Aug 12, 2010 07:15 GMT  ·  By

The next major iteration of Google Chrome has graduated to Beta and is now available for download and testing.

In less than a week after releasing the last developer preview of Chrome 5.0’s successor, Google has signed off the first Beta development milestone and is now offering the bits to early adopters.

Google Chrome 6.0 Beta brings to the table a variety of bug fixes, but also delivers more horsepower improved stability, a graphical user interface redesign and new features.

Users will be able to find the necessary download links for Chrome 6.0 Beta at the bottom of the screen.

As always, Google once again focused on kicking performance up a notch. Of course, in terms of touting speed improvements in Chrome 6.0 Beta, the Mountain View-based search giant is focusing on applauding advances related to the open source browser’s JavaScript engine, as per usual.

“Our new beta release continues to be faster than before,” revealed James Hawkins, Google Chrome Software Engineer.

According to information shared by Google, Chrome 6.0 Beta is no less than 15% faster than the Chrome 5.0 Beta on the V8 benchmark.

At the same time, the latest Beta Build also delivers a 15% performance improvement on the SunSpider benchmark, compared to the Beta for the previous version of Chrome.

“Additionally, we’ve improved by 64% on Mozilla's Dromeao DOM Core Tests,” Hawkins added.

Chrome 6.0 Beta also comes with touchups to the user interface. Of course, early adopters and developers that have already been playing with the Dev channel releases of Chrome 6.0 are already familiar with the small UI redesign details.

UI optimizations have been focused on streamlining the upper toolbar, delivering a better UX for the Omnibox, and better centralizing the browser’s options into a single menu.

As far as new features are concerned, Chrome 6.0 Beta offers Autofill and enhanced synchronization capabilities.

“Autofill, helps you fill in web forms automatically with information that you specify, such as your name, address, phone number, and the credit card number you use for shopping online,” Hawkins explained.

“Autofill builds up and saves this information for you over time, so that you can fill in long web forms with just a few clicks without typing in the same information over again,” he added.

“In addition to syncing bookmarks, preferences, and themes, you can now choose to sync your Chrome extensions as well as your Autofill data (excluding credit card numbers) through your Google Account,” Hawkins said.

Google Chrome  6.0.472.33 Beta for Windows is available for download here.
Google Chrome 6.0.472.33 Beta for Mac is available for
download here.

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