Today, Google announced a major new update to its Chrome web browser that gives the application a large speed boost, as well as some new features. According to Google, Chrome now loads JavaScript-heavy pages 30% faster than the previous stable version. Some of the new features that Google announced today were already available in the last beta version, but users on the stable version will now get access to Chrome’s full screen mode, form autofill, and improved new tap pages. In addition, Google says that the new stable version of Chrome contains over 300 bug-fixes.
Google Chrome is available in three versions, a stable, mainstream version, a beta version, and a cutting-edge developer version. Today’s updates were already available in the beta version, but for most users who probably didn’t know that the other development tracks exist, these updates represent a major step forward.
Improved New Tab Page, Autofill, Full Screen Mode
Similar to the beta version of Apple’s Safari 4, Google Chrome now allows users to delete items from the new tabs page. As Google puts it, you can now finally hide those “embarrassing gossip blogs” from your Most Visited section, which automatically appears when you open a new tab in Chrome.
Chrome can now also autofill forms with information a user has previously entered into similar forms, and it finally has a full-screen mode that hides the title bar and the rest of the browser window.
Sadly, though, one neat feature that was available in the beta versions – the ability to drag tabs to see them side-by-side – did not make it into the stable version…yet.
Here at ReadWriteWeb, we are big fans of Chrome, but the lack of extensions always makes us go back to Firefox as our preferred browser. The developer version already contains some rudimentary support for adding extensions and user-scripts, but it will probably still take a while before these features will make it to the stable version of Chrome.
If you are already using the stable version of Chrome, these updates will be applied automatically, and if you are not using Chrome yet, you can download it here. Officially, Chrome is only available for Windows, but if you are a very brave Mac user, you can download an unstable and highly unpolished version of Chrome here.
