Development on Google Chrome follows a frantic pace. Testing builds intended for developers come once a week or so, beta builds once every few weeks and stable builds once every three months. And Google intends to speed up the process even more. For now, the developers are getting close to releasing the first beta build of Google Chrome 6.
Currently, the Google Chrome beta is stuck at 5.0.375.125. In fact, if Chrome releases weren’t confusing enough, for all intents and purposes, Chrome beta is identical to the stable release and shares the same version number. However, it’s now clear that Google is ready to release a Google Chrome beta, most likely labeled as 6.0.472.xx.
Regularly, the last figures in the version number are reserved for small updates, usually bug fixes and security patches. For the developers channel they are rarely go beyond 0. The latest developers release is labeled as Chrome 6.0.472.11 and only brings some tweaks and bug fixes, indicating that this will be Chrome’s next beta release. The previous dev build was Chrome 6.0.472.0.
It’s not ready to be labeled as a beta yet, but once Google is done putting all of the finishing touches and plugging the most obvious bugs, a beta announcement will be made. It will be the first Chrome 6 beta and the first beta to bring new features in a few months.
For those upgrading from the current beta, the changes will be significant, by Chrome standards. The UI has gotten a revamp focused on cleaning it up and grouping the buttons and functions better. The Page and Wrench menus have been merged as well. The upcoming Chrome 6 beta will be the first beta to bring support for WebM. You can read more about the features built into
Chrome 6 here.
Google Chrome 6 for Windows is available for download here.
Google Chrome 6 for Linux is available for download here.
Google Chrome 6 for Mac is available for download here.
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