Version 10 of Google’s Chrome web browser has entered the dev channel, available to those who enjoy living on the edge. This release features an update to the V8 engine that powers Chrome’s speedy JavaScript, a more refined preferences dialog and print and save options for any PDF files you view in Chrome.
If you’re already subscribed to the dev release channel you should be automatically updated. If you’d like to take the dev channel for a spin, Google has instructions on how to switch Chrome channels.
Of course the dev channel releases often have bugs and Chrome 10 is no exception. Commenters on the Google Chrome blog report that Google Sync no longer works with this release. If that happens to you, you might try disabling any startup flags you might have been using with previous releases, which reportedly solves the problem.
Along with the update to the JavaScript engine, this release features a number of bug fixes (particularly on the Mac platform) and some welcome refinements to the new tabbed preferences dialog. In addition to a better looking UI, the new settings page now has a search box to quickly find the preference setting you’re looking for.
Chrome 10 also features an updated message for the “clear browsing data” option on the preferences page. Instead of just deleting your browsing history and other items, you can now “obliterate the following items from the beginning of time.” We doubt that bit of linguistic whimsy will make it all the way to the stable release of Chrome 10, but it’s certainly more entertaining than the old “clear browsing data” message.
Provided Google sticks with its six week update schedule, Chrome 10 should arrive as a stable release in April 2011.
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