Google has introduced a way that you can talk to your browser, as long as that browser is Chrome. It won't talk back, but it will do your bidding. These instructions cover the basics of the new speech-to-text feature, which is functional but has yet to be implemented widely.

First off, be sure that you're using Google Chrome 11 (download for Windows | Mac | Linux)or later, and that you've got a microphone. Next, you have to navigate to a site that supports the new speech API. Currently, that's limited to Google Translate, which itself is limited to translations that originate in English. Expect that to change as site developers begin to implement the feature. One other hitch is that because this is a brand-new feature, it's also limited at present in Google Translate to translations originating in English.

So: Set Google Translate to English, then click the microphone that appears in the lower right-hand corner of the input box. Speak the sentence you want translated. When you're done talking, Google will automatically translate it. You can also use the site's Listen option (to the right of the text field) to hear what's the translation sounds like.

Web sites that currently use the speech API
• Google Translate
• Web2Voice, which demonstrates embedded video playback, control, and search
• HTML5 demo Web site

There are currently some unofficial options for playing with the Speech-to-HTML API. The Web2Voice site that I discovered in a Chromium HTML5 Google groups forum has implemented basic YouTube compatibility using the new speech API. Click the microphone icon and say, "Green Lantern trailer," to search for trailers from the upcoming movie. If you click and say, "Play official trailer" it will play the trailer with those words in the title. To pause it, click and say "stop." To resume, click and say "play."

This isn't an official implementation, since that would appear on the YouTube site. But this certainly gives a strong indication of what the API is capable of. Unfortunately, having to click the microphone for every input is a bit of a pain. You might as well just click the pause button yourself. Also annoying is that the feature has trouble distinguishing between audio playback from the computer and your voice.

What this likely will be extremely useful for is accessibility within the upcoming Google Chrome OS. If you're spending you're entire computing time in the browser, as you will be in Chrome OS, and using the keyboard isn't easy for you, then having on-demand speech-to-command options are a must.

If you discover more options for the API, let me know in the comments below.

In the quest for better browser speed, Mozilla has begun work on new Firefox engines for running JavaScript programs and displaying graphics.

The new JavaScript engine, including a compiler called IonMonkey, is designed to run Web-based programs faster and to impose less disruption during the pesky memory-scrubbing process called garbage collection. And the graphics engine, called Azure, is intended to get along better with Windows' graphics interfaces while still working with those of Mac OS X and Linux.

Says Joe Drew, who's working on Azure:

Firefox 4's graphics performance is great...We're not content with "great," though, and our investigations into how to make drawing even faster have revealed that some of our choices in Gecko's graphics engine aren't optimal for performance.

Naturally, Azure is designed to improve the performance. It also lays the groundwork for future work in separating Mozilla processes into different memory compartments, a long-running project called Electrolysis. The compartmentalization has the potential to improve security and performance, but it requires extensive retooling of basic parts of the browser.

The browser market has become hotly competitive, with Google's Chrome stealing away share of usage once held by Mozilla's Firefox and IE9 finally giving Microsoft a competitive browser again. Responding to the challenge, Mozilla has put Firefox on a Chrome-esque development fast track to try to get new features into people's hands faster.

The next version, Firefox 5, is due June 21, according to release manager Christian Legnitto. But don't expect the JavaScript and graphics changes to arrive that soon.

"IonMonkey is currently in the design stages--David Anderson and I are studying the compiler literature and the competition and doing experiments to find out just what features IonMonkey needs. Coding is about to start," said David Mandelin, a Mozilla JavaScript engine programmer. Compilers handle the essential task of translating the programs a human wrote into the instructions a computer understands.

The new JavaScript engine also is due to get a new debugging interface. That's potentially important: JavaScript programs are steadily increasing in sophistication and size, and tracking down why something isn't working is crucial for programmer productivity.

And, more to the point, all the browser makers are trying furiously to court Web developers with features to make their lives easier. Web developers are the ones who ensure a Web site or Web application works on multiple browsers and takes advantages of new features.

Originally posted at Deep Tech