Google Revises And Revs Chrome's JavaScript Engine

Thursday, May 21st, 2009

MG Siegler is a general partner at CrunchFund and a columnist for TechCrunch, where he has been writing since 2009. His focus is on Apple. Prior to TechCrunch, MG covered various technology beats for VentureBeat. Originally from Ohio, MG attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI. He’s previously lived in Los Angeles where he worked in Hollywood and in... → Learn More

picture-415Occasionally, I boot up Windows on my Mac just to run Google Chrome. Given how often I used Google’s services like Gmail and Google Reader, it’s almost worth it because they run so fast on Chrome’s JavaScript engine, which it calls “V8.” And today, Google has apparently slammed on the gas and made V8 even faster.

JavaScript-heavy webpages (such as Gmail), will now run 30% faster on Chrome, according to Google. Given how fast they were already running, that’s fairly insane.

This new version of Chrome also boasts the ability to remove thumbnails from the Tab Page. This is a feature that rival browsers such as Safari 4, already offer and is useful if, as Google notes in the video below, “you have a site in there that you’d rather not admit to visiting quite as often as your actually do.” Other new features include full-screen browsing mode and form auto-fill. Again, many of its rivals also already offer these.

Google says its fixed over 300 bugs that have caused crashes since it first launched. That’s nice, but the speed is the real story here. At least until the damn Mac version launches.

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