May 12, 2011 11:33 GMT  ·  By

Tests carried out by Softpedia have revealed that you don’t need Google’s Chrome web browser in order to ‘download,’ ‘install,’ and play the free Angry Birds game from the Chrome web store.

As instructed by the folks at Google, we fired up a Beta build of Chrome, accessed the search giant’s web store, selected Angry Birds from the library of apps, and hit ‘Install.’

Much to our delight - even though we’ve long beaten pretty much every level in every edition of the game - we spent our entire lunch break popping pigs.

But we got mixed results. For example, the game runs better on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, rather than on Leopard.

Newer Macs also exhibited better performance. As you’d expect, on Windows PCs it works like a charm.

“But what if we access chrome.angrybirds.com in Safari?”, we asked. After all, Apple’s browser uses the same page rendering engine (WebKit) as Chrome does, therefore it should have no trouble running it.

So we did and, sure enough, it worked!

In fact, it worked even better in Safari - faster frame rates, less lag, better sound experience, you name it.

Want to know something else? It even works in Firefox - no WebKit required! And this applies to both Mac and Windows machines.

So all you really need to do is access the address for Angry Birds on Chrome’s web store and you’re good to go. As noted above, your mileage may vary depending on your system specs.

Firefox (unlike Safari), will ask you if you let the site save content to your hard drive as you attempt to launch the web-based game for the first time. If you plan on holding on to your game progress, let it.

That’s not to say we don’t like Chrome, or anything like that. As an editor reporting Apple news, I simply had to share this with fellow Mac fans who may or may not want a new web browser installed.

So, what are you waiting for? Go to chrome.angrybirds.com and see how it works for you.