Google updates Chrome Dev channel to version 9

Less than one month after version 8.x arrived, Google has released version 9.0.570.0 of Chrome for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux into the WebKit-based browser's developer channel (a.k.a. the Dev channel). The first Chrome 9.x Dev branch release comes less than two weeks days after Chromium 9.0.563.0 – the open source browser upon which Chrome is based – was released.

The latest Dev channel release addresses several issues that caused the browser to crash and features various tweaks to the V8 JavaScript Engine and Extension handling. In addition, the update corrects an incognito mode (also known as "private browsing") problem on Linux systems and a problem on Mac OS X that could cause the dock icon not to be updated after closing an incognito window with an in-progress download. Other changes include disabling hardware acceleration by default and a security modification that requires a user gesture when opening file choose dialogue.

As with all development releases, use in production environments and on mission critical systems is not advised. Users testing the release are encouraged to provide feedback and report any bugs that they encounter.

More details about the release, including a list of known issues, can be found in a post on the Google Chrome Releases blog and in the SVN Revision Log. Chrome 9.0.570.0 is available to download for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux from dev.chromium.org. Existing Dev channel users should automatically be upgraded to the release. The latest stable branch of Chrome is version 7.0, released on the 19th of October, while the 8.x branch is now in the browser's Beta channel.

(crve)