With the latest developer build of Google Chrome being released this week (version 2.0.180.0), evidence has surfaced showing that extensions and plug-ins are on their way for the browser.

Release notes show that developers have implemented “extensions window & tabs API events.”

“The extensions posse would like to point out that as of today’s dev channel release, extensions are starting to be a bit more useful. We can now put little bits of UI (user interface) in the chrome of Chrome, and some of the APIs (application programming interfaces) are starting to come together,” said Google programmer Aaron Boodman. “There is still quite a ways to go, but if you’re interested in building extensions for Chrome, this might be a good time to start taking a look.”

Google has also updated Chrome Extension HOWTO and included some sample extensions, including a gmail checker.

You can download the latest developer release from the Chromium website.

Along with Apple’s release of 10.5.7 yesterday, Apple has also quietly updated Safari 4 and 3 with security patches.

The update for Safari repaired input validation and memory corruption issues which could have allowed hackers to plant malicious code on websites.

The update was included for Mac users who have already installed the 10.5.7 update, or an updated version of the browser can be downloaded and installed manually from the Apple Safari website.

Google is set to run an advertising campaign on television in the United States, in a bid to steal market share away from rival Microsof’s Internet Explorer.

Currently, Google Chrome holds almost 1.5% of the browser market share, while Internet Explorer is streaks ahead at 66%.

“We designed a Google TV Ads campaign which we hope will raise awareness of our browser, and also help us better understand how television can supplement our other online media campaigns,” said a post on Google’s corporate blog.

The first advertisements are expected to air over the weekend.

Mozilla, famous for Firefox, has released Prism 1.0 beta to the public.

The application which is yet to see mainstream media attention, allows users to turn some websites into downloadable applications which they can use on their computer when they are offline.

Prism works on Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms.

More information plus a download link can be found on the Mozila Prism website.

With Windows 7 Release Candidate just out the door, it seems the operating system is already raising complaints from Mozilla and Opera over the continued bundling of Internet Explorer.

“Our initial review suggests this is a blatant use of the Windows operating system to change the market dynamics of browser usage,” said Mozilla Chairperson, Mitchell Baker.

This is despite the fact that Internet Explorer 8 is now an optional component in Windows 7.

Microsoft still has a month to address the anti-competitive complaints bought against it by the European Union.

The Google Chrome team has created a slew of new videos to promote their browser.

You can watch each and everyone of them from the Google Chrome YouTube channel. The 11 featured videos are all new, with 42 videos now in the channel.

A new project has been started by Mozilla with the aim of splitting up Firefox over several processes, with one process for the user interface, and one process for each open tab.

This is similar to both Google Chrome, and Internet Explorer 8, which both use multiple processes. The advantage of this is that if one tab crashes, it only closes one tab, rather than all open tabs, increasing the general stability of the browser.

The multi-process approach also allows the browser to take use of multiple CPU cores which are increasingly becoming the standard.

At this stage, it doesn’t seem like we will see a full release of this technology in Firefox for at least a year. More information on the project can be found in the Mozilla Links blog.

With the recent release of Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft is now seeking suggestions and feedback from users about what they would like to see in Internet Explorer 9.

“Hi Everyone!
We have added a new feedback form on Connect designed specifically to handle improvements for the next version of Internet Explorer. This includes not just feature requests, but all types of feedback including issues that currently exist in IE. Please continue to rate the submissions since we will look at the top rated reports first.

Please be patient with the resolution of the reports you submit as we are in the research phase for the next version of IE. To shed some light on the status of your submissions, we’ll use a new field, Review Status, which will indicate whether we have reviewed the issue or not.

Please see the Connect site for more information.

The IE Team.”

Feedback can currently be left on the Connect website by anyone who was testing IE8.

After the recent row between developers of the AdBlock Plus and NoScript add-ons for Firefox, Mozilla is considering creating an add-on policy. Mozilla’s proposal follows.

Changes to default home page and search preferences, as well as settings of other installed add-ons, must be related to the core functionality of the add-on. If this relation can be established, you must adhere to the following requirements when making changes to these settings:

• The add-on description must clearly state what changes the add-on makes.
• All changes must be ‘opt-in’, meaning the user must take non-default action to enact the change.
• Uninstalling the add-on restores the user’s original settings if they were changed.

These are minimum requirements and not a guarantee that your add-on will be approved.

NoScripts developer has already agreed to this policy and has released an update to its extension.

Both Mozilla’s Firefox and Google’s Chrome have continued their upward trends through April, increasing their market share. Firefox increased it’s share to 22.5%, up half a percent on last month, while Google Chrome was up around a quarter of a percent to 1.4% share.

Internet Explorer on the other hand continued to bleed users, slumping for another month. Despite the release of Internet Explorer 8, the browser lost almost three quarters of a percent to finish of the month with 66.1% market share.

Both Apple’s Safari and Opera stayed steady for the month, with 8.2% and 0.7% market shares respectively.

More detailed results can be seen using Market Share by Net Applications.