Google Chrome 2, 30% faster than older version: Google was announced updated version Chrome 2 on Google’s company blog yesterday, claiming that this version 2.0 is 30% faster than its predecessor. We loaded it up and sure enough, it’s even faster than earlier versions.
It’s now added a new feature that allows a user to remove thumbnails from the New Tab page. “Now you can finally hide that embarrassing gossip blog from the Most Visited section,” wrote Google’s Darin Fisher yesterday. Chrome also now has a form autofill feature that is already found in Internet Explorer, Firefox et al.
Chrome 2 completed the well-known SunSpider JavaScript benchmark in 1503ms, compared with 2689ms for version 1. This leaves the competition in the dust: Internet Explorer 8 required 9,065ms, while the Firefox 3.1 beta took 3,045ms.
Chrome has generated much greater interest than market share since its introduction last September, in part because it lacked popular features included in existing browsers. This update adds some of those, but mostly builds on Chrome’s speed claims.
Chrome 2 is the closest thing yet to an embedded kiosk mode for Web-based software. One more feature I want: A way to turn off all keyboard shortcuts so my typos don’t shut the window on a half hour’s work.
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