Not to be outdone by competing browsers, Google has released Chrome 18, which, aside from receiving the usual slew of security related fixes and a bundling of the latest version of Adobe's Flash Player, features a boost in 2D performance and 3D compatibility.
The 2D performance boost is in relation to the HTML5 Canvas, which is fast growing in popularity as a quick, plug-in-free way of delivering animated content, vector graphics and 2D games, with the new changes in Chrome 18 bringing advanced GPU acceleration to web developers' latest toy.
Chrome 18 also adds support for WebGL on older or limited functionality chips, where either the graphics chip or platform would not normally be capable of delivering an effect, Chrome allows this to be offloaded to the CPU and processed through TransGaming's SwiftShader. Whilst performance will take a hit, more content will be available to Chrome users running under such conditions, with SwiftShader offering some of the best CPU-bound performance ratings out there.
Major details of Chrome 19 still remain a mystery, currently, we know there will be an update to the Javascript V8 engine and that the option to disable file or data downloading will be added as an optional security measure.
On another note, after penalising the search ranking of its Chrome browser back in January, for violating its own paid links guidelines, Google has at last lifted its penalties, which should see interest in the tenacious browser perk-up once more.
