14 DAY TRIAL // Google Chrome 8.0 recently graduated to the Dev Channel, but the development process needs to move extremely fast, if the final version of Chrome 7.0’s successor will be wrapped up and offered to users in approximately six weeks. In this regard, Chrome 8.0 Beta is just around the corner. The Mountain View-based search giant is already gearing up to build the first Beta development milestone of Chrome 8.0.
For the time being however, early adopters and developers will need to content themselves with test driving the Dev channel release of Chrome 8.0, which went live on October 12th, 2010.
In a note shared with the developers working on Chrome, Google’s Jason Kersey emphasized the need to accelerate the efforts around the Beta Build.
The pressure put on devs to move as fast as possible is related to the six week major release process pace imposed by Google.
“As part of our goal to make the 6 week release cycle feasible, we are working to keep developers time spent on each release branch as short as possible,” Kersey stated.
“This allows for more feature and bug work on the trunk, and more coverage of the trunk with dev channels. To achieve this, I'm working to shorten the beta cycle for this release as much as possible.
“To do that means two things, less focus on non-blocker bugs, and (hopefully) quicker resolution of blocker bugs.”
Earlier this week, the Mountain View search giant managed to deliver the stable version of Chrome 7.0 right on time.
Users can now download Google Chrome 7.0.517.41 through both the Stable and Beta channels for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
At the same time, Google is also looking to the future and the company is already talking about Chrome 9.0.
Chromium 9.0 will be the first to be offered to early adopters, with Chrome 9.0 Dev and Beta following.
"We are aiming to get our first beta candidate in hand by the end of the week, and fixing this list of bugs is what blocks us from that," Kersey added.
Google Chrome 7.0 Stable and Beta for Windows are available for download here.
Google Chrome 8.0 Dev for Windows is available for download here.