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Google Chrome 3 Released

Posted on 16 Sep 2009

in News

by Adrian Roselli (aardvark)

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Adrian Roselli

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User since: 14 Dec 1998

Articles written: 85

Google has announced the release of Chrome version 3 (stable release). Given that it just celebrated its first anniversary earlier this month, it may catch up to Internet Explorer versions in no time.

Speed

Google claims the latest release is faster — 150% faster in JavaScript performance since the first beta and more than 25% faster than the last stable release. Google doesn't offer up any comparisons against other browsers, however.

New Tab Page

The New Tab page (the blank page you come to when opening Chrome or opening a new tab) has been modified since the last beta release. You can rearrange the thumbnails and even pin thumbnails so they don't go away. The page also offers more customization options than before, such as displaying the pages as a list of links.

The Omnibox

What Google calls the Omnibox is the address bar that also acts as a search bar. Google has added icons to the drop-down menu to help distinguish between suggested sites, searches, bookmarks, and sites from your surfing history.

HTML5 Support

Insofar as it is possible to support a spec that is still being written, Chrome added support for some of the core elements. In this release Chrome has added support for video and linked out to a sample site to test drive it. Google already had support for the audio and canvas elements and links to the 50th Chrome Experiment page to prove it.

Themes

Chrome now supports themes. All those UI enhancements Google has worked so hard on can now be casually tossed aside by just grabbing an ugly theme. The example they show is the Stargazer theme. There are more in the Themes Gallery.

A founder of evolt.org, Adrian Roselli (aardvark) is the Senior Usability Engineer at Algonquin Studios, located in Buffalo, New York.

Adrian has years of experience in graphic design, web design and multimedia design, as well as extensive experience in internet commerce and interface design and usability. He has been developing for the World Wide Web since its inception, and working the design field since 1993. Adrian is a founding member, board member, and writer to evolt.org. In addition, Adrian sits on the Digital Media Advisory Committee for a local SUNY college and a local private college, as well as the board for a local charter school.

You can see his brand-spanking-new blog at http://blog.adrianroselli.com/ as well as his new web site to promote his writing and speaking at AdrianRoselli.com

Adrian authored the usability case study for evolt.org in Usability: The Site Speaks for Itself, published by glasshaus. He has written three chapters for the book Professional Web Graphics for Non Designers, also published by glasshaus. Adrian also managed to get a couple chapters written (and published) for The Web Professional's Handbook before glasshaus went under. They were really quite good. You should have bought more of the books.

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evolt.org Evolt.org is an all-volunteer resource for web developers made up of a discussion list, a browser archive, and member-submitted articles. This article is the property of its author, please do not redistribute or use elsewhere without checking with the author.