Google has announced two new major releases of Chrome, one of which takes the popular open source web browser to the much-anticipated version 14.0.
The search giant first confirms that the Dev channel has been promoted to version 14.0.794.0 for Mac, Windows, Linux and Chrome Frame platforms, which delivers an updated V8 engine (v. 3.4.3.0), a fair number of tweaks, as well as a Mac-specific fix addressing “invalid server certificate” errors.
The Chrome 14 Dev release notes list a few security fixes as well, but also a few known issues, in what is a typical changelog for a Developer release.
While this release will undoubtedly attract fans immediately, it should also be noted that as a result of Chrome Dev reaching version 14, the Beta channel has been promoted to version 13.
According to Chris Bentzel, software engineer writing on the Google Chrome Blog, Chrome 13 Beta is nothing short of spectacular, as it features their new prerendering technology which makes some Google.com search results load almost instantly after the user clicks on them.
Those who live by the saying “I’ll believe it when I see it” can feast their eyes on this video.
“Although Google.com is the most high-profile site to use this new prerendering technology, it can be used by other sites since it’s been designed as a web standard,” according to Bentzel.
He advises web developers who are interested in learning more to visit this post in the Chromium blog.
That’s not all. Chrome 13 Beta adds other new stuff, like an updated omnibox that suggests partial matches for URLs and page titles from the user’s browsing history.
Finally, this Chrome release also adds a much-requested Print Preview feature that uses Chrome’s built-in PDF viewer to display the page you want to print.
It updates automatically as you adjust your print settings and, as a bonus “for being patient” with Google’s engineers, it also allows you to save any web page as a PDF file.
All versions of Google Chrome - Stable, Beta, and Dev - can be downloaded via the links below. Don’t forget to drop us a line and tell us how you like these new enhancements in Chrome.
Note that Chrome 14 Dev is an unstable release, not suitable for important work.
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