14 DAY TRIAL // Google has pushed its open source browser one step further, and jumped from version 5.0 to 6.0 in terms of the Stable releases available to end users. Concomitantly with the second year anniversary of the Google browser, Google Chrome 6.0.472.53 was made available for download to the public, graduating from the Beta channel, for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
At the same time, the Mountain View-based search giant continues to work on the next versions of Chrome, and also offered a new Beta Build of Chrome 6.0 for testers running the three platforms supported by the browser.
“Updates from the previous stable release include: updated UI; form Autofill; syncing of extensions and Autofill data; [and ] increased speed and stability,” noted Jason Kersey, from the Google Chrome team.
In addition to the changes enumerated above, the latest Stable release of Chrome also brings to the table a variety of security patches to over a dozen vulnerabilities.
The release of Chrome 6.0 Final coincides with the second year since Google first unveiled its open source browser to the world.
In the past couple of years Chrome has grown impressively, hitting a share of 7.52% on the browser market, which is equivalent to roughly a third of Mozilla’s users, according to statistics shared by Net Applications.
“We’re releasing a new stable version of Chrome that is even faster and more streamlined,” revealed Brian Rakowski, Chrome Product Manager.
“Chrome is now three times faster than it was two years ago on JavaScript performance. We’ve also been working on simplifying the “chrome” of Chrome".
“As you can see, we took the already minimalist user interface and stripped it down a bit more to make it easier to use."
“We combined Chrome’s two menus into one, revisited the location of the buttons, cleaned up the treatment of the URL and the Omnibox, and adjusted the color scheme of the browser to be easier on the eyes,” he stated.
Google continues to push Chrome forward, with the promise that there will be a rapid succession of new releases in the months to come.
At this point in time, in addition to Chrome 6.0 Beta, early adopters can test drive the Dev channel release of Chrome 7.0.
“We’re hard at work on making Chrome even faster, and working on ways to improve graphics performance in the browser through hardware acceleration,” Rakowski added.
“With the Chrome Web Store, we hope to make it much easier to find and use great applications on the web. We also ratcheted up the pace of our releases so that we can get new features and improvements to everyone more quickly.” Google Chrome for Windows is available for download here. Google Chrome for Linux is available for download here. Google Chrome for Mac is available for download here.