Google puts Chrome 2 out on final release

Google has released final code for the second version of its Chrome browser, eight months after the official launch.

Chrome 2 comes with a claimed 30 per cent speed boost for browsing thanks to the revised V8 JavaScript engine that processes downloads from multiple pages but allocated resources to most used items.

“Web applications are becoming more complex," wrote Google software engineers Mads Ager and Kasper Lund.

“An increased number of objects puts additional stress on the memory management system of the JavaScript engine, which has to scale to deal efficiently with object allocation and reclamation. If engines do not scale to handle large object heaps, performance will suffer when running large web applications.”

Other, more cosmetic feature changes include the ability to run the browser in full screen mode, an autofill function for remembering form information and a new way to edit the opening screen which displays the browser's most visited sites.

“It's useful if you end up with a site in there that you'd rather not admit to visiting quite as often as you actually do,” said Google chrome product manager, Brian Rakowski

The company is also claiming the browser is much more stable then before. Rakowski said this was because the company had fixed over 300 bugs in the system since launch.

Existing Chrome users will be updated “very soon” he said, on the Google Chrome blog, and new users can download it here. Google says that updates will be pushed out regularly in future.