Google Chrome update brings 30% faster browser

Google this afternoon launched an official update to its Chrome browser that it hopes will fight back against Safari 4 and other newer rivals. The upgrade further refines the software's distinctive java script  engine and is estimated to be about 30 percent faster when using web apps and other sites that depend heavily on the code. Chrome similarly gets updates that bring it up to par with some features on other browsers, such as autofill for forms as well as a full-screen mode and the ability to remove unwanted thumbnails from the "most visited" page.

The search engine pioneer also boasts having fixed over 300 bugs and improved the general stability of Chrome. It continues to require Windows XP or Vista. Versions for Linux and Mac OS X remain in development but aren't anticipated until later this year.

In addition to its speed, Chrome is unique among browsers in assigning a program thread to each browser tab and thus preventing a crash in one from taking down the whole browser as well as speeding up browsing on multi-core computers. It also creates a "sandbox" to prevent malicious web code from easily infecting the operating system.