Chromium 7 Has Arrived and It's Not that Awesome

By Chelsi Nakano (@chelkano) Aug 18, 2010

3 comments

Team Google set the bar pretty high when they said a new version of Google Chrome would be out every six weeks, but so far they're delivering on their word. Yesterday, Chromium 7 arrived (not even a week after version 6 went beta), and the changes should hit Chrome fairly quickly.

And by "changes" we mean tiny alterations that you probably wouldn't have otherwise noticed. In Google's defense, Wolfgang Gruener of Conceivably Tech notes that 7 shines when it comes to HTML5 support, "which now hits a record 228 of 300 points in html5test.com, ahead of 227 that was posted by the Chrome 6 Beta. IE9 scores 85 of a possible 300 points. Chrome 6 Beta hits 227 points, Opera 10.61 166 points, and Firefox 4 Beta 4-pre 199 points."

MG Seigler of TechCrunch claims version 7 feels "noticeably snappier" and more solid overall, but if you're just looking at face value, there's nothing to get excited about other than some teeny tiny changes to the UI.

To be fair, Google did attempt to downplay their cranked up schedule in the following statement:

Since we are going to continue to increment our major versions with every new release (i.e. 6.0, 7.0, 8.0, 9.0) those numbers will start to move a little faster than before. Please don’t read too much into the pace of version number changes – they just mean we are moving through release cycles and we are geared up to get fresher releases into your hands!

So, okay, we're not reading too much into it. We are, however, still excited for the significant changes. For example, word on the street is that hardware acceleration features are in the pipeline. The general consensus of opinion is that whatever is on its way in Google Chrome won't come close to what IE9 and Firefox have to offer in this regard, but you know Google and their diligent ways.

The Chromium dev channel will change accordingly over the next couple of days, but if you'd like to move faster than Google, here's a snapshot build.