14 DAY TRIAL // With the Google Chrome 3.0 stable release barely out the door, the Google team is not looking back and the web browser reached 4.0.211.4 in the developer channel with the latest release. Initially billed as 4.0.211.2, the version number got bumped after a serious error was discovered leading to crashes when launching the browser with the –enable-sync option. The error is now fixed and Chrome is ready for eager developers to test.
The latest release comes with a nice set of updates and some new or improved features, but nothing too spectacular. For all platforms, Chrome's New Tab page is now faster and several bugs relating to NewFTP have been fixed. A bug affecting the Dailymotion online video site has also been resolved. On Windows, selecting a new language for the interface also changes the tips displayed.
Extension support is also coming along nicely, both for users as well as for developers. There is now an enable/disable button on the extensions page, as well as an “update extensions now” button to force it to check for newer versions. Finally, relative URLs inside extensions can now be referenced from the chrome.window and chrome.tab APIs.
Linux and Mac users should be more satisfied with the new release, as there is a significant number of fixes for both platforms. While there is no word on when the beta versions for Linux or Mac are coming, the releases are beginning to look more fleshed out and there shouldn't be long now before they are ready for a wider release.
While Chrome development pushes ahead, the stable branch and even the beta releases felt somewhat neglected. Chrome had reached 4.0 in the dev channel, but was still stuck at 2.0 for the general-use version. Finally, just last week, the browser reached 3.0 in the stable channel as well, bringing a significant number of features available for a while to users of the test versions.
Google Chrome 4.0.211.4 is available for download here.