14 DAY TRIAL // Google Chrome 10 is now deemed stable enough to wear the beta label. After a couple of months in the developer channel, Chrome 10 is almost ready for mass consumption. And, despite the short development cycles, there are plenty of new features and updates over the current Google Chrome 9 release.
Along with a huge boost in JavaScript performance, the biggest single leap to date, Chrome 10 adds support for hardware accelerated video by default, the new in-tab settings page, password sync by default and some better, security-minded options.
"In the spirit of the lunar new year, we’re excited to kick off the Year of the Rabbit with a slew of enhancements in the Chrome beta channel," Jeff Chang, Product Manager and Min Li Chan, Product Marketing Manager at Google, write.
Hardware-accelerated video
Google Chrome 10 expands the list of features and tasks offloaded to the GPU. The graphics chips in most computers are able to handle a lot of the tasks typically managed by the CPU and do it a lot faster and more efficiently.
Browser makers are all working to have as many parts of the rendering process handled by the GPU. IE9 and Firefox 4 both boast full hardware acceleration, on Windows 7 and Vista at least, but Chrome is not that far behind and many stages are already done, though not all are enabled by default.
Google Chrome 10 adds another piece to the puzzle by enabling GPU acceleration for HTML5 video by default. This should result in lower CPU usage in all scenarios, with the biggest improvements seen when playing full-screen video. Apart from the better performance, this also leads to extended battery life on mobile devices.
Password sync
Google introduced bookmark sync almost a year ago and it has expanded the feature ever since. It has been experimenting with password sync for many months now, but the security implications probably made Google more cautions than with other features.
If you have sync enabled, you can now synchronize passwords across browser instances. You have to encrypt the data stored in the Google cloud for this to work, either with your Google account password or, even better, with a specific passphrase.
In-tab settings page
Google Chrome 10 beta adds another feature we've been seeing for a few months now in the testing builds, in-tab settings. Rather than a classic modal dialog, all the Chrome settings and configuration options are available through a regular tab.
This has several advantages, it looks the same across all platforms, it looks good in Chrome OS and is more convenient for the user as well. The in-tab settings page is completely on-par with the old one.
In fact, it's better in a number of ways. Since the settings tab is essentially a web page, Google added a search box which you can use to quickly find the configuration option you want if you can't remember where it is, or don't want to go through all the steps.
What's more, you can actually use direct URLs for any individual page within the settings tab, so you can access any portion directly, or send others a fast way of accessing a specific config option.
If you're already using a Google Chrome beta you should be automatically updated to the latest version. Google Chrome 10 will be in beta for a few more weeks before being introduced to the stable channel.
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.