Google has just released a beta version of its popular Chrome browser. Version 17 brings along several new features designed to improve the browser’s speed and security, as well as a more noticible feature such as page prerendering before you finish typing the URL.
“One of the things people like best about Chrome is that it loads web pages quickly. To get you where you want to go even faster, Chrome will now start loading some web pages in the background, even before you’ve finished typing the URL in the omnibox. If the URL auto-completes to a site you’re very likely to visit, Chrome will begin to prerender the page. Prerendering reduces the time between when you hit Enter and when you see your fully-loaded web page–in some cases, the web page appears instantly,” Google stated in an official blog post.
On top of that, Google has implemented new security features to Chrome 17, but adding improvements to the browser’s Safe Browsing technology designed to protect users from malware attacks. “If a file you download is known to be bad, or is hosted on a website that hosts a relatively high percentage of malicious downloads, Chrome will warn you that the file appears to be malicious and that you should discard it,” Google explained.
Chrome 17 includes new extensions APIs as well as various minor tweaks and changes.
