Chrome gets speed boost

May 22, 2009 | 13:07

Tags: #actionscript #browser #ecmascript #google-chrome #javascript #v8 #web-browser

Companies: #chrome #google

JavaScript performance appears to be the new battleground in the war of the web browsers, and Google is determined not to be left behind – and has boosted the performance of Chrome by 30 percent.

In an announcement on the Official Google Blog yesterday, the company revealed that the latest build of its open-source browser Chrome improves performance on JavaScript-heavy webpages by a not-inconsiderable 30 percent.

Scoring 2714 on the V8 Benchmark Suite compared to the previous stable version's 1645 reveals that whatever the company has done under the hood is working – doubly impressive when you remember that Chrome was already leading the SunSpider benchmark tests carried out by ZDNet at the start of the year.

The latest stable build doesn't just improve on the performance of the V8 JavaScript engine, however: the team have been working on adding the most requested improvements to the browser. First and foremost is something users have been finding the most surprising omission from Chrome's feature set: form autofill. For anyone who enjoys their privacy – or frequently visits a site they'd rather people didn't know about – the ability to remove an entry from the most recently visited sites list which appears when a new tab is opened will be welcomed.

Another feature which has been lacking in all but the development build of Chrome is full screen mode, which is now available to all via the F11 key. All this comes along with over 300 fixes for bugs and flaws within the application.

Chrome users will be automatically upgraded to the latest stable build over the next few days, but if you can't wait that long it's available for download immediately.

Are there any features still missing from Chrome that are preventing you from switching, or is Google rapidly producing the best browser on the market? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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