Google recently released version 3.0 of Chrome browser and I noticed this yesterday. To upgrade the browser, I fired up the About page and selected the upgrade option. The upgrade was pretty quick. Even though there are no groundbreaking changes in the new version, it sports a new look and Google says it’s performs 25% faster than the previous version. Lets look in more detail about all new features of 3.0.
Speed. Speed. Speed!!!
The one and only selling point of Google Chrome browser is it’s speed. It launches at lightening speed and process JavaScript very quickly. The new version is optimized to perform much better than it’s predecessors and in Google words:
This new release of Google Chrome is faster than ever…we’ve improved by more than 150% in Javascript performance since our very first beta, and by more than 25% since the most recent stable release.
Redesigned New Tab Page – More Thumbnails, Recent Bookmarks Out
The new tab page of the browser is redesigned to sport a trendy and clean look. It removes the right side panel and the entire space is allotted to display more number of most visited web sites thumbnails. The recently closed web page links are rearranged to move below the thumbnails, Recent Bookmarks and Search boxes are totally removed(I was using Search boxes on new tab page quite often, what am I supposed to do now?).
Redesigned Omnibox – Icons To Distinguish Various Type of Links
The Search bar or Omnibox of Chrome 3.0 is optimized to have better presentation. The drop down have a new designs and added little icons to help you distinguish between suggested sites, searches, bookmarks, and sites from your browsing history.
HTML 5 Support
Now Chrome supports various HTML 5 standards. It means to chrome can recognize the tags like < video >, < audio >, and the < canvas > and plays embedded video and audio without the need for Flash.
Themes Supports – Dress Up Differently
If you are bored with the default blue theme(i’ love the default theme) you can now decorate Chrome browser with one among several flashy themes available at it’s Themes Gallery. I’m not a big fan of themes so I leave it to you to explore.
What is Still Missing? – Where are Addons? RSS Support??
So far Google as has released 3 major versions of Chrome but still some very important features are missing in the browser. Especially the ability to detect & show RSS feeds and Addons. These features are available in all the major web browser except Chrome!