14 DAY TRIAL // The Development branch of Google Chrome, a browser built on the Blink layout engine that aims to be minimalistic and versatile at the same time, has advanced to version 38 and is jam-packed with changes and new features.
Google Chrome usually features three distinct branches: Dev, Beta, and Stable. The Stable and the Beta branches have already been updated, and now it's time for the Dev release to also get a new version.
The Development branch is the one where all the new features are added and tested for the first time. It's very likely that some of the new things that users find in this release might not make it downstream to Beta or Stable.
According to the changelog, a new version of the Blink engine has been integrated, a minimized state for the home-card has been added, configure flags for libgcrypt11 have been added, combined shadow assets used by the class ui::wm::Shadow have been added and the unneeded assets for individual shadow patches have been removed, the policy code has been cleaned, the browser no longer focuses on the password bubble by default, UMA has been added for the new generic permission class, BoringSSL has replaced OpenSSL, and the Context Menu "Open image" has been removed from the Image URL Tab.
Also, the ephemeral app cache from Clear Browsing Data is now cleared properly, animation has been added when zooming pictures, display, message_center, shell_dialogs, and webview have been added to the GN build, the V8 engine has been updated, drag-off-end scroll canceling for Linux has been removed, the new avatar bubble's background is now corrected on Linux, and font-specific rendering settings are now allowed.
The Google Chrome developers only provide two kinds of binary files, deb and rpm, and no source. If you are not using a Linux distribution capable of reading this type of files, you will have to wait until it hits your repositories.
Also, keep in mind that if you intend to use this browser on the Linux platform, the Java elements will not work. In order to access Java components on a website, you will need to downgrade. You can find an older version of Google Chrome on Softpedia, along with all the other versions, but you will also have to disable the repositories for Google Chrome so that it doesn't upgrade along with everything else.
Usually, a complete list of changes can be found on the official website.
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