14 DAY TRIAL // While Google Chrome 12 is getting ready for its beta debut, the finishing touches are being put on it in the dev channel, the rest of the Google Chrome team is pushing ahead with Google Chrome 13.
The latest Chromium and Google Chrome Canary builds have added a couple of new features and it's starting to look like the main touting point for Chrome 13 will be multiple profile support.
Google has been working on this for quite a while, but it's only now getting ready to implement it, though it's still not enabled by default. The first elements were added in some of the very first Chromium 13 builds and newer ones add more polish.
The UI for switching between multiple profiles has been updated and is now enabled in more versions. Google Chrome Canary is also sporting the new UI.
With a fresh install of either Chromium or Chrome Canary, you will notice the new drop-down menu for account switching and a notice that you're not logged in.
The multiple-profile feature is linked to Google sync, so you must have that enabled first. The profiles are also linked to a Google account, there's no way to use another provider or your own solution to store the data in the cloud.
That said, it's a very useful feature for a number of use cases. For one, it enables users to keep their work and home accounts separate. This means you can have two or more browser profiles, complete with preferences, bookmarks and so on, at the same time and switch between them when you need.
The latest Chromium builds also add an interesting new feature or rather tweak, the possibility of restricting the Chrome Instant feature to searches only. What this means is that regular websites, from the history or bookmarks, won't be preloaded.