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Google Chrome 2.0 gets stable release

By Sean Michael Kerner on May 22, 2009 11:16 AM

From the 'dev channel version goes prime time' files:

Google Chrome stable is now at version 2.0. Forgive me if I don't sound too excited, I've been running Chrome 2.0 dev-channel (Google has three version of Chrome dev, beta and stable) for months without issue on a test box. But for those that aren't running the dev-channel Chrome 2.0 is a big step forward. It's faster, has fewer bugs and oh yeah more features too.

The biggest new feature highlighted by Google is support for full-screen mode, something dev-channel Chrome users have enjoyed since since Chrome dev 2.0.166.1 which came out in February.

"We've made a lot of changes to stuff you never see, such as a newer version of WebKit for rendering web pages, a new network stack, and improvements to speed up the V8 Javascript engine," -Mark Larson Google Chrome Program Manager said in a blog post.

The V8 engine is a critical component of Chrome and make JavaScript run faster, a whole lot faster in Chrome 2. Google has invested a lot of effort into making JavaScript execution a key feature and differentiator for their browser ever since the first Chrome release last September.

When combined with improvements in WebKit -- which is the core rendering engine for Chrome (and Safari) the end result is a browser that noticeably faster. In fact, the speed difference between Chrome dev and Chrome stable was one of the motivating factor for me personally to use dev on all my Windows test boxes.

Google also updated the dev-channel version this week to 2.0.181.1 with even more V8 and WebKit enhancements. Officially the 2.x stable release is being called the 2.0.172.28 release.

Work is still ongoing with extensions as well as Mac and Linux versions. I wonder if any of those new effort will results in a numbering change to Google Chrome version 3?

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