Google has said today that the upcoming Chrome beta is the fastest and most efficient yet, seeing a 30 percent increase in the V8 benchmark and 35 percent in the SunSpider benchmark test.
Over the years, Chrome’s performance has jumped 213 and 305 percent, respectively, on the benchmark tests. (see the picture)
Users of the latest beta can synchronize their bookmarks on multiple computers as well as browser preferences such as homepage/startup settings, language and themes.
Additionally, you can also now install and use Chrome extensions in “incognito” mode.
Finally, the beta release “contains the goodness of some new HTML5 features, namely Geolocation APIs, App Cache, web sockets, and file drag-and-drop capabilities. Additionally, this is the first Chrome beta that features initial integration of the Adobe Flash Player plug-in with Chrome, so that you can browse a rich, dynamic web with added security and stability — you’ll automatically receive security and feature updates for Flash Player with Chrome’s auto-update mechanism.”
Result for: beta release
According to new figures from Net Applications, both Firefox and Google Chrome continue to wrestle away market share from long time leader Internet Explorer, with Chrome seeing the strongest growth.
Chrome saw over 10 percent growth to reach 3.58 percent market share, while Firefox continued its ascent moving to 24.07 percent. Apple’s Safari still remains in third at 4.42 percent share, mainly due to increased Mac sales.
Net Applications says given Chrome’s growth and recent beta release of Chrome 4, the browser will likely surpass Safari, and the 5 percent mark, by February of next year.
Also interestingly was the numbers behind Internet Explorer, which although still the clear market leader at 64.64 percent, is a far cry from the 93 percent share it owned in 2003. Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft’s most recent update to the browser, had 18.1 percent share, moving it to within days of surpassing Internet Explorer 7 at 18.2. The eight-year-old and extremely inefficient Internet Explorer 6 remained the leader for the pack, at 23.2 percent.
IE6 remains the leader despite Microsoft’s plea for users to stop using the browser, if they have the choice. Many corporate users are not so lucky.
Result for: beta release
The most popular BitTorrent client, uTorrent has moved onto version 2.0, albeit in beta form for the time being, and promises tons of updates and changes.
– 2009-08-04: Version 2.0 Beta (build 16081)
- Change: disable toolbar offers for Wine installs
- Feature: New Setup guide & Speedtest.
- Change: uninstaller is added to all user profiles
- Fix: crash when assigning new label to torrents from RSS
- Change: Incomplete downloads sort after completed downloads if sorting by “Completed On”
- Feature: Add Moldova to peer flags
- Change: Added upnp host cache to speed up upnp nat resolution on misbehaving routers
- Fix: maintain category list selection on update for some edge cases
- Change: if selected, install start menu and desktop shortcuts to all users instead of only current user
- Feature: Grayscale disabled toolbar buttons
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