14 DAY TRIAL // The most recent Chrome Dev Channel Update, posted by Karen Grunberg on Friday, February 12, has brought Chrome to version 5.0.322.2 for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. Google has added support for extensions to the Mac beta, a feature previously available only in less stable 'developer' builds.
According to the release notes, Mac specific changes in this build include: honor modifiers for clicks on home button – cmd-clicking the home button now opens your home page in a new tab; implemented writing direction context menu in text input fields; added local storage nodes to the cookie manager. Additionally, Chrome for Linux and Mac OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard) can now run Native Client modules directly, no plugin required. To enable these features, users are required to run Chrome with the following command line flags --internal-nacl --enable-gpu-plugin --no-sandbox.
Grunberg urges users to note that, “This should only be used to experiment with Native Client, disabling the sandbox for normal web browsing is dangerous and is not recommended.” Also, he reveals, platform-independent NPAPI extensions for 2D, 3D, and mouse/keyboard events are now available.
As far as extensions are concerned, Chrome should not crash when extensions now use cookies, while the browser will preserve the order actions across extension autoupdate. Finally, the developers have implemented overflow and reordering of browser actions. According to Grunberg, “This was actually in the last update, but missed the release notes”.
A few known issues are listed as usual. Particularly, Chrome doesn't show the popup blocker bubble, this being an issue plaguing all versions for all platforms. An issue present only in Mac and Linux builds is that the software can't save cookie settings.
As usual, to get the latest version of the Google Chrome web browser, use the link below. Chrome works on Intel-machines only and requires Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) or later. Chrome for Mac is still beta software, therefore users are advised to exercise caution when utilizing the browser, or at least not rely on it for important tasks.