14 DAY TRIAL // The next major version of Google Chrome is going to hit an important milestone next week, according to a message the search giant shared with developers.
Early adopters can already get a taste of Google Chrome 8 by accessing the bits shared with testers and devs through Chromium, the open source project behind the browser.
At the time of this article, testers could download Chromium Build 8.0.549.0 from Google’s FTP servers reserved for the Chromium project.
According to Jason Kersey, a member of the Chromium team, Milestone 8 for Chrome is just ahead.
“Quick reminder to everyone that we plan on branching for the M8 milestone at the beginning of next week,” Kersey said on October 7th.
“If you have features or strings that you need in the build, please get them in before the end of Monday, as we will not be taking them past that point.
“If you have bugs targeted at M8 that you're not going to be able to fix or address, please move them out of the milestone. Nag emails for those who have bugs assigned begin this afternoon,” he told the developer community around Chromium.
This means that Chrome 8 will hit feature freeze next week, with work moving on to focus on getting the browser version ready for release by the end of 2010.
Chrome 8 will bring to the table a range of enhancements, including a speed boost to its JavaScript engine, additional HTML5 support, better Hardware acceleration, etc.
Google remains committed to producing a flood of major releases of Chrome, and is bound to soon go past Internet Explorer 9 in terms of browser versions if it keep offering new iterations at the pace of one every six to eight weeks.
The Mountain View-search giant is currently offering end users Chrome 6.0 through the Stable Channel, and Builds of Chrome 7.0 through the Dev and Beta channels.
In fact, hot on the heels of a new Chrome 7.0 Dev release, Google made available for testing a new Chrome 7.0 Beta Build.
“The Beta channel has been updated to 7.0.517.36 for Windows, Mac, Linux and Chrome Frame,” revealed Anthony Laforge, from the Google Chrome team.
“The majority of fixes in this release were related to stability and polish. Of particular note, we also landed fixes for NTLM authentication and restored the ability to hide the most visited sites on the new tab page.”
Google Chrome 7.0 Beta and 6.0 Stable for Windows are available for download here.
