[Osiris]

Google has released an alpha of Chrome 2.0, even though work on version 1.0 of the browser remains incomplete.
The unpolished Chrome 2.0 rocked up in the early hours of today and comes loaded with the latest WebKit release that adds support for various CSS functions and speed improvements.
Spell checking can now be enabled or disabled in a text field with a simple click of the mouse. More language support has been added for the function too.
The browser also comes with the form autocomplete feature which remains missing in action in Chrome 1.0. It landed in September last year and had the beta tag removed in uncharacteristically speedy fashion by Google last month.
That’s despite the fact that the Mac and Linux versions of the open source browser remain notably absent.
Google’s release notes for the Chrome 2.0 pre-beta offer some hints about when those versions might arrive, however.
Chrome 2.0 uses a new network code that might mean fanboys and gals will finally get their mitts on the Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer rival.
It now has its own implementation of the HTTP network protocol, said Google. The internet giant was previously using the WinHTTP library on Windows, thereby inadvertently shunning Mac and Linux because of the lack of common code.
“We fixed a few bugs in HTTP authentication and made Google Chrome more compatible with servers that reply with invalid HTTP responses,” said the company. “We need feedback on anything that's currently broken, particularly with proxy servers, secure (https) sites, and sites that require log in.”
So there you have it, perhaps the wait is nearly over for Mactards and Linux lovers keen to Google the web via Google’s browser.

Google spins out Chrome 2.0 pre-beta alpha ? The Register

[Osiris]

Google Chrome 2.0 Pre-Beta Release

Is anyone else feeling that the Google Chrome developers are desperately trying to raise the version number of the Google Chrome browser to be on pair with Mozilla Firefox and probably Internet Explorer? It is hard to see another reason if you look at the release schedule. The Google Chrome 2.0 Pre-Beta was released less than half a year after the release of version 0.2 of the browser.
The pre-beta release adds several requested features to the web browser. Among the form auto-completion, full page zooms, a middle-click auto scrolling feature, user profiles and Greasemonkey support. The later still has to be activated by launching the Google Chrome browser with the -enable-user-scripts parameters. This is best done using a shortcut.
The release notes for this release contain all changes including interesting ones like the force SSL mode which will only load https sites in the browser. That’s a pretty clever method of getting rid of most phishing related dangers on the Internet.
Check out the instructions on how to download early release versions of the Google Chrome web browser.