In the blog announcing the release, Google also said it is splitting up Chrome releases into three separate public versions, a stable version for the general public, a dev version within its Dev channel, and an experimental pre-beta version within its new Beta channel. The new 2.0 version is available only in the Beta channel. Google says it moved existing Dev channel users to the new Beta channel, giving them the option to stay there or move to the more stable Dev channel via the new channel changer page.
The new WebKit version means Chrome now supports full-page zoom, autoscroll, CSS gradients and CSS canvas drawing. And now that Chrome has dropped the WinHTTP library on Windows in favor of its own implementation of HTTP, it provides Chrome with common code on Windows, Mac and Linux. Other highlights include support for different browser profiles, so that new tabs can have their own bookmarks, history, cookies, etc., as well as a new HTTPS-only browsing mode that forces Chrome to load only HTTPS sites. For a more complete list, see the release notes.
So that’s two major Chrome releases in two months. As Sean Michael Kerner says on Internetnews.com, if Google keeps up this pace, maybe we’ll see Chrome 8 before Microsoft’s IE 8 comes out of beta.
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