14 DAY TRIAL // Just days after it released a new version of its open source browser to the Stable channel, patching almost a dozen vulnerabilities, Google kicked up a notch the developer preview of Chrome. Early adopters running Windows, Mac OS X and Linux can now download Google Chrome 6.0.427.0 through the company’s Dev channel, a space reserved for testers, as version 6.0 is in pre-release stage, and as such not meant for deployment into production environments.
Karen Grunberg, from the Google Chrome team, notes that, as far as changes are concerned, a bug was fixed for Chrome 6.0.427.0 on all supported platforms in which focusing on the Autofill profile produced no preview in empty form fields.
The Mountain View-based search giant has also taken care of additional issues impacting the Dev preview of Chrome 6.0. “Fixed sad-tab showing briefly during switch to Chrome Frame. Sometimes, navigating to a page in Chrome Frame within IE would display the sad tab page briefly until the navigation was initiated from IE,” Grunberg stated.
A downside to testing pre-release software is that early adopters are bound to come across various problems. With Google Chrome 6.0.427.0, testers will notice that, “Chrome crashes when canceling the signing to sync. Chrome crashes when click[ing the] ‘save’ button at AutoFill Profiles window,” according to Grunberg. At the same time, Google warned that users would not be able to install extensions for the browser, such as the Colourful Abstract Rings Theme.
Google Chrome 6.0.427.0 is the second developer Build of the open source browser since the Mountain View search giant introduced support for its WebM open web project. Testers can run Chrome 6.0.427.0 in order to try out HTML5 VP8 support, and see how it compares to other codecs such as Ogg Theora and H.264. Google is the driving force behind WebM and VP8, along Mozilla, Opera, Adobe and other companies.
Google Chrome 6.0.427.0 WebM/VP8 Dev is available for download here,
Google Chrome 5.0.375.70 Stable is available for download here.
Google Chrome 5.0.375.70 Beta is available for download here.