Chrome 14 launches with Native Client, Lion support

By Mike Flacy September 16, 2011

Google+ enhanced: Five must-have Chrome extensions — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Earlier today, Google pushed the most recent revision of Chrome out to users of the Web browser. Google Chrome 14 brings a smattering of bug fixes as well as updates to the core functions of the browser. One such update adapts Chrome to the Mac OS X Lion scroll bar style that appears when scrolling up and down the page. Chrome is also now compatible with Lion’s full-screen mode. Google has included Native Client support within this version of Chrome allowing developers to run C and C++ Web apps within a secure space in the browser. While it only works with content from Google’s Web Store at the moment, the company plans on removing that limitation shortly.

Chrome 14 has also received a new Web Audio API that allows developers to mix sound sources within a three dimensional space, a feature that could easily translate into Web-based games. Advanced audio effects like spatialization can be built into a HTML5 page for instance. Google has published a variety of demos if interested in taking the new sound effects for a test drive. On the bug squashing front, Google fixed 32 bugs ranging from low to high in severity and paid out nearly $15,000 to those that reported the problems. No critical bugs were located during this round of revisions.

While testers in the Chromium channel are already playing with Chrome 16, the next version of the popular Web browser will bring more end-user upgrades than Chrome 14. The most significant upgrade within Chrome 15 are three options at the bottom of a new tab. When a new tab is launched, users can switch between most visited sites, apps and bookmarks. The recently closed tabs menu has also moved to the bottom right hand corner of a new tab, a helpful tool after accidentally closing a tab.

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Computing

Best Apple Studio Display deals: Save $299 on 5K monitors

Apple Mac Studio and Studio Display.

If you're working on things that require a high-end monitor with excellent resolution and image fidelity, then the Apple Studio Display is what you're looking for, especially if you're in the Apple ecosystem and using things like the Apple MacBook Pro and the Apple MacBook Air. As a 5k monitor, it blows a lot of other monitors out of the water, although it does come with a deep price tag, so if you're the sort of creative pro that's looking to up their game, you'll likely want to grab yourself some good monitor deals. Luckily, you can get some good discounts on the Apple Studio Display, depending on which model your looking for, and if you're thinking of pairing this with a new Apple computer, check out some of these Apple deals as well.
Apple Studio Display — $1,300, was $1,599

The Apple Studio Display is one of the more premium monitors on the market. It’s not to be confused with the Apple Pro Display XDR, which is Apple’s professional, high end monitor. And while the Apple Studio Display and Pro Display XDR have some similarities, the Studio Display comes in at a much lower price tag. It has a 27-inch screen that comes with 5K resolution and 600 nits of brightness, as well as support for one billion colors and the P3 wide color gamut. It also has a six-speaker sound system with Spatial Audio, which makes it a great place to sit down and watch movie.

Computing

Best 3D printer deals: Start printing at home for $159

best 3d printer deals featured image

There's a lot of stuff you can potentially do within the 3D printing space, whether it's printing some cool minis for your D&D game or turning into a fully-fledged business, especially with the new and faster 3D printers out there. But you don't have to buy the best 3D printers on the market to get started, and a lot of entry-level printers have gone a long way to the point where they are very fun and easy to use. Of course, we aren't at the point where you can 3D print a cheesecake, but there are probably quite a few companies working on making that a possibility.
For now, though, there are a ton of great 3D printer deals you can take advantage of, which is why we've gone out and found some of our favorites and compiled them for you below. Amazon deals, Best Buy deals and Walmart deals are the most common retailers to find discounted 3D printers, but we've found a few deals direct from the manufacturers.

Creality Ender-2 Pro — $159, was $179

Computing

Best external hard drive deals: Portable SSDs, game drives & more

A man uses a WD My Passport external hard drive alongside his laptop.

While a lot of content has gone digital these days, including things like cloud storage services allowing us to store our files online, having a physical form of storage to keep with you is important. In a similar vein, it's frustrating that some of the best phones on the market don't even come with a lot of internal space, while most laptop deals you take advantage of also likely will land you with less than 1TB of storage. To that end, we've gone out and collected some of our favorite external hard drive deals we could find and collected them below, and some of them are even the best external hard drives on the market. If you decide internal storage will fit your needs better, check out SSD deals, or PS5 SSD deals for your gaming needs.
Seagate FireCuda Gaming 2TB -- $60, was $100

If you have a gaming setup that's full of RGB and you want to add a little bit to it while still extending your hard drive space, then you should absolutely grab this 2TB Seagate FireCuda Gaming. It has a customizable LED under the bottom lip of the hard drive, and it even comes with the latest 3.2 gen USB standard, so you can game off of it directly on your PC or older console. While you hopefully won't need it, it also comes with 3-years of data recovery service, which is a nice plus at this price bracket.