New Version 3.0 of Google Chrome is Much Speedier

by Sam Dean - Sep. 15, 2009Comments (5)

As announced on the Google blog, there is an official stable release 3.0 of the Chrome browser available now. You can download it here, and if you're already using Chrome, you'll be automatically updated to the new version. Google's post includes walkthroughs of some of the major new features, including significantly faster Javascript performance, a new look for the New Tab page, and improvements to the Omnibox--the search bar and address bar that makes it very speedy to navigate to sites you're looking for. Here's what you'll find under the hood in the new Chrome.

The Omnibox now has an enhanced drop-down menu that includes icons so that you can distinguish between URLs, bookmarks, searches, and more, as seen here:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This new release of Chrome also includes many HTML 5 enhancements. According to Chrome developers:

"We're particularly excited about the <video> tag in HTML5, which makes embedding videos in a page as simple as embedding regular images. The <video> tag also allows video playback without a plug-in. You can give the <video> tag a whirl in Google Chrome and also check out our 50th Chrome Experiment, which uses HTML5 <audio> and <canvas> tags."

Google has been testing themes for Chrome for some time, and they are included in the new release. You'll find many of the available browser themes at this page, and you can see snippets of several of them below:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As you experiment with the new Chrome, you can provide Google feedback on it here.  Chrome is now officially one year old, and it's good to see it advancing and getting speedier. The benchmark charts below, from Google, show version 3.0's speed improvements in Javascript tests, which look substantial (bigger is better in the first chart and smaller is better in the second one).


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5 Comments
 

Extensions/Add-ons and RSS support will be in version 4 of Google Chrome along with many other features/bug fixes. Work has been started on these features already, along with development builds for Google Chrome 4.0.


0 Votes

@divilex, yes, you can actually start using some extensions with Chrome now if you subscribe to the developer versions.


Sam


0 Votes

I wonder if we will see as many extensions as Firefox, or if they will make it easy and API-compatible.


0 Votes

@James: Hopefully Google gives developers an easy way to port their existing firefox plug-ins/apps to Chrome - otherwise its going to be VERY difficult to attract users (esp. Firefox users) en masse. Firefox has over 1.5 BILLION add-ons downloaded to date with 176 MILLION Add-ons in use currently!! So, switching costs are high from the end user's perspective.


Yet, Google can use, and is using, the IE approach (and now the Apple/Safari approach) of shoving their browser down our throats but approach will not necessarily produce the same results it did for Microsoft back in the 90s.


0 Votes

@Arrogant. First - I love that name for obvious reasons!


I cannot imagine it would be that hard to make it so that Firefox plugins will just work and not have to be re-written. There are existing themes too, but given that Chrome has its own UI paradigms, that might not work as well. Plugins, on the other hand, ought to be portable in an automated manner, hopefully!


0 Votes
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