Google announced Tuesday that the third stable release of Chrome is ready for the world, a little over a year after its debut.
Chrome releases evolve from developer previews to beta releases to stable ones, and the third version of Google's Web browser has now earned that coveted status. It's about 25 percent faster than the Chrome 2.0 stable version, and the new version also comes with a few tweaks.
Google redesigned the New Tab page with a click-and-drag mentality, added icons to the Omnibox to distinguish between searches, sites and bookmarks when entering text in the address bar, and perhaps most significantly, added support for the video tag in the HTML 5 standard in a stable version of the browser.
Bringing HTML 5 technologies into Chrome is a huge part of Google's strategy for both the browser and Chrome OS, coming one day to a netbook near you. The capabilities delivered by the video tag were a highlight of Google's presentation to developers at Google I/O in May: the tag allows Web developers to embed videos like they were photos, alleviating the need for plug-ins.
Developer preview versions of Chrome 4.0 are well under way, but Google has yet to release a Mac version of the browser despite interest from luminaries such as Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
This article was first published as a blog post on CNET News.
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