New Chrome 11 offers speech-to-text
Be careful venting your frustrations with modern technology when using the latest version of Google Chrome, released Wednesday. Chrome 11 comes with the ability to convert your speech to text, which could prove to be a big boon to people who have difficulty with keyboards as well as providing on the go translations when used with Google Translate.
The new feature, based in HTML 5, requires a microphone icon embedded in the web page. Click the icon and then speak into the computer's mike, and the input records as text. The browser automatically inserts the text into the available form field. At the time of writing, the microphone and voice-to-HTML feature appears to work only with English.
Other changes in Chrome 11 include the introduction of hardware accelerated 3D CSS, bug fixes in cloud print, a security update to the built-in version of Adobe Flash, and user agent string changes introduced to bring Chrome in line with user agent changes made in Firefox 4. The jump from Chrome 11 beta to stable also includes 25 security changes, including 15 marked as high risk. These fixes cover potential risks such as URL bar spoofing during navigation errors, and numerous instances of stale pointers in PDF forms, sandboxing, and drop-down list handling.
For more on this story, read Chrome 11 wants to hear you speak on CNET News.