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Edge Beta completes Microsoft's trifecta of pre-release mobile browsers
It joins Dev and Canary in addition to the stable release of Edge
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Microsoft is really fleshing out its mobile browser options. Last month the company published a Canary build of Edge to the Play Store, and it's following up with a Dev build today. That's three out of four of the release channels available as an Android version ... oddly, the Beta channel has yet to make its way onto the platform as a dedicated app listing, still relying on the Play Store beta system.
Google has introduced a few top-level domains over the years, including .google, .apps, and even .lol. Last year, the company announced the .dev TLD, intended for use by software developers. Registration has been open to select partners since January 16th, but now anyone can buy a .dev domain — as long as you have $11k.
Chrome OS version 72 is rolling out the developer channel right now, and with comes support for Android 9 Pie. With the updated runtime, it also means that Android keyboard apps can now be run on a Chromebook, including Gboard.
As the number of available .com domains continues to decline, alternative domain endings are becoming more popular. Many developers (including yours truly) prefer to use .io domains for personal sites and projects, as a nod to "I/O" being the abbreviation for "input/output," but now Google is working on a new ending specifically for those people — .dev.
Exporting your saved passwords from desktop Chrome has been possible in one way or another for years. However, the feature has always been missing from the Android browser - until now. Google is now testing the ability to import and export passwords straight from Chrome on Android, but only the latter function seems to be working right now.
Autoplaying videos are among the most annoying web trends of recent years, bombarding you with unsolicited content when you least expect it. Chrome 63 (currently on the dev and canary channels) on desktop recently gave users the ability to mute certain websites permanently, and there's a special toggle in the works so you can ensure they stay quiet. In the upcoming Chrome 64, both on mobile and desktop, Google is introducing even stricter conditions that should stop unwanted audio from ever playing automatically.
In version 39, Chrome for Android learned an awesome trick: using a simple HTML tag, any webpage could tell Chrome to theme its UI (and your device's status bar) with a specified color. The downside to this feature was that it only worked if tabs and apps were "merged," meaning your Chrome tabs would show up inline with your recent apps, rather than relying on Chrome's own in-app tab switcher.
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- Today Google released more details on the new support library. A post on the Android Developers blog (here) goes into all the gory details of the new navigation view (which should make dealing with nav drawers easier) and other elements like the FAB.
One year on, Google's material design philosophy is still picking up steam. As popular as it's become in the community though, there are still some holes left to fill in terms of implementation.
Besides new family-friendly and kid-friendly efforts on search and discovery in the Play Store, Google announced during its keynote today that Play Store search will be getting smarter overall.
When it comes to getting users to your app, your Play Store listing counts for a lot. What users see (and read) when they reach your app's listing can make or break their decision to download or buy, so carefully crafting a good listing is important.
Photo credit: Jamie Pearson (CC BY 2.0)
In the midst of update Wednesday, Google has just pushed a brand new version of Chrome to the Play Store - Chrome Dev.
Google updated its design spec recently. The material spec, which Google says is a living document (as evidenced by its ongoing updates), gained further guidance on floating action buttons, dialogs, updates on typography, and a lot more.
It's no secret that Google advocates developing apps with multiple form factors in mind. While not all the apps in Google's own portfolio are quite up to speed on this front, apps like the ones in Google's Play suite have done a nice job so far in supporting phones and tablets alike.
At some point or another, most Android developers will eventually open up the profiling tools to track down bugs and performance issues in a misbehaving application. Let's be honest, the tools included with the Android SDK do leave something to be desired. Facebook has just released one of its internally-developed tools which provides network inspection, database inspection and interaction, and a support for access to the dumpapp output with the use of customizable plugins. The most interesting feature about Stetho is that it runs entirely through the Chrome Developer Tools – the same interface used by web developers everywhere.
Months ago, we posted a rumor about "modular actions" set to come to Google's Search app (now just called Google) along with "Ok Google Everywhere" functionality that would allow users to activate search from anywhere on their device. The latter has already been implemented, but Google is still inching toward the former. With the technically unreleased Google app, the search interface can overlay apps from which it is called, but Google today announced another step forward - the ability to let apps hook into search by accepting voice queries from the user.
Google I/O 2014 has come and gone, but that doesn't mean great stuff from the conference isn't still coming out. The companion app used by thousands of attendees -and hundreds of thousands of fans and followers- has been open sourced! Code for the I/O app is meant to serve as an example of best practices for Android developers, providing fully functioning implementations of the latest design principles, UI controls, networking code, and more.