Chrome for Mac limps into view

CHROME FOR MAC has taken its first tentative steps into the big wide world.

Mike Pinkerton, who is currently working on the project for Search behemoth Google, tells us that work has shifted gears from layout tests and WebKit compatibility, to getting the application user interface up and limping. "That also means getting the separate WebCore renderer processes to communicate over IPC to the browser," he adds.

"Last week the entire team made a tremendous amount of progress getting the cross-platform model and controller classes scaffolded, topped off with a Cocoa UI (with similar strides on Linux using Gtk). We were at the point where you could create new windows and tabs (and close them too) using the shared code, which would spawn/quit associated renderer processes. It was pretty exciting to watch them come and go in Activity Monitor, knowing how close we were to getting bits on the screen."

As if that weren't enough excitement for a Friday afternoon, Mike and his colleagues soon had the rendering process up and running and here's the very first screen shot of Chrome Mac displaying a web page!

There's still a long way to go before the champagne corks start popping, however, as Mike points out: "clicking doesn't work and the renderers still crash like anything."

And if you were wondering what was going on with the design of the skin, Pinkerton says: "The UI clearly needs much love, but it's an indicator of the clean and simple direction we're heading."

There's no firm news on when the new browser will hit the downloads but, from what Mike tells us, much of the hard work under the bonnet is already done. µ