Chrome 13 Hits Beta, Google Touts "Print Preview" Feature. For Serious.

Google Chrome first launched on September 1, 2008. The very next day, someone filed a “bug” report on the Chromium project page stating the following:

There is no option for a print preview. I think that this is needed so that you can see what the page will look like before wasting paper and toner.

Good news, Eric Lake — today is your lucky day! Yes, it may have taken almost 3 years and 13 versions, but Google has finally added “Print Preview” as a feature of Google Chrome! Google touts the new addition (which still doesn’t work on Macs yet) in their post today on Chrome 13 entering beta:

Second, we’re happy to announce that issue number 173 in our public bug database, which has collected more than 900 “stars” from users around the world since it was filed in 2008, has been implemented on Windows and Linux (the Mac version is coming soon). That’s right–we’ve finally added Print Preview! Print Preview uses Chrome’s built-in PDF viewer to display the page you want to print, and it updates automatically as you adjust your print settings. You can also choose to save any web page as a PDF file, using the “Print to PDF” option that’s automatically included in the printer list. Thanks for being patient with us on this one!

More importantly, Chrome 13 brings the new Instant Pages feature Google unveiled earlier this week. And there’s a new Omnibox suggestion feature.

Chrome 13 should be in beta for a few weeks and then it will go stable with the new features as well. Meanwhile, Chrome 14 just entered the dev channel. No word on if it will contain the “set as desktop wallpaper” bloatware, er, feature.