14 DAY TRIAL // Google has just announced the availability of the latest beta version of its Chrome web browser. The new version, 3.0.195.4 Beta, brings some of the new features currently available in the developer releases like some HTML 5 capabilities and support for themes. Google also boasts that the new beta is 30 percent faster than the current stable version in JavaScript performance.
“As always, we continue to focus on speed, and this beta release shows over 30% improvement on both the V8 and SunSpider benchmarks over our current stable channel release. We've also improved two of the most loved and most used features of Google Chrome: the New Tab page and the Omnibox. Plus, we decided to add a little bit of style by allowing you to deck out your browser with colors, patterns, and images,” Glen Murphy, Google software engineer, wrote on the Chrome blog.
One of the biggest features is an improved New Tab page, which now lets users customize the "Most Visited" entries by removing the less flattering sites and allowing them to rearrange the order of the thumbnails. Another useful feature is the possibility to pin certain pages to any position so that they won't move even if they aren't some of the most visited sites anymore.
The Omnibox, one of the areas that has seen the most work from Google developers and most praise from the users, has also been improved with a new layout of the drop-down menu and with the introduction of small icons in front of the entries to distinguish between searches, bookmarks and the sites saved in the browsing history. Under the hood, the beta release now supports some HTML 5 capabilities like the <video> tag and web workers, which enable web apps to function offline.
The update that is the most visible, though, is the support for the newly launched Chrome themes, allowing users to customize the look of their browser, a welcomed change after seeing the same blue theme for over a year now. A new gallery has been set up to house the new themes, with 29 already available, and installing them is as easy as it gets, requiring just one click from the user.
The latest versions of Google Chrome are available for download here.