Chrome gets a touch faster
Faster browsing and better offline support for some Web apps kick off the stable version of Chrome 27.
Already known for its speed, Google just boosted Chrome's Web site rendering speed by another 5 percent.
The latest stable release of the browser, Chrome 27 (download for Windows, Mac, or Linux), received the small improvement by managing its resources better. To boil down the jargon, the browser's internal resource scheduler now favors more critical resources over preloaded sites.
Chrome engineer James Simonsen wrote in the company's blog announcing the update Tuesday that, across the hundreds of millions of people using Chrome, the amount of time saved equals around 510 years per week. But what we're really talking about are split seconds of time saved.
Other changes in the browser include: cleaner calendar forms, thanks to HTML5; WebReal-Time Communication (WebRTC) support for live audio input support via the Web Audio API; and support for the new Sync FileSystem API so that developers can synchronize Web app data. This could improve the ability of Chrome Web Apps to function properly offline.
Improvements were also made to the Omnibox's search result rankings, and tweaks to Chrome's developer tools now allow Web developers to customize tool views.
On the security front, Google paid nearly $15,000 over the past six-week upgrade cycle to researchers for reporting bugs. The largest payout went to well-known independent Chrome security researcher Atte Kettunen from the Oulu University Secure Programming Group, who earned $3,133.70 for finding memory safety problems in the Web Audio API.
You can read the Google Chrome 27 changelog here.