Posted by Florian Wardell | 0 comments
Chrome 4.0 for Windows
(Windows only)
Google has released version 4.0 its Chrome web browser, which it claims has more than 1,500 new features. Chrome edged up to 3.6 percent of browser usage for October, its highest showing so far in Net Applications’ statistics since the browser’s first public release 14 months ago. That’s within striking distance of third-place Safari at 4.2 percent, but still well short of second-place Firefox at 24.1 percent and dominant Internet Explorer at 64.6 percent. The new release adds two of the most sought-after features: extensions and bookmark syncing. Also, Google boasts that Chrome 4 runs 40% faster than Chrome 3.
Extensions are little programs, created by developers, which add useful functionality to the browser and to the websites you visit. Some provide you with alerts and notifications, others let you easily access your favorite web services from icons next to your address bar, and there are lots more. Extensions have been available in the beta release for about a month now, but now you can get them in the stable version. There are now more than 1,500 extensions in the gallery; there were only 300 when the beta hit the streets. That’s still nothing compared to what Firefox has to offer, but Chrome’s slowly getting there. And don’t forget that with Chrome, you don’t have to restart the browser after you installed an extension. You can find extensions for Google Chrome in the extension gallery, and install the ones that interest you. Extensions on Google Chrome take only seconds to install, and can be uninstalled just as easily. You can view and manage the settings for your extensions by clicking on the Tools menu and selecting “Extensions.” A Google Voice extension — which Google announced this weekend — is now available. It adds a button in your toolbar that lets you know how many new messages you have. You can access messages and transcripts and make calls or send text messages from within Chrome. It also makes phone numbers on web pages callable with one click, kind of like the Skype extension for Firefox.
For those of you who use several computers — for example, a laptop at work and a desktop at home — you can now keep your Google Chrome bookmarks synchronized and up-to-date across computers, without needing to manually recreate your bookmarks every time you switch computers. To read more on bookmark sync, check out this handy guide.
The 4.x series has other significant features, too, though it’s not clear whether they’ll arrive in the beta or stable versions. One is Google’s Native Client, which lets JavaScript applications take more direct advantage of a PC processor’s horsepower through a careful security mechanism. Another is WebGL, a 3D interface that does the same with hardware-accelerated graphics.
Together, the features have the potential to dramatically improve the power and sophistication of Web-based applications. That’s particularly interesting given that Google is building Chrome OS, a browser-based operating system.
Here’s a recap of the most important additions to Chrome 4.0:
- Extensions
- Bookmark sync
- Enhanced developer tools
- HTML5: Notifications, Web Database, Local Storage, WebSockets, Ruby support
- v8 performance improvements
- Skia performance improvements
- Full ACID3 pass, due to re-enabled remote font support (with added defense against bugs in operating system font libraries)
- HTTP byte range support
- New security feature: “Strict Transport Security” support
- Experimental new anti-reflected-XSS feature called “XSS Auditor”
You can download the latest version of Google Chrome here. The mac 4.0 version shouldn’t take long to hit the beta channel.
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