14 DAY TRIAL // While companies with a consistent tradition in browser development such as Microsoft and Mozilla are taking years to advance Internet Explorer and respectively Firefox from one version to another, Google is going through Chrome releases like its has been producing it since the dawn of the Internet. Just a week after it left version 1.0 behind and launched v2.0 for the general public, the Mountain View-based search giant has kicked Chrome up a notch and all the way to version 3.0. As of May 27, Google 3.0 Build 3.0.182.2 is up for grabs via the Developer channel.
“Google Chrome 3.0.182.2 has been released to the Dev channel. Highlights for this release: Google Chrome now supports the video tag. Auto-spell-correct flag will fix common typos like "teh" for "the" in the blink of an eye. Various bits of UI clean-up (toolbar and dangerous download bar paint issues). Multiple crash fixes,” informed Anthony Laforge, technical program manager.
Laforge also pointed out that there was an issue with this release, but that the next development milestone provided via the Dev channel would resolve it. “The font in the browser's user interface is very small in most non-English languages. This will be fixed in the next Dev channel update.” Along with the delivery of Chrome 3.0.182.2, Google has also taken to the next level the browser's rendering engine and the JavaScrip engine. In this sense, the Mountain View company's latest iteration of its open-source browser took WebKit to version 531.0, V8 to 1.2.5.1 and Gears to 0.5.21.0.
At the end of the past week, Google started serving Chrome 2.0 Build 2.0.172.28 to all users downloading the browser through the Stable channel, replacing the last build of Chrome 1.0 available. It took the search giant just eight months to go from Chrome version 1.0 to Chrome version 3.0. This while Mozilla will release Firefox 3.5 at least a year after Firefox 3.0, and with Microsoft having offered Internet Explorer 8 in March 2009, after launching IE7 at the end of 2006.
The latest releases of Google Chrome are available for download here.