The new beta is up to 30 per cent faster the company claims, in the most part down to better handling of Javascript functions. The DNS caching and DOM bindings have also been improved.
Support for HTML5 features, notably video tagging and web workers functions has been added. The new version of Firefox’s browser already has full HTML support.
The user interface has also been changed, most notably the opening tab pages which shows the most frequently visited pages and bookmarks that the user has been viewing.
“Embarrassed that checking out lolcats is showing up as your most popular browser pastime?” said the company on the Chrome blog.
“Now you can bump up something dignified and refined into that top Most Visited slot with a simple click and drag of your mouse. You can pin website thumbnails to a particular spot so they don't disappear even if your browsing habits change.”
Navigation tools have also been upgraded via the Omnibox function, which gives a drop down menu of favourite sites, and the browser can now be customized using various pre-loaded themes.