Download Google Chrome 2.0.168.0

At the end of the past week, Google made available a new development milestone of the next iteration of the Chrome browser. The Mountain View company is making headway with the development of Chrome 2.0 and has now reached version 2.0.168.0. At the same time, Microsoft is on the verge of releasing Internet Explorer 8 RTW, which has already been reported as being finalized, while Mozilla will rebrand Firefox 3.1 as Firefox 3.5, in the evolution from Beta 3 to Beta 4 of the next version of its open source browser.

“Google Chrome's Dev channel has been updated to 2.0.168.0. The highlights for this week: new – NTLM auth without automatic logon; Remote Desktop and Vista Theme changes now work nicely; new French and Polish dictionaries; and better support for PAC files and use of V8 to process them (use --proxy-resolver-v8 to try). Fixes: more improvements to full screen mode and many crash and stability fixes,” Jonathan Conradt, Google Engineering program manager, revealed.

Chrome 2.0.168.0 is a dev channel build, which comes to the table with fixes for in excess of 150 bugs. At the same time, Google has introduced a new version of its JavaScript engine. The Mountain View search giant indicated that “Update v8 to version 1.0.3.1 containing a fix for a crash bug in new 'eval' optimization code.”

At the same time, there are known issues with Chrome 2.0.168.0 that end-users have to be aware of. “Browser hangs if history page shows after clearing history. History tab search tab eats every alternate clicks Regression: about:network dialog shows up behind current Chrome window. Javascript alerts don't work in New Tab Page. Cannot switch to background Chrome window with modal dialog open. Copying most visited page screenshot and selecting paste and go causes crash. Bookmarking a page not reflected on history page when open. Browser crash on 'Remove/Remove All' of passwords,” Conradt added.

The latest development milestone of Google Chrome is available for download here.