The latest installment of Google’s upstart web browser ‘Chrome’ has been released. ‘Chrome 9’ addresses several problems with the previous version of the browser and also adds several new features.
WebGL uses hardware acceleration in a new way to allow web developers to employ advanced 3D graphics in the web browser. Google has posted several examples of how WebGL allows the browser to handle graphics more smoothly.
‘Chrome 9’ also includes support for Chrome Instant, a tool that loads web pages as they are being typed into the URL field. This is a familiar trend with Google who has employed a similar feature on their (world dominant) search engine, that displays search results as soon as the user starts typing into the search field.
The 9th release of the Chrome browser also includes fixes for several bugs that were discovered in previous installments. One audio bug was found with the help of the online gaming community Reddit, and Google left a message for them on a Chrome Releases blog.
“Special thanks to the Reddit community, for playing so much of the game ‘Z-Type’ that they uncovered a Chromium audio bug – see below!”
Google offers a cash reward to anyone who can expose security flaws in their browser.
Google Chrome has grown steadily in popularity since its release and has been touted as the ‘minimalist’ alternative to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, or Mozilla’s Firefox browser. Internet Explorer is the most popular web browser in the world with more than 50% of the total market share. The latest numbers for Google Chrome have it climbing past 12%, while Firefox, the world’s second most popular browser hovers around 22% for the seventh consecutive month.
Image source: Google