Google Feels the Need for More Speed With Chrome 2.0
We’ve been playing around with the latest release of Google’s open-source web browser, and we’ve found it to be well worth the upgrade.
Chrome 2.0 adds features like full screen mode, form autofill, the ability to delete specific sites from your most-visited list and a faster JavaScript engine. The JavaScript enhancements are the most important from a competitive perspective because it makes web apps in Chrome run faster, including those made by Google itself.
If you’ve been running Chrome in the beta or developer “channels,” there won’t be too much to see here, as you’ve had access to these new features for a month or so. But if, like most users, you’ve been sticking to stable releases, Chrome 2.0 definitely deserves a place on your desktop.
The most noticeable change from earlier releases is the speed boost. Thanks to an update to Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine, Google claims that Chrome 2.0 loads pages about 30 percent faster. While those with faster hardware may not notice it in general use, JavaScript-heavy pages like Google’s Gmail, Docs and other web apps, are a bit snappier. These are the same applications upon which Google is betting a large part of not only its future, but the future of the web. By making its own webapps run more efficiently to the point where they closely rival the performance of their desktop counterparts, Google is hoping more users will switch to the hosted versions.Also noteworthy are the browser’s new tab controls, which allow you to delete select sites from the most-visited list that appears when you open a new tab in Chrome — you wouldn’t want anyone to know you’ve been frequenting those gamer dating sites again now, would you?
While Chrome 2.0 is a worthwhile upgrade, it’s regrettable that one of our favorite features from the most recent developer beta — the ability to drag tabs and compare two tabs side by side — did not make the cut. Also missing from the new Chrome 2.0 release is the experimental extensions support.
As always, if you’re already using Chrome, you’ll be prompted to upgrade in the near future. If you’d like to take Chrome for a spin, head to the download page (sorry, still no native Mac or Linux versions, but you can try the Chromium releases). And if you’d like to test the betas or developer releases, be sure to grab a copy of the channel switcher app as well.
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