The Chrome team have now enabled desktop notifications for the browser, allowing extensions to step out from a simple icon, and provide a notification box to give users more information.

Desktop notifications are available as of Chrome 5, and Google’s own Gmail Notifier is one of the first browser extensions to support the new notifications.

“When notifications are used from an extension, there are no permission prompts or infobar warnings. The experience is seamless – it just works” wrote Chrome Software Engineer, Aaron Boodman.

Full details for developers on how to add desktop notifications to their extensions can be found in the documentation. More desktop notification enabled plugins are sure to pop-up in the coming days and weeks.

Google Chrome 5.0.375.55 has been released to the stable channel, available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

The release marks the first stable version of the Chrome browser for the Mac and Linux platforms.

The release also closes 6 security holes, 2 of which were rated as high, and 4 rated as medium. The new browser also fixes several stability bugs, which would cause the browser to crash.

New features found in Chrome 5 for exsisting stable users include:

• Better HTML5 support
• Geolocation API
• App cache
• Drag and Drop for files

Adobe Flash Player is not bundled into the browser as expected, but Google promises it will be back once Adobe Flash Player 10.1 is released.

The latest release will be pushed out to existing Chrome users, while new users can take the plunge and download the browser from the Chrome website.

Google has announced a new format for the HTML5 video war, called WebM and using the VP8 codec.

The new video format is royalty free and designed specifically for use on the web. The WebM project is sponsored by Google, Mozilla, Opera, AMD, Nvidia and Oracle amongst others and is aiming to become the standard way we view video on the web in years to come.

All major browser have announced support for the format, except for Apple.

“In its HTML5 support, IE9 will support playback of H.264 video as well as VP8 video when the user has installed a VP8 codec on Windows” commented Internet Explorer General Manager Dean Hachamovitch.

“Video will finally become a first-class citizen of the Web. This is a big deal, and the day will be remembered in the history of the Web” wrote Håkon Wium Lie, CTO, Opera Software. Opera also have preview builds of the browser available which support the WebM video format.

Mozilla was also quick to follow, with preview builds of Firefox that also include support for WebM. Chrome builds should follow in the coming week.

Apple has been very quiet on the matter, not stating whether it will support the format in it’s Safari browser, and whether this format could make an appearance on iPhones, iPads and iPod touches.

This is a great day for open web standards.

The Chromium team has sure been working hard, with Google Chrome 6.0.401.1 hitting the Dev Channel for Windows, Mac and Linux users.

This means Chrome 5 is now feature complete, and will continue to make its way from the Beta Channel to the stable release.

Not much has changed so far, with a list of changes available in the Google Chrome Releases blog. There is however one known issue with this build; hitting enter in some form fields does not submit the form. This bug is expected to be fixed in the next Dev Channel update.

Current Chrome Dev Channel users will automatically receive the new update, while new ‘daring’ users can get details on how to get this latest build from the Chromium website.

Neowin has discovered that this weeks Google Chrome speed test videos were faked, which was later confirmed by Google.

Scepticism came when one attentive Neowin user noticed that during the first potato test, the web page was loaded from the local machine, rather than over the Internet as the video would have you believe.

“For the Chrome Browser vs. Potato film, we used a version of the web page allrecipes.com that is accessible when logged in. About four hours into the Potato Gun shoot we decided to use a locally loaded version of the web page to enable more precise synchronization with the potato gun. We finally got the shot we were hoping for after 51 takes” responded Google.

Google did note however that the Sound vs Chrome video was filmed for real.

“For Chrome Browser vs. Sound, we loaded an artist page from Pandora.com, a streaming internet radio service directly off the web on a 15Mbps internet connection.”

According to Google the aim of the video was to show the true rendering speed of the Chrome browser, which involved removing as many variables as possible to get an accurate result.

Google Chrome 4.1.249.1064 has been released to the stable channel for Windows users.

The update includes two bug fixes, one of which solves a bug that causes slow JavaScript performance.

Three security holes have also been closed, all of which were rated as high.

A more detailed description of each of these issues can be found in the change log.

Windows users will automatically receive the update, while new users can download Chrome from the Google Chrome website.

Google has pushed out an update to its Chrome browser, taking its stable version to 4.1.249.1059.

The latest release closes seven security holes, 4 of which were rated as high,  with the other 3 rated as medium.

A full list of security holes that were fixed can be seen in the release notes.

The browser will automatically update itself for Windows Chrome users, or can be downloaded from the Chrome website.

Google has removed the http:// from new development builds of it’s Chrome browser.

The change was noticed when a user posted a bug report in the Chromium issue tracker, to which a Chrome developer replied and stated that this is a new feature, and not a bug.

Currently when you copy and paste a the URL from these development builds, the http:// will be missing, but this is expected to change in the new future.

https:// and ftp:// are still displayed for security reasons, but some argue this is inconsistent.

This feature will eventually make its way into the standard browser.

The WebKit team have announced WebKit2 is on it’s way, the popular rendering engine found in Apple’s Safari, and Google’s Chrome web browsers.

“WebKit2 is designed from the ground up to support a split process model, where the web content (JavaScript, HTML, layout, etc) lives in a separate process” wrote Anders Carlsson and Sam Weinig. This is similar to what the Chrome team have done, but it allows other developers to use this model right from the framework without having to add an extra application layer.

WebKit2 can currently be compiled for both Mac OSX and Windows users. More information can be found in the WebKit wiki.

No word yet on when this will make its way into the Safari browser, of if Google will be interested in this method over it’s own for Chrome.

Google has done the “impossible” to show the power of HTML5, and ported Quake II to run in the web browser in what seems another dig at Adobe’s Flash.

The move seems a little contradictory, with Google announcing just last week that they were bundling Adobe’s Flash with Chrome. Either way, a lot of work appears to have gone into porting the game.

“We started with the existing Jake2 Java port of the Quake II engine, then used the Google Web Toolkit (along with WebGL, WebSockets, and a lot of refactoring) to cross-compile it into Javascript. You can see the results in the video above — we were honestly a bit surprised when we saw it pushing over 30 frames per second on our laptops (your mileage may vary)” said Google’s Chris Ramsdale.

Right now, the game will only run in Google Chrome and Safari, and the port can be downloaded by visiting the Google code page.