Aug 13, 2010 16:26 GMT  ·  By

Google’s big announcement in the Chrome department this week has been the first Chrome 6 beta. It’s a big release and a clear improvement over the previous beta versions. But those that want to live on the cutting edge got a bit left behind.

For the past couple of weeks, the focus in the dev channel has been on getting ready for the beta builds. The most recent dev channel builds have been beta pre-releases.

But when the beta finally landed, Google Chrome 6.0.472.33, the latest build in the dev channel was still Chrome 6.0.472.25. So, for a couple of days, dev channel users were actually running an older version than beta users.

The situation has finally been rectified with the release of Google Chrome 6.0.490.1 for all supported platforms, which brings the dev channel back in line with the Chromium builds. Of course, the users that didn’t want to fall to much behind, could have installed the Canary builds.

The Dev channel has been updated to 6.0.490.1 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Chrome Frame platforms,” the official announcement reads.

Since it’s a bigger jump than between most dev channel builds, the new version actually comes with quite a few changes and improvements.

Fixes on all platforms:

· Late binding enabled for SSL sockets - high priority SSL requests are now always sent to the server first; · Fixed focus problems with restoring from minimize; · Fixed Cannot add an address properly in the "AutoFill options" dialog box; · Several fixes and checks relating to syncing extensions; · Click-to-play is now behind the --enable-click-to-play command line switch. Fixed several issues with click-to-play.

There are other platform specific fixes as well. The interesting new feature is the ‘click-to-play’ functionality. Basically, it works like the FlashBlock Chrome extension, but for all plugins. If enabled, by default it blocks all plugins for all sites. You can disable the feature for specific plugins or specific websites.

Google Chrome for Windows is available for download here. Google Chrome for Linux is available for download here. Google Chrome for Mac is available for download here.