Google's Chrome Gets Another Shiny New BetaGoogle's Chrome Gets Another Shiny New Beta

Today Google made another beta version of its Chrome browser available to those brave enough to forgo the 1.0 version. The beta includes HTML5 goodness baked in and a 30% increase in speed.Some of the tweaks available on the latest beta of Chrome go beyond the new themes that showed up yesterday. Google made some pretty serious under-the-hood improvements.

First up, some HTML5 capabilities are now part of Chrome. They are video tag functionality and web workers, according to Google. HTML5 will become an important part of the Web's future, so this is a good step for Google to take. It makes blending Web apps with the browser, among other things, easier on developers.

Other major tweaks include changes to the Tab page, which lets users customize it a bit and permanently adjust some of their favorite sites. Google explains, "Now you can bump up something dignified and refined into that top Most Visited slot with a simple click and drag of your mouse. You can pin website thumbnails to a particular spot so they don't disappear even if your browsing habits change. Last but not least, you can hide parts of the page if you don't want to see them using the layout buttons on the top right of the New Tab page."

Google also adjusted the Chrome Omnibox a little bit. Now, it has an updated drop-down menu, which includes icons to visually separate between sites, searches, bookmarks, etc.

Speed has also been improved. Google says users should notice a 30% increase in page load speeds, but obviously results are dependent on many factors.

One thing that Google has done is to speed up how the active or newest Web tab loads. For example, if you open five tabs/pages at once, Chrome will know to load the text, graphics and icons to the active page first and then wrap up loading all the stuff on the secondary tabs/pages that aren't active.

Last, Google is sure to mention that the themes are now available for the beta version of Chrome. Perhaps the reasons I experienced a slow-down in service yesterday was because I hadn't updated to this latest beta of Chrome yet.

Anyway, the beta is free. Go ahead and check it out if you're a beta kinda person.