Google previewed several Chrome browser improvements Monday that will be rolling out to all Chrome users in the near future. Among other things, the forthcoming Chrome 9 release will feature an overhauled V8 JavaScript engine capable of running JavaScript programs twice as fast.
The speed of the Chrome browser has been Google’s biggest focus since day one — from the moment the user clicks on the icon to everything he or she does in the browser, noted Google Vice President Sundar Pichai. This helps explain why Chrome has enjoyed “300 percent growth since January of this year” and now has “120 million users worldwide,” he said during a Google media event in San Francisco.
Performance Enhancers
Earlier this year, the company’s design team launched a new feature on Google’s home page called Google Instant, which displays search results even as the user is typing a query. Now the company is planning to bring the same instant experience to the Chrome Omnibox — Google’s name for the URL window at the top of the browser.
“That’s one part of the equation, but, as you know, the Omnibox is about more than search results — it’s also about getting to the URLs you frequently go to,” said Google Director of Product Management Brian Rakowski.
The next Chrome browser release will be able to immediately recognize the URL for a favorite web destination such as ESPN as soon as the user types the letter “E”, Rakowski noted. “I don’t have to hit enter, I don’t have to finish the query — the page loads instantly.”
Google has also been working on a built-in PDF reader for Chrome with the focus on “making it really, really fast,” Rakowski said. “It makes loading PDFs a breeze.”
To further accelerate browser performance, the next Chrome release…