Chrome 16 arrives - did you notice?

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 15 December 2011 09:41

Opinion and Analysis

Automatic updating has its advantages, but it can conceal feature changes.

Google's approach to automatically updating the Chrome browser makes a lot of sense if the objective is to get security patches onto as many computers as possible as quickly as possible. And Chrome 16 does deliver multiple security fixes - 15 of them, with six given a rating of high.

But the update process is so silent that feature changes may go unnoticed. Unless you read the Google Chrome Blog, there was no obvious clue that Chrome now allows different users to sign in.

Previously, signing in to Chrome (to sync bookmarks, apps, history, etc) only worked conveniently with one Google account. Chrome 16 delivers a mechanism for quickly and easily changing the signed-in user.

As Google points out, this isn't a substitute for using separate accounts at the operating system level, but it would be convenient in situations where you're happy to give a 'guest' (eg your spouse or child) access to their Chrome settings on your computer.

So how do you use this feature? Click Add New User in the Personal Stuff section of Options or Preferences (depending on the operating system). Each user you create can sign into their own Google account to retrieve their Chrome settings.

Someting gained, something lost - see page 2.