14 DAY TRIAL // If there were any doubts that the final, stable release of Google Chrome 9 is just around the corner, the number of Chrome 9 Betas we've been getting for the past few days should dispel them.
While the latest beta channel release, Google Chrome 9.0.597.47 Beta, re-introduces support for WebGL, hardware accelerated compositing and the Flash sandbox feature, more adventurous Chrome users are discovering that the most experimental releases now have the 'in-tab' options menu enabled by default.
"The Beta channel has been updated to 9.0.597.47 for Windows," the release announcement read. "Flash Player sandboxing has been restored for all platforms but XP as has accelerated compositing and WebGL," it continued.
Flash sandboxing had been disabled, temporarily, last week with the release of Google Chrome 9.0.597.44. The subsequent Google Chrome 9.0.597.45 brought back sandboxing in some cases, WebGL 3D graphics was disabled as was accelerated compositing.
The latest beta release brings back the sanity and everything is working as intended. With this update, you can expect Google Chrome 9 to be released to the stable channel soon.
In the mean time, those who want to be using the very latest features and don't mind some of the bugs that come with that, may have noticed that Chromium 10 and the most recent Google Chrome 10 Canary Builds have the in-tab options menu enabled by default.
This feature has been in the works for quite a while now and has been available as a flag for months. Google is finally ready to replace the legacy modal dialog-based options menu with a much more slick Settings page.
The in-tab settings page has several advantages. For one, it looks the same on all platforms supported, which means a more seamless experience for the users and less work for the developers. But it also means that Google Chrome OS is even less dependent on the GTK library still used for some elements.
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.