Ars Technica has posted a great review of the current state of Chrome for Mac. Included are two videos showing how far Chromium has come in just the last few months.
Karen Grünberg said “we’re working as fast as possible and progressing as fast as we can without compromising security” and suggested that we might see a beta release in Q3 09.
The article also includes detailed instructions on how to compile pre-release Chromium builds on Mac. Be sure to check it out.
LinuxHaxor has discovered that early-pre-alpha builds of Chromium, which Google Chrome is based off, is 4 times faster than current stable builds of Firefox on Linux.
The test was run with the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark tool.
While these results are impressive, LinuxHaxor mentions that current Google Chrome Windows builds are still 2 times faster than early Chromium builds for Linux.
Good news everyone! Google Chrome is getting faster. The Google Chrome Blog has details of the new beta, which suggest that the next version of Chrome is up to 35% faster.
The benchmarks used include Google own V8 benchmark, where the browser was an 25% faster, and the Sunspider benchmark which achieved a result 35% faster than the current stable release.
These improvements should make their way in to the stable release shortly.
A new report coming out of Microsoft claims that Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) is on average faster than both Google Chrome 1.0 and Firefox 3.0.5.
The report titled Measuring Browser Performance: Understanding issues in benchmarking and performance analyzes how various parts of the browser and their network components can impact on performance benchmarking.
Contradictory to all other tests, Microsoft claims that IE8 outperforms both Firefox 3.05 and Chrome 1.0, so the results should be taken with a grain of salt.
Of interesting note, IE8 loads mozilla.com faster than Firefox while Firefox loads microsoft.com faster than IE8.
The full 14-page report is available from the Microsoft Download Center.
Google Chrome may soon have full-screen mode. An avid user has spotted that the versions available from the Dev Channel now include full-screen support.
To enable full-screen in the development release of Chrome you just press F11, much like any other browser.
This much anticipated feature should make it’s way in to the public release of Google Chrome in the coming weeks.
Google Chrome on Mac
Google’s Mike Pikerton has posted the first screenshots of the Mac build of Google Chrome.
Apparently things are coming along nicely, with tabs now able to properly render web pages.
Mike comments that there is still a “very very long way to go” and a release date is still impossible to predict, although a July release date has been hinted at previously.
After news that Google Chrome is no longer using WinHTTP libaries in alpha versions of its web browser, Google now hopes to relese its browser for both Mac OS X and Linux before the first half of this year.
Chrome’s product manager Brian Rakowski said Mac and Linux versions are progressing. “That team now is able to render most Web pages pretty well. But in terms of the user experience, it’s very basic”.
“We have not spent any time building out features. We’re still iterating on making it stable and getting the architecture right.”
The status of the Mac OS X version can be tracked on the Google Chrome Dev Channel.
Google has released a pre-beta release to its dev channel allowing developers to take a look at new features packed into Google Chrome.
With a version number of 2.0.156.1, the release includes a new version of WebKit, autocomplete for forms, and an updated spell checker.
This release also brings Google closer to bringing Chrome to Mac and Linux, with its own version of the HTTP protocol. In previous releases Google has been using WinHTTP library, tying the browser to Windows only.
Google is yet to announce a release date for the final version of Chrome 2.0.
Google has finally taken Chrome off its training wheels and removed its beta tag. The move comes after Google says the browser has met strict performance and reliability requirements.
Released just over 100 days ago, the beta version has been downloaded roughly 10 million times and taken around 1% of the browser market. Far shy of Microsoft’s 70% for Internet Explorer.
The latest release doesn’t include any new features, and is still only available for Windows, but does fix a few of the remaining bugs.
Users already using Chrome will have their browser automatically updated in the next few days, or alternatively you can download the new version from the Google Chrome website. Happy browsing!
Google Chrome is to get the same level of customisation as Mozilla’s Firefox, with a new effort launched to make it possible for developers to create plugins for the popular browser.
Third party applications or addons are attributed to the huge success of Firefox, and is currently the number one most requested feature from Chrome users.
Aaron Boodman and a few others from the Chromium project last week released a design spec detailing their plan for developers.
The document also lists some extensions that the company would like to support, including both an ad and flash blocker – both of which are top addons for Firefox.
Google is yet to give a release date on the feature, but at least work is under way. Stay tuned for more information in the coming months.