May 6, 2010 report
Google Chrome 5 beta released
(PhysOrg.com) -- Internet search engine giant Google has released a new beta version of its Chrome browser, and it is visibly much faster than the previous version, and faster than most other browsers.
Opera 10.53 is still faster than Chrome 5, but Opera has suffered from security problems, which have not affected Chrome. According to Google, Chrome 5 beta is much faster than the previous version at rendering JavaScript and is 30% faster as measured by V8, and 35% faster by SunSpider JavaScript benchmarks.
Chrome’s other new features include an expanded bookmark sync feature that stores your bookmarks “in the cloud” and synchronizes not only browser bookmarks but also themes, settings and homepage (but not open tabs) across any computer running Chrome. It also synchronizes with Google Docs, which is where all the settings and bookmarks are saved, so you can still access your bookmarks through Google Docs even if you are using a computer that is not running Chrome.
HTML5 is rapidly becoming a new programming standard for Web pages, and the new beta release includes several HTML5 features such as file drag-and-drop, and Geolocation application programming interfaces (APIs). Also included is a built-in Adobe Flash Player, which is updated automatically as part of the normal update procedure. This avoids some of the problems users have had with Flash if they do not keep their software up to date. The new Chrome beta version also makes communications between Web applications and host servers faster through Web sockets.
Google Chrome also has an Incognito Mode that lets you browse the Internet without saving cookies or keeping records of your search/browsing history. The new beta now lets you choose Chrome extensions you want to use in Incognito Mode since you can manually select them via an extensions manager page, but these extensions will then be able to record your browsing history in Incognito Mode.
Google Chrome 5 runs on Linux and Macs as well as Microsoft Windows. The beta release is available, but like all beta releases it may contain bugs and be less reliable than the stable versions of Chrome. You will also have to uninstall any previous versions of Chrome before you install the new beta version.
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