Chrome 24 Beta Adds MathML, Unprefixes IndexedDB, requestAnimationFrame

Chrome 24 Beta is faster and that's about it. The few new features it introduces are minor at best. But developers may have more to like in the latest beta, highlights are datalist support for date and time, MathML support and unprefixed IndexedDB.

Google's Peter Beverloo, who has been tracking Chrome progress way before he was working for Google, put together a list of the most notable additions.

HTML datalists are a useful way of making forms easier for users to complete, by providing suggestions.

These suggestions can be of any kind, depending on what you're trying to achieve, color, numbers, text and so on. Now, Chrome 24 adds support for date and time datalist suggestions.

Also new in Chrome 24 is native support for MathML, thanks to it being included in WebKit in the first place.

As the name suggests, MathML is a math markup language, it enables you to include complex math equations and formulas and be sure that they can be displayed properly in the browser.

IndexedDB, again as the name suggests, is a database for the web, it enables apps to store structured data locally.

It's supported by most modern browsers, but since it's been in active development, it is only getting unprefixed in Chrome. It's been unprefixed in Firefox 16 as well, now in the stable channel.

The requestAnimationFrame method for JavaScript has been unprefixed as well. The method enables developers working on games or highly visual and intensive apps to ensure that their creations run smoothly at 60 FPS as they should.

Technically, what it does is inform the browser that you want to paint a new frame, in HTML5 Canvas for example. This makes for smoother frame rates as the browser will choose the best time to repaint the frame, for example, when it's repainting the entire page.