Chrome will gain improvements in the printing system

One of the most fascinating things, in my opinion, is being able to follow a program throughout your life and, thus, vibrate with each of your victories and improvements. And this is exactly what has been happening since September 2008, when I was still just a reader of Google Discovery and Google released, for download, the first public Beta of Chrome.

In almost three years (damn, I’m getting old), I was able to experience the wonderful growth that Chrome had. I’m not just talking about the growing number of users (today, it is the second most used browser in Brazil and the third in the world), but mainly the addition of new features to the browser. In essence, the browser must be minimalist like Google, but it came into the world very naked. In order to compete with its main competitors (Internet Explorer and Firefox), it was inevitable that it would gain more resources, and this was done satisfactorily by Google throughout this period.

As a Chrome evangelist that I am (but no bigger than my adoration for Gmail 😛), I’ve always noticed a big complaint from users: the lack of a preview Printing. Although I hardly print things from the browser, I know it is a widely used feature, especially by IE users. It seems that the company finally resolved to remedy this browser flaw.

Apparently available only to users of the Chrome Dev version, whenever a page or document is sent to the printer (the famous Ctrl + P), the functionality functionality Print preview is loaded and the guide chrome: // print / open, giving the user some options for customizing the printer, such as the definition of the printer to be used, the pages to be printed, the number of copies and whether to print in black and white or color.

With an integrated PDF viewer since June 2010, Chrome did not allow users to save files or have them printed, at least not intuitively. This was a reason for complaint on my part, a few days ago, on Twitter.

If Google reads the things I say on Twitter, I don’t know. The only thing I know is that, last Saturday, friend Gregori Pavan warned me that there was a new feature in the PDF preview of Chrome. When accessing a file to test, I came across two new options: save and print. Yes, Google killed two rabbits with one ax!

Well, now, in addition to being able to change the way the document is displayed on the screen, zooming in, zooming out or displaying it in full screen, users can, with a simple click, have the file saved or printed. In the latter case, the Print preview is loaded. The only thing I don’t know, in the case of the PDF viewer, is whether the novelty is available only to users of the Dev version of the browser.

What’s next for Chrome? I dont know. I just know that, every day, I like him even more. 🙂