Following Mozilla’s recent release of Firefox 10, Google has made the latest stable edition of its Chrome web browser available for download. Chrome 17 introduces additional security features as well as the ability to pre-cache websites so that your most visited sites load faster.

Safer browsing

Chrome already checks sites for a list of known malicious files, however, Chrome 17 expands on this list by looking for dangerous executable files including “.exe” and “.msi” files. If these executable files do not match its safelist (whitelist), Chrome will use Google’s search index to find more info on them.

And speedier

On the speed front, Google has managed to boost the speed that users access their favourite websites. Noé Lutz, Google software engineer and malware vigilante explains: “When you start typing in the omnibox [the adress bar] and the URL autocompletes to a site you’re very likely to visit, Chrome will prerender the page, so it will appear faster--sometimes, even instantly--as soon as you hit Enter.”

Users who are new to Chrome can go to Google’s page to download (Windows version is less than a MB) version 17 of the browser. Those who already have Chrome installed on their PC can simply click on the wrench icon and select “About Google Chrome” to start the automatic update process.   

 

In other browser related news Net Applications recently made the latest monthly browser stats available, showing that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer still commands the lion's share of the global browser usage pie.