Google Chrome Gets its First Major Update

The Google Chrome hype seems to live on despite it received mixed reactions from the industry. We praised it for its blazing speeds and a responsive UI, while others called it a total failure. We also highlighted some of the security issues of the browser, and hoped that it would improve in the future. Apparently, the guys at the Chromium Project are hard at work just trying to deliver that.

Google Chrome got its first major update late last night. This is the first time the minor version changed from 0.2 to 0.3. The update brings some bug fixes as well as enhancements to the overall user interface. But the major focus of the update was to resolve issues with various plugins.

According to the release notes for Google Chrome 0.3.154.0, the main problems addressed and fixed with this update are related to the Flash plugin. I had reported earlier about the issue on my previous review, and it seems like the developers listened to it. More specifically, the release notes highlight the following:

• Improve the performance and scrolling of plugins. This especially improves pages with multiple plugins playing video.
• Fixes plugins not playing when embedded in a third-party frame on a page.
• Fixes a problem where using Flash plugins could lock up Google Chrome and cause 100% CPU usage.

Other minor changes include enhancements to the UI (mostly in the options dialog) and some more streamlined search results with suggestions.

While this update is only availble to the developers, you can also take part in the developer community testing by opting to be a developer (you don’t actually have to develop anything). Just download this utility and choose Dev from the two options. Then click the Wrench > About Google Chrome, it will automatically detect the update and download it.