January 21, 2012, 7:34 AM — Getting too much work done? If so, fire up your Web browser and head over to chrome.angrybirds.com. This is where you can play Chrome Angry Birds, the browser-based version of Angry Birds. It’s just as addictive and as fun as the mobile version. And that’s why your productivity will end here.
Angry Birds is available in the Chrome Web store; simply add it to your browser to begin playing. It automatically installs an offline version, too, so you don’t have to be connected to the Internet in order to play. If you prefer to use a browser other than Chrome, Angry Birds also works in Safari, Firefox, and Internet Explorer (but only IE 9 or higher). You can choose between SD and HD versions, depending on the speed of your Internet connection.
Just like its insanely popular mobile version, the browser-based version of Angry Birds has you slinging birds at those annoying pigs. Instead of using your fingers to do so (unless you’re using a touch-screen tablet or PC), you simply grab your mouse and start slinging. Making the adjustment isn’t difficult at all, but I found that I had just a tad less control over the positioning of my birds–or maybe that’s just what I tell myself when I have trouble knocking over enough little green pigs.
The browser-based version features the same levels found in the mobile version, but adds a Chrome dimension available only to Web users. I’d tell you more about it, but I’m still trying to unlock it. If you get there first, let me know what to expect.
Getting too much work done? If so, fire up your Web browser and head over to chrome.angrybirds.com. This is where you can play Chrome Angry Birds, the browser-based version of Angry Birds. It’s just as addictive and as fun as the mobile version. And that’s why your productivity will end here.
Angry Birds is available in the Chrome Web store; simply add it to your browser to begin playing. It automatically installs an offline version, too, so you don’t have to be connected to the Internet in order to play. If you prefer to use a browser other than Chrome, Angry Birds also works in Safari, Firefox, and Internet Explorer (but only IE 9 or higher). You can choose between SD and HD versions, depending on the speed of your Internet connection.
Just like its insanely popular mobile version, the browser-based version of Angry Birds has you slinging birds at those annoying pigs. Instead of using your fingers to do so (unless you’re using a touch-screen tablet or PC), you simply grab your mouse and start slinging. Making the adjustment isn’t difficult at all, but I found that I had just a tad less control over the positioning of my birds–or maybe that’s just what I tell myself when I have trouble knocking over enough little green pigs.
The browser-based version features the same levels found in the mobile version, but adds a Chrome dimension available only to Web users. I’d tell you more about it, but I’m still trying to unlock it. If you get there first, let me know what to expect.
Getting too much work done? If so, fire up your Web browser and head over to chrome.angrybirds.com. This is where you can play Chrome Angry Birds, the browser-based version of Angry Birds. It’s just as addictive and as fun as the mobile version. And that’s why your productivity will end here.
Everything’s bigger in the browser-based version of Angry Birds, including the ads.Angry Birds is available in the Chrome Web store; simply add it to your browser to begin playing. It automatically installs an offline version, too, so you don’t have to be connected to the Internet in order to play. If you prefer to use a browser other than Chrome, Angry Birds also works in Safari, Firefox, and Internet Explorer (but only IE 9 or higher). You can choose between SD and HD versions, depending on the speed of your Internet connection.
Just like its insanely popular mobile version, the browser-based version of Angry Birds has you slinging birds at those annoying pigs. Instead of using your fingers to do so (unless you’re using a touch-screen tablet or PC), you simply grab your mouse and start slinging. Making the adjustment isn’t difficult at all, but I found that I had just a tad less control over the positioning of my birds–or maybe that’s just what I tell myself when I have trouble knocking over enough little green pigs.
The browser-based version features the same levels found in the mobile version, but adds a Chrome dimension available only to Web users. I’d tell you more about it, but I’m still trying to unlock it. If you get there first, let me know what to expect.
When the first in-browser version of Angry Birds was released in May it was seen as an important demonstration of the flexibility and power of HTML5. It showed that complex applications could potentially be coded once to run on any platform with a browser. It would remove the need for different versions for, say, Android, iOS, Windows and Mac.
The problem is that there is not yet a finally agreed set of standards for HTML5, so every browser has a slightly different implementation. The Next Web says that convincing leading casual games company PopCap to use the Chrome Web Store is a major victory for Google’s browser.
Bejeweled has been remade in pure HTML5 glory, with 3D accelerated graphics and effects just for the browser. This step shows PopCap is very interested in the potential of HTML5 gaming, and believes the latest version of Bejeweled “is one of the most advanced and impressive HTML5 games yet implemented.”
PopCap has also announced that two of its award-winning games, Plants vs Zombies and Peggle, which had only been available for download through sources such as Amazon would now be available through the official Android Market.
Rolling out a game on two platforms at once is so passé. Why not three at once? That’s the target for Seattle game startup Zipline Games, which is showing off its new game today on iOS, Android, and Google’s Chrome Web browser.
