14 DAY TRIAL // The final version of Google Chrome 8 is getting close now, but the team is already working on Google Chrome 9. The latest dev release brings quite a few new features, if only in experimental form. The about:flags section now hosts several experiments that landed in Chromium very recently, like support for Native Client and Snap Start.
Google Chrome 9.0.587.0, which is now available for all supported platforms including the Chrome Frame, bundles all of the updates and patches of the past week or so from the Chromium builds.
The latest dev release is is mostly a bug-fixing release, on the face of it, but comes with at least a couple of interesting features for the brave of heart.
The about:flags section, which houses experimental features and changes that the Chrome team doesn't want enabled by default but feels comfortable enough with to make them available for testing to a wider audience, comes with new experiments.
Native Client support has now been included and can be enabled if you want to test Google's experimental technology for web apps. Native Client promises the speed of native desktop applications on the web by enabling browsers to run binary code for the architecture on which they run.
Executing binary machine code is several times faster than interpreted code like JavaScript and pretty much everything else on the web. However, creating and running binary code on the web comes with as many challenges as possible advantages.
Another new experiment in about:flags is Snap Start which promises to speed up secure HTTPS connections. The latest Google Chrome dev also comes with support for several experimental extension APIs.
Already, the Chrome dev channel included some interesting new experiments like Web Page Prerendering and a new form of Instant, Verbatim Instant.
Finally, the Click-to-play feature for plugins, which Chrome has supported for several months now in one form or another, is listed in about:flags as well.
This feature enables users to disable all plugins, Flash, Java and so on, and only run them on a case-by-case basis and only when the user specifically chooses to.
The about:flags section is getting quite crowded in Google Chrome and it would be nice to see more experiments graduate to become full-fledged Chrome features.
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.