Google announced the latest Beta release of its Chrome browser today. And no, this post was not paid for by Google. The release, Google said improves security and speed.
Speed has always been one of the big draws to Chrome, and one of the biggest points Google has always made about the browser.
Now, with this beta, Chrome will actually start loading pages in the background before you’re even finished typing the URL in the omnibox. Essentially this is the browser equivalent of Google’s Instant Pages, which took Google Instant a step further to load search results quicker.
Maybe soon, all you’ll have to do is think of the page you wish to visit, and Google will deliver it.
“If the URL auto-completes to a site you’re very likely to visit, Chrome will begin to prerender the page,” explains Chrome software engineer Dominic Hamon, who also goes by the title “Speed Demon”.
“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,” he adds.
The security part comes in with the Safe Browsing feature, which has received some improvements with the latest update. It now includes functionality to analyze .exe and .msi files that can be downloaded.
“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,” explains Hamon. “We’re starting small with this initial Beta release, but we’ll be ramping up coverage for more and more malicious files in the coming months. Remember, no technical mechanism can ever protect you completely from malicious downloads. You should always be careful about which files you download and consider the reputation of their source.”
The features will surely be much more appreciated when they come to the stable release.