Google’s web browser Chrome, which went from beta to complete in record time for Windows computers, is almost ready for Apple Macintosh systems.
It is understood that up until now Google engineers had been building an engine that could render pages on the Mac within a framework called the test shell.
However, turning the rendering engine into a fully fledged browser for the Mac environment has been a challenge.
A screenshot of Chrome working on OS X has been posted to the Chromium developer list, sparking speculation across the web.
Google has set a deadline of shipping Chrome for the Mac and Linux operating systems by June.
At present, Google describes Chrome for OS X and Linux as “a work in progress.” A message on the Chrome developer’s forum said: “As of mid-Feb 09, we now have an application that looks a lot like our vision for Chromium on Mac OS X, and can create windows and tabs using the same cross-platform infrastructure used by Windows and Linux, but using a Cocoa UI layer on top.
“As tabs are created, new renderer processes are created (you can see them in Activity Monitor), and they go away when the tab closes. The end-to-end rendering pipeline is hooked up and we are drawing a little, but not correctly. We’ll put up a screenshot when we have something looking like a real webpage.”
By John Kennedy
Pictured: the first screenshotof Google Chrome for Mac
