The Google Chrome team has pushed out the beta release of the Chrome 2.0 web browser release. In addition, they have also opened the beta update channel, so if you’re running the beta you’ll get continuous updates keeping you up to speed with Chrome 2.0’s development tree. Apart from speed improvements, Chrome 2.0 delivers several other interesting new features.
The new Chrome 2.0 beta offers little in the form of interface updates; but let’s be honest, the Chrome interface leaves little to be desired. There are, however, several improvements in browsing, a lot of them thanks to Chrome 2.0 packing the latest WebKit release. It brings features like form autofill (finally!), full page zoom, and autoscroll to the Chrome world. It also comes with a new side-by-side tab feature, which is best explained in this short YouTube demonstration:
This side-by-side feature doesn’t actually work, though, on my installation of Chrome 2.0, but that might be because I’m running it on Windows 7. Google also claims speed improvements of 25-35% over previous Chrome releases, but a quick benchmark by BetaNews showed a 10% speed improvement over the previous stable release. This new release doesn’t seem to pass the Acid3 test yet, though; the score goes up to 100, but it fails the linktest.
Still no native Linux port? 😐
From what I heard a beta release should be out by July for Apple and Linux OSs.
BTW its great to see the pace at which all the browsers are optimising and releasing often.
I was thinking the same thing. I thought that they were supposed to remove all of the Windows only bits for the 2.0 release, thereby making it possible to be cross-platform. I guess we will have to be patient to see if that actually happens for this release.
Ask, and ye shall receive.
http://osnews.com/story/21152/Google_Chrome_for_Linux_On_Its_Way_Ta…
So are they sticking to their mandatory auto update service and schedule task that get installed without asking the user?
Edited 2009-03-17 22:31 UTC
I hope they have an auto update service turned on by default.
I’m going to rant on this a little, first people throw a bloody fit if it doesn’t update, then they throw a fit if it does. You can’t have it both ways! It’s 2009, we need auto updates for a web browser. It makes sense. From a business standpoint, all you need is a system to control it, and since it’s so early in it’s release, isn’t that great of a call from a risk/reward standpoint to start with.
It’s a good app, it tells me when it wants to do something, that’s fair, but if your saying that because you don’t want it to auto update, then sorry, you’ve lost out to the other 90-95% of the world that wants it to.
Safari 4 asks me if I want to enable the feature. Google does it by default.
Firefox checks for updates when the browser is running. Google installs (at least) a system service and a scheduled task.
Everyone else lets me download an installer package and install the software even if I’m not directly connected to the internet. Google only lets me download an installer which will then download and install the app. But it fails when behind an authenticating proxy. They also do that with Google Earth…
I guess there is the standard way of doing things, and there’s the Google way…
Oh my god!! What a wondrous feature… It’s present in Opera since at least 10 years.
I think a lot of people are excited about the Linux version. Since Chrome 1.0 came out I have pretty much stopped using Firefox on XP. I love that you can kill a tab acting up, say with a nasty Flash movie, and it keeps going. Usually I have to kill the whole Firefox app when a plugin crashes the browser. Once the native GTK version comes out I think I will remove Firefox for good on Linux.
My favorite thing about chrome is the speed, but right after that its the tab implementation. I have never seen an app that does tabs this right.
Chrome, FF3, Safari, IE8, Opera 9-10 – this is all freakin’ mindblowing. After the early years where IE5 ended up on top for a while before the advent of Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox, I thought for sure that the browser wars would settle into a 2 horse race with Opera hanging back and some few other popping up once in a while to keep thing interesting.
But the 4-way horse race of the last few months has been unprecedented. Although, I have to give some credit to Safari 3 a while back for showing us all just how much faster browser rendering could be.
Firefox 3 is still my browser of choice although the Google Chrome multi-process features are killer and I hope the FF team will implement something comparable in the near future.
Have to agree wholeheartedly. For us end users this is a godsend. I just hope that IE’s market share dominance will continue to erode, but also that the spoils go to other browsers than Firefox. No point in having one dominant player disappear just to be replaced by another. A high level of competition in this market is what will push the browser experience further at a faster pace.
Technically, the Beta update track has always existed; It just stopped getting substantive updates after the stable 1.0 release, in favor of the less stable Dev track… until now. Finally!
I’m happy to see that scrolling a page per tick (as per my mouse settings in Windows) works properly now.
I’ll switch once Chrome have mouse gesture
Edited 2009-03-18 06:36 UTC
I’m somewhat addicted to mouse-gestures myself. Anyone know what the status is on the Chrome plugin architecture?
From a “cross-browser”-view I did a very stupid thing and got addicted to vimperator (vim-like keybindings and interface in FF). It really blows my mind, but it sucks to try new browsers…
I’m still waiting for my Android’s Chrome to support downloading files with extensions that don’t have a registered app. I don’t suppose the new version of Chrome means any updates to the Android browser?
i dislike the fact that image are zoomed with text, is not possible to use again the function text only zoom just like in the 1 version?