Chrome beta brings speed and themes

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 6 Aug 2009 at 15:24

Google has released a new beta of Chrome, bringing a significant performance boost and theme system.

Among the most significant claims Google's making about the new beta is that it's around 30% faster than the current official stable version. The company puts this down to its V8 Javascript rendering engine.

Although Chrome is built on WebKit, the search giant custom built its own JavaScript renderer, claiming it would allow plenty of room for future optimisation.

The second significant addition brings official support for themes, which allow users to change the look of the browser. There are currently 29 themes in a web-based galley accessible through the "personal stuff" menu. Users need only click on a theme and it will be downloaded and installed.

As it stands there's very little to get excited by, especially when compared with Firefox's 20,000 alternatives, but it's still a sign of the growing maturity of the browser.

A small, but no less, promising addition is the inclusion of support for the video tag, allowing the browser to play certain video formats without needing to install a proprietary codec.

Find out why Stuart Turton's fallen in love with the unstable developer's build of Chrome on the blogs.