Google today said that it has “temporarily stopped” the developer channel browser push as reports of browser crashes have started to trickle in. However, there is good news as well: The new developer release shows and even slimmer GUI as well as a native PDF reader, which is integrated into the browser in a similar way as Flash.
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Many Chrome 6 users are stuck with a virtually unusable Chrome 6.0.437.1 Dev version as Google updated the browser on Thursday and has stopped further updates since then. The company later said that the current version is now 6.0.437.3 for Windows, Linux and Mac, while the update push remains suspended.
Google has not provided updates on what causes the browser crashes, but it appears that all Windows operating systems are affected. There have been no reports on crashes on Mac and Linux platforms, while many users believe that Chrome 6 browser extensions may have a tough time with some websites.
When Chrome 6.0.437.x works, you may notice the first visible updates GUI updates this new browser version will bring. There is a new native PDF viewer as well as subtle updates to the browser interface (see Google’s blog post here (http://blog.chromium.org/2010/06/bringing-improved-pdf-support-to-google.html).)
The PDF viewer is disabled by default and needs to be enabled in the chrome://plugins configuration options of the browser. At this time, the viewer is only available for the Mac and Windows version. Linux support will follow soon, Google said. What makes this PDF viewer special is the fact that PDF pages will render like HTML pages and are promised to offer a similar functionality as regular web pages. This first version of the reader does not support advanced features such as embedded media. Users will be able to launch the Acrobat Reader separately, if they need access to those features, Google said.
The “Go” button on the right side of the URL bar is now gone and has been replaced with a bookmark button, which was placed to the left of the URL bar before. Many users may not even notice this update, but it removes one more button from the GUI, which now includes only back, forward, home and reload buttons to the left of the bar as well as the bookmark button to the right, as well as the usual menus for site control and browser customization.