“No one’s been crazy enough to hit three platforms, so we thought we’d put a stake in the ground,” says Zipline CEO Todd Hooper, who’s in Mountain View, CA today for a gaming announcement by Google.
The game is Wolf Toss, a take on what’s known in the industry as a “physics game.” That’s the casual-game format popularized by Finnish developer Rovio’s hit Angry Birds, in which players launch little birds from slingshots to destroy the fortresses set up by a group of marauding pigs that have stolen their eggs.
In Zipline’s Wolf Toss, you’re firing a hungry wolf from a cannon to chase down the three little pigs. The game actually started out as a simple demo months ago—I remember Hooper showing me a proto-version on his phone—but Zipline decided to make it a full-fledged title.
“I handed my phone to a lot of people and said, ‘Hey, here, play it’—and I noticed they wouldn’t give my phone back,” he says.
Like many games of this genre, Wolf Toss is free to play and looks to make money by selling premium content. But it’s also more than a product for Zipline, because it was developed for iOS, Android, and Chrome at the same time using the company’s Moai game developer platform.
Moai is built around Lua, a common programming language for games, and offers a single open-source platform for both the front-end elements seen by consumers and the back-end infrastructure. It allows developers to build their products once and deploy them to multiple user platforms, rather than duplicating efforts for multiple different operating systems.
So if Wolf Toss were deployed to iOS, Android, and Chrome without that system making all the translations, “Then you’ve got three engineering teams and the game costs three times as much,” Hooper says. Moai previously made news by powering Crimson: Steam Pirates, the first release through Bungie Aerospace. Hooper says Moai now has about 3,000 developers signed up.
Even though a service like Moai can simplify the process, it can’t totally eliminate all of the headaches that come with putting a game on three different user platforms at the same time. Everyone has different payment mechanisms for the premium content, for example. There are different approval processes for the app stores. And even different screenshot specs for advertising the games within those stores—a thousand little things that add up for a small company.
“I think we’re unique, and probably also crazy,” Hooper says with a laugh.
Zipline is working on more games, both for itself and others. Check out the video for an idea of what Wolf Toss is like—I see some elements of both Angry Birds and maybe even some old-school Sonic the Hedgehog from the era of Sega consoles, if I’m not mistaken.
Curt Woodward is senior editor at Xconomy Seattle. Reach me at cwoodward@xconomy.com. Get story feeds and more on Twitter @curtwoodward and Facebook on.fb.me/curtwoodward.
Eagle-eyed readers will have already taken note of the visit we received last week from two Angry Birds (plus a couple of pigs).
In their unique rendition of ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas,’ the quartet referred to a ‘fifth magic level’ and mentioned some ‘Samsung mobiles’ as well.
Today, all is revealed; t’was all a pig big publicity stunt for a competition, which sees players of the Chrome version of Angry Birds in with a chance of winning a Samsung Galaxy Note, plus assorted Angry Birds merch.
To be in with a chance of winning, head over to the Chrome Web Store and install the desktop version of Angry Birds. Log in as normal and select today’s challenge from the Season’s Greedings level – you’ll know if it’s the right one as it’ll have a red bird using a Galaxy Note in the window.
To be within a chance of winning, you’ll need to score highly. The top 50 scores will win prizes, with an additional 50 chosen at random.
Top prize is a Samsung Galaxy Note and a selection of 10 Angry Birds merch items. Second prize is a Galaxy Note and 5 large Angry Birds toys. Third prize is a Samsung Galaxy Note and a single large Angry Birds toy.
Fourth to Tenth Prizes are 3 small Angry Birds Toys for each winner, with all other winners will receive 1 Angry Birds Toy.
We’ve had a quick go at the level – which even features little Galaxy Notes as obstacles – and we couldn’t even finish it, because we’re rubbish.
For more details on the Angry Birds Galaxy Note compo, head on over to note.angrybirds.com
Update: there’s also this bespoke Bejewled-style game that sees you matching up pigs and birds in groups of three for points. In a nice Samsung tie-in, the Samsung ‘S-Pen’ icon acts as a joker. Enjoyed yourselves? Good. Now get back to work.
Google figures your web browser should do it all, and that includes playing games. According to developer advocate Paul Kinlan, early next year Chrome is going to offer an even better gaming experience: by adding plug-and-play support gaming controllers.
Now, there’s already a good chance that your operating system might know what to do with a gamepad. “Might” isn’t good enough when you’re supporting 4-plus operating systems as Chrome is — and possibly adding a fifth by taking over browsing duties on Android as well. Chrome already offers plenty of gaming-related features, like WebGL and Native Client support for web-based gaming that could one day rival a traditional PC gaming experience.
Google’s pushed gaming in Chrome before, of course. When support for Chrome Web Apps arrived, Google promoted them by adding Entanglement and Poppit to users’ new tab pages. The company also made a ton of noise about the arrival of the web-based version of Angry Birds, which popped up back in May.
