The very first beta of Chrome 10 was launched late last week, and sports a new version of Google's (NASDAQ: GOOG) V8 JavaScript engine called Crankshaft. In independent benchmarks done by Computerworld, Crankshaft was found to be 64 percent faster than its predecessor on its own V8 benchmarks. In addition, GPU acceleration for video should also see better battery life on laptops with capable graphics hardware, which is realized as video processing is shifted to the more efficient graphics processor--reducing CPU load. I have not tried it yet, but Google says that the implementation in Chrome 10 beta is just a "preliminary implementation."

Google has also added a number of innovations to the usability of Chrome, including a redesign of the Settings interface to show in the webpage area of a tab. In addition, the new version will encrypt synchronized passwords for additional security. Other tweaks under the hood are designed to appeal to power users. For example, most setting pages now have their own dedicated URLs, while Chrome configuration settings can be searched for within the search box. Users keen to give Chrome 10 beta a spin can access it from the beta channel page here.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at InformationWeek
- check out this article at Computerworld
- check out this article at PCMag

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