Google's Chrome now faster and more featureful than ever

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 09 March 2011 11:14

Business IT - Technology

The latest update to Google's Chrome browser delivers speed improvements previously found only in beta releases. The company claims a 66% boost in JavaScript performance.

An improved version of the V8 JavaScript engine is the headline feature of the latest release of the Chrome browser from Google. This makes its performance on the V8 benchmark suite approximately six times faster than the original version of Chrome, according to figures provided by the company.

Other improvements include password synchronisation between multiple computers via a Google account (with the option of a passphrase instead of relying on your Google account password), and the extension of sandboxing to the integrated Flash player, providing an additional layer of protection against malware.

Also new is a major change to the settings interface. This is now implemented as a browser tab instead of an OS-native dialog box, and includes a search box. The latter change means you don't need to hunt around for the section that includes the items of interest, as the browser collects all the matches into one page.

For example, searching for 'home' displays the 'On startup' options (one of which is 'Open the home page'), 'Home page' (where the home page is specified), 'Toolbar' (to choose whether or not the Home button is displayed), and 'Search' (because the URL for one of the search engines known to that particular copy of Chrome included the word 'home').

Previously installed copies of Chrome will be automatically updated to the new version. New users can download the installer (for Windows or Mac OS X) here.