Google has finally released Chrome Beta for both Mac and Linux.
Version 4.0.249.30 has been promoted to the Beta channel for Windows, Mac and Linux.
Mac users who had a previous developer build installed will automatically be moved to the Beta channel.
Chrome on Linux is integrated tightly with native GTX themes, while updates are managed by the standard system package manager.
Mac users will also notice that Chrome has a native Mac OS X graphical user interface.
Download links are below:
Google has released the first early development builds of Google Chrome for Mac and Linux, but has stressed these builds are far from complete and are missing many common features.
According to Chrome developers, these builds lack the ability to watch YouTube videos, the option to print, change privacy settings amongst a large list of other missing features.
Those still wanting to test out the browser on these new platforms can use the links below:
Download Google Chrome for Mac OS X
Download Google Chrome for Linux
Both Mozilla’s Firefox and Google’s Chrome have continued their upward trends through April, increasing their market share. Firefox increased it’s share to 22.5%, up half a percent on last month, while Google Chrome was up around a quarter of a percent to 1.4% share.
Internet Explorer on the other hand continued to bleed users, slumping for another month. Despite the release of Internet Explorer 8, the browser lost almost three quarters of a percent to finish of the month with 66.1% market share.
Both Apple’s Safari and Opera stayed steady for the month, with 8.2% and 0.7% market shares respectively.
More detailed results can be seen using Market Share by Net Applications.
Ben Gooder from Google has revealed that the Linux version of Google Chrome will be using the Gtk+ developer libraries.
This is partly the cause of the delay with both Mac and Linux versions of Chrome, as using native GUI libraries for each version of Chrome requires a large amount of extra time.
Gooder explains “that using these frameworks also limits what you can do to a lowest common denominator subset of what’s supported by that framework on each platform”.
In the long run, this means that Chrome for Linux will look like Chrome for Linux, instead of having a foreign interface.
A release date for Google Chrome Linux is still to be announced.