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Chrome 24 Released, Chrome Beta Channel For Android Added
An anonymous reader writes "Google has released Chrome version 24 for Windows, Mac, and Linux. You can update to the latest release now using the browser's built-in silent updater, or download it directly from google.com/chrome. The biggest improvement on the user side of things is the speed increase. Google's own Octane JavaScript test shows that this is the fastest Chrome release yet. When the beta came out in November, the company was touting that Chrome had become 26 percent faster on Octane than it was last year. Now it's even faster. Google also announced it is introducing a new Chrome beta channel for phones and tablets running Android 4.0 or higher. You can download version 25.0.1364.8 right now directly from Google Play (since this is a beta, it's not available via search; you'll need to use the link). The release of version 25 is significant because it means Google is attempting to bring Chrome for Android in line with the desktop version. The current release of Chrome for Android is version 18, last updated in November."
You can update to the latest release now using the browser's built-in silent updater. Not really silent if you need to be told you need to update.
Managing memory better so I don't have to keep shutting down web browsers every day or two. Most power users have many windows and many tabs up, and some are relevant for weeks, but most are unused and could be backgrounded much more effectively in terms of processor and memory use. Hint: Replace with a URL and a snapshot image updated infrequently.
Also, speaking of tabs. If I use them, I can't easily see visually which pages I have up, in the overview of windows display modes that most OSs offer. There is a usability disconnect here.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Between mobile Firefox being a thing again and Chrome being improved we can finally see some competition for Opera Mobile on Android :)
The state of the Android browser is fairly pathetic, so this is really quite important.
Right now the only reason for chromebooks to exist is that Chrome on Android is meh at best. When this changes they can stop deploying ChromeOS. Hopefully they will offer some kind of upgrade path to Android on Chromebooks, so that the community doesn't have to fumble its way through :)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I still think it's really neat that I can click install in the Play Store on my PC and watch it start downloading on my phone...
I've noticed that for large SVG files where much of the content has display='none' (so it is only displayed when something is clicked to trigger a change in the display property) Chrome seems to take several seconds to become responsive after the SVG page load is initiated, while other browsers seem to handle it almost instantly. Since a display value of none "indicates that the given element and its children shall not be rendered directly (i.e., those elements are not present in the rendering tree)" it seems Chrome shouldn't be spending so much time processing such stuff. Version 24 doesn't seem to fix that issue.
Chrome's functionality sounds great, but I do not like its attitude: it establishes numerous connections "on the side" talking back to Google central all the time, almost constantly transmitting all sorts of information: Google intercepts and highjacks most of the traffic when someone uses Chrome, that much is obvious.
The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.