for free on labs.adobe.com for Mac and Windows. Web designers can use the tool to bring animations, similar to those created in Flash Professional, to websites using standards likes HTML, JavaScript, and CSS.

Because HTML5 is a moving standard, Adobe says it is adopting an open development methodology for Adobe Edge. For now, this means the company is releasing the software on the Adobe Labs website sooner than it would during a normal development process in order to allow user feedback to help shape the final product. Adobe Edge is not yet even considered in beta. It is being designed as a fast and lightweight professional-grade tool that complements Adobe's existing Web tools, such as Adobe Dreamweaver CS5.5, Adobe Flash Professional CS5.5, and Adobe Flash Builder 4.5.

The preview enables you to add motion to existing HTML documents without hampering design integrity of CSS-based layouts, and it also allows you to create visually rich content from scratch, using familiar drawing tools that produce HTML elements styled with CSS3. You can import standard Web graphics assets such as SVG, PNG, JPG, and GIF files and style them using CSS3. The design stage utilizes WebKit to enable design, preview, and manipulation of content. The timeline feature lets you define and customize motion applied to HTML elements. Content created with Edge is designed to work on modern browsers including those on Android, BlackBerry Playbook, iOS , HP webOS, and other smartphone mobile devices as well as Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, and Internet Explorer 9.

"Over the last year Adobe has delivered on several significant HTML5 milestones including contributions to jQuery, submitting code to WebKit, and enhanced HTML5 output in Creative Suite 5.5," Paul Gubbay, vice president of Design and Web Engineering at Adobe, said in a statement. "Now, with Adobe Edge, we're taking our HTML5 tooling to a whole new level and look forward to getting some really useful feedback from the community over the next few months, as we refine the product."

Google Chrome surpasses Firefox, takes #2 spot in the UK

Internet Explorer remains the most popular browser in the United Kingdom with 45% usage, though likeFirefox it's way down from the 55% high it enjoyed just a year ago. Safari is the 4th most used web browser in that country with a 8.5% market share.

The Guardian reports that Chrome is the first product that Google has advertised nationwide on British television.

Exactly a month ago we reported on several metrics for worldwide browser usage where we observed Chrome was still ways off from reaching the second spot with a 13% market share, versus 21% of Firefox, and a very dominant 53% position from Internet Explorer. On the other hand, TechSpot readers who are undoubtedly ahead of the curve predominantly use Firefox and Chrome browsers (61% combined) versus 30% for Internet Explorer users. This in spite of the fact Internet Explorer 9 is not a bad browser, regardless of what others have to say about it.

To share one last interesting figure about browser usage, Firefox controls the browser market in Germany with 6 out of every 10 users running it

Google Chrome - Save Tabs on Exit

Firefox has an inbuilt feature that saves the sessions (i.e tabs that are open) when closing the browser. When its restarted, all the previously unclosed tabs are opened again. Guess what, Google Chrome has also got it. Here's how to enable it.

1. Click the Tools icon on the top-right of the browser (Its near the address bar). Click onOptions (If you are on Linux, it should be Preferences).

2. A new window pops up. Under the Basics tab, select the "Reopen the pages that were open last" option.

That's all. Now Google Chrome will preserve the tabs when closing and open them again when started.

An interesting option is the third one which allows you to choose which pages to open when starting Chrome.

Google Chrome and Chromium to get new logos

Google Chrome will be getting a new logo in the next version. Those on the dev branch are already seeing it in version 11.0.696.12 dev.

Last week, the good old guys at the Polish forum FrazPC provided a comparison screenshot between the old and new logos for Chrome. They also got their hands on a comparison that showed Chromium would also be getting a new logo.

If you look closely, however, the new Chrome logo is actually slightly different in Chrome 11 when compared to what the Polish guys found. Clearly Google was still making changes when the comparisons were leaked.

Either way, I can't figure out whether I like the new logo or not. On the one hand, I was a big fan of the old 3D logo. On the other hand, the new 2D one seems much cleaner, and could go well with the perception of the browser.

I never realized how often I see Chrome's new logo: every time I hit Alt+Tab, it pops out at me. What do you think of the new logos for Chrome and Chromium?