14 DAY TRIAL // Google has introduced the second update to the Beta channel for its open source browser in less than a week. Google Chrome 4.1.249.1030 Beta is currently available for download, but only for early adopters running Windows, just as it was the case with the previous release. The mountain View-based search giant, while developing flavors of Chrome in parallel for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, more often than not doesn’t synchronize releases, especially if they are updates through the Beta or Dev Channels. Case in point: Google Chrome Beta Build 4.1.249.1030, which is available for testing only by users of Microsoft’s proprietary operating system.
At the start of this month, the Windows Beta channel for Google Chrome was updated to Build 4.1.249.1021. Google explained the necessity for a version 4.1 of the open source browser as it was attempting to deliver Chrome 5 features to users early. Build 4.1.249.1021 brought to the table Chrome 5 features including automatic translation of web pages and extra content settings for user privacy. Obviously, v4.1 is a minor update to version 4.0, which was released in the Stable channel in the first half of February 2010.
Google Chrome 4.1.249.1030 Beta introduces a few fixes, out of which Orit Mazor, of the Google Chrome Team, chose to emphasize two, related to the installer and to the user interface. Until 4.1.249.1030 Beta, users that had Chrome installed and attempted to install the browser again would get an error message informing them that the browser was already on their computer. However, this is not the desired behavior, and Google tweaked Chrome to allow deployments even on machines where Chrome had already been installed. The UI bug involved the browser incorrectly reporting plugins as blocked in specific scenarios in which no plugin allocation attempts existed.
Google Chrome 4.1.249.1030 Beta comes just five days after the release of Build 4.1.249.1025, which was focused on introducing performance improvements, but also fixing bugs in the cookie manager and translate infobar.
The latest release of Google Chrome Beta is available for download here.
Google Chrome 4.0.249.89 Stable for Windows is available for download here.