New Beta of Google Chrome Arrives, Plus Instructions for Extensions

Google is out with a beta version of the Chrome browser which adds quite a few new features. If you recall, Chrome officially came out of beta in December, but this post confirms that developers have been doing a lot of work to improve it. Google claims its 25 percent faster on V8 benchmark tests and 35 percent faster on Sunspider, so if you are looking for improved JavaScript speed, you may want to get the new beta. Here is more on the new features.

Google has added Form AutoFill features in Chrome, which lets the browser remember the text you enter on web sites to save you time when you revisit them. When you go to enter text in fields you have typed in before, the text you previously entered will automatically appear right below the characters you are typing.

You can also do full page zooms in Chrome now, as you can in Firefox. To do so, you click the Page menu, select Text Zoom, and select Larger or Smaller. Choosing Normal returns your view to its original aspect ratio. Additionally, there are AutoScroll features.

Google has posted a video here showing another new feature that allows you to drag tabs to get a side-by-side view of web pages, as seen here.

As we have posted before, Google is also encouraging development of extensions for Chrome, especially since extensions for Firefox are among the primary reasons that people use it. There is a new Chromium Developer Document offering a how-to on creating extensions for Chrome, found here. Hopefully, we will start to see good extensions arriving soon.