Following a month after the beta, Google closed the week with the final release of Chrome 14. For mac folks, this release represents the first version of the OS with support for Mac OS X Lion’s native elements. It uses full-screen mode and the ‘invisible’ scroll bars while also mending crashes from the earlier release.
Every user gets access to Native Client, short NaCl for short, a frequently promised way of integrating native code into apps. This coding system allows apps written in C or C++ language to run with access to the hardware but still fenced off from the rest of the OS. It allows games and other media-heavy titles to run at full speed from the web without becoming risks.
Native Client currently only works with web apps downloaded or bought through the Chrome Web Store but will eventually expand elsewhere. Web Audio API support also comes in for live effects like reverberation.
“Today, we’re happy to ship a new release to the Stable channel of Chrome, following up on last month’s Beta channel release. This release contains two significant technologies which allow developers to create even more powerful web apps and games.” – was stated in the official blog announcement.
Chrome 14 includes 34 patches for vulnerabilities, for which Google paid a total reward of $14,337 to those who reported them. Google also said that Microsoft as well as Apple reported bugs in Chrome.
The Chromium channel is currently on version 16. It is interesting to note that Chrome developers have posted almost 8000 revisions to Chrome since the Chromium team began its work on Chromium 15 and began finalizing Chrome 14 with trunk version 835 on July 25. The revision log indicates that trunk 835 received nearly 6600 changes over the previous version 834.
Linux, Mac, and Windows users get the update simultaneously, as in the past. Also, don’t forget to check out our Google Chrome Extensions category, for the latest add-ons!