Ultimately, this new functionality might be less about gaming in Chrome than it is about providing developers with more direct access to a system’s hardware. That goal is one shared by Mozilla, whose plans for Boot To Gecko include providing web developers with access to a smartphone’s inner workings using standard web code.
Plug-in free support is also coming for microphones and cameras, and Google will also finally implement support for its own WebRTC framework. WebRTC uses the VP8 codec and other technology from Global IP Solutions, which Google acquired in 2010. WebRTC is open source and has support from Mozilla and Opera in addition to Google, and it’s set to bring Skype-like voice and video chat to browsers without the need for a plug-in (think Google Talk).
Google’s new Chrome 15 is better than ever. This release boasts a new tab page, which makes it easier to get to your Chrome apps and most visited sites. Under the hood, there are also several significant security and performance improvements.
Before launching into those, let’s go over the basics for those of you who haven’t used Chrome. The Chrome Web browser has a minimalist interface. Instead of a tool-bar, the basic interface has a combination address and search bar, the Omnibox, at the top with tabs above that. The handful of visible control buttons consist of Back, Forward, a combined Stop/Reload button, and a preferences wrench icon. That’s it.
If you add extensions, they’ll appear as icons on the right of the Omnibox. If you like having lots of tool-bars and endless interface tweaking power, Chrome is not for you. If you want a clean, fast system without a lot of fuss, Chrome will work well.
When you open a new tab in Chrome 15 you’ll see the “New” New Tab page. At the bottom of the page, you can jump from a page with your Chrome Apps to one with your most visited sites. In the Chrome 15 beta, there was a third choice, “Bookmarks,” but Google elected to not include this feature. Bookmarks are still available via either the Bookmark Bar or Manager.
Besides giving you easier navigation between online apps and your favorite Web sites, you can also organize apps by dragging and dropping them into new sections. You do this by dragging a program to the bottom of the page until a new apps section appears. You can then name the section to something useful by double-clicking on its label. For example, you can make one called “Games” to stuff Angry Birds and the like in.
On the new apps tab, you can also go directly to the revised Chrome Web Store. Here you’ll find the latest Chrome Apps in a much easier to review and install format. Want to know more about a particular application? Click on it, or an extension or theme, and you’ll get panels with additional information, screen-shots, and reviews.
That’s all nice but the real tests of any browser these days are how secure it is, how compliant is it with Web standards, and never, ever least, how fast it is.
As for security, Google fixed numerous vulnerabilities in this update. In addition, this new version of Chrome has been set to defend its secure Web connections against attacks from BEAST, for “Browser Exploit Against SSL/TLS,” a hacking tool for breaking Secure Socket Layer/Transport Layer Security Web site encryption.
When it comes to observing Web standards, Chrome continues to be the pick of the litter. On the Acid 3 compatibility test, which checks how well a browser complies with various Web standards such as CSS, JavaScript, and Extensible Markup Language (XML), Chrome 15 scored a perfect 100. By comparison, Firefox 7 also scored 100 and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) 9 scored a 95.
On the HTML5 Test, which checks to see how compliant the Web browser is with the HTML5 Web page standard, Chrome 15 scored 343 out of a possible 450. Firefox took second with score of 313 and IE is way back in the back with 130 points.
Moving on to performance benchmarks, I set Chrome, along with the latest releases of Firefox and Internet Explorer, on a Gateway DX4710 Windows 7 SP1 test box. This PC is powered by a 2.5-GHz Intel Core 2 Quad processor and has 6GBs of RAM and an Intel GMA (Graphics Media Accelerator) 3100 for graphics. It’s hooked to the Internet via a Netgear Gigabit Ethernet switch, which, in turn, is hooked up to a 60Mbps (Megabit per second) cable Internet connection.
For my first test, I used Mozilla’s Kraken 1.1 benchmark. In Kraken, which like most Web browser benchmarks measures JavaScript performance, lower scores are better. Here, Chrome left Firefox and IE in the dust with a score of 4,048.2ms. Firefox 7 came in next with a score of 6792.9ms followed by IE with a dreadful 17,051.9.ms.
On Google’s own JavaScript V8 Benchmark Suite, where higher scores are better, Chrome, to no surprise, won again. This time it scored 7,913. Firefox came in next at 3,775, with IE behind it with 2,193.
On the oldest JavaScript test, SunSpider 0.9.1, , where lower results are better, IE finally won one with a score of 252.6ms, Chrome in next with 298.4ms, and Firefox came in last with 303.5ms.
Finally, I tried the trio of popular browsers on the beta Peacekeeper Web browser test suite This test looks not only at JavaScript performance but at HTML5 compatibility, video codec support and other Web browser features as well. With Peacekeeper, higher is better and Chrome once more won out with a score of 2,303. Firefox and IE were both far behind with scores of 1,699 and 1,626 respectively.
Put it all together and what do you get? You get the best popular Web browser available today. Download Chrome yourself and see. Chrome is available for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows.
Eagle-eyed readers will have already taken note of the 
