Google Chrome Beta Update Brings Speed, Security Improvements

Yesterday's update of the Google Chrome Beta browser brought several exciting additions to the Internet browser that users of the dev and canary builds enjoyed for some time. The beta channel version has been updated to 10.0.648.82 for all supported operating systems. With Chrome 10 come improvements in many areas.

The JavaScript engine has been updated to improve the performance of the browser. Jeff Chang, Product Manager over at the Chrome blog speaks of a 66% performance improvement on the V8 benchmark suite over the previous version

That's not the only speed improvement in the new beta channel release. GPU-accelerated video has been implemented as well, albeit preliminary, which should reduce the cpu usage of users with compatible graphics hardware, according to Google by up to 80% in full screen mode.

Security in the new version has been improved as well. Chrome will for instance disable outdated plugins automatically by default which in the past have always been one of the most popular attack vectors.

Other features included in the release are password syncing which is not enabled by default and a new settings page that opens in a tab instead of a dialog box. Settings access has been improved as it is now possible to enter the name of the setting into the url form to see all settings that match the query. It is now also possible to jump to most settings directly without having to navigate through a series of menus first.

The new Chrome Beta channel version improves several key aspects of the web browser. Chrome Beta users are as usual updated automatically. New users who want to download the Chrome Beta release can download it from the getting involved page over at Chromium.

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