14 DAY TRIAL // Google has released the fastest iteration of its open source browser yet to the general public. The final version of Google Chrome 5.0.375.55 is now available for download for users of Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. The Mountain View-based search giant pushed Chrome 5.0 to Beta at the start of this month, revealing that it outperformed all previous releases of the open source browser. In less than a month since the introduction of the Beta development milestone, Google Chrome 5.0’s evolution has produced the first Stable Build, a release that is ready for the general public to install and use immediately.
The Beta of Chrome 5.0 was 213% faster compared with the first ever Beta of the browser, according to the scores in the V8 benchmark Suite. At the same time, JavaScript performance had jumped 305% in Chrome 5.0 Beta over the first testing milestone of Chrome in the SunSpider benchmark, and sank well under 500 milliseconds.
Chrome 5.0.375.55 marks an important milestone for Google’s open source browser, in the sense that this is the first Stable release synchronized across all supported platforms. The promise from Google is that existing users of Chrome on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux will be offered automatic upgrades to the latest Stable release soon.
“Today’s stable release also comes with a host of new features. You’ll be able to synchronize not only bookmarks across multiple computers, but also browser preferences -- including themes, homepage and startup settings, web content settings, preferred languages, and even page zoom settings. Meanwhile, for avid extensions users, you can enable each extension to work in incognito mode through the extensions manager,” Brian Rakowski, Google Chrome product manager, revealed.
Google has also been hard at work testing deep integration between Chrome and Adobe Flash. However, for the time being, Flash did not make it into the Stable version of the search giant’s open source browser. Rakowski revealed that Adobe Flash Player integration into Chrome 5.0 would be enabled by default soon, as Adobe would produce the full release of Flash Player (version 10.1).
“Our stable release also incorporates HTML5 features such as Geolocation APIs, App Cache, web sockets, and file drag-and-drop. For a taste of HTML5’s powerful features, try browsing through websites developed in HTML5 such as scribd.com, dragging and dropping attachments in Gmail, or by enabling the geolocation functionality in Google Maps. We’ve also given Chrome’s bookmark manager a facelift with HTML5,” Rakowski added.
Google Chrome 5.0.375.55 Stable is available for download here.
Google Chrome 6.0.408.1 Dev is available for download here.
The new WebM-ready Firefox 3.7 Alpha 4 is available for download here.
Chromium 6.0.412.0 is available for download here.
Opera 10.54 Build 21868 Beta with HTML5 WebM VP8 video support is available for download here.
Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) Platform Preview 2 Build 1.9.7766.6000 is available for download here.
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