Google's Chrome 13 Beta Adds Instant Pages

• June 17, 2011 11:48am EST

Well this is a first: Google has crossed a line by requiring a particular browser to use a feature of its market-dominating search site. The feature is Instant Pages, and the browser is Chrome 13, a beta version of which the company released on Thursday.

It's somewhat surprising to see Google going the proprietary route. Microsoft has received a thorough lashing at the hands of the tech press for this type of activity, because of its introduction of proprietary features in IE6 (some of which went on to become universally supported standards).

Google's Instant Pages as supported by Chrome 13 uses background page preloading to do its magic. While you're gazing at Google's search results page, the browser is loading the top hit in the background. I first saw this technique in action in the RockMelt browser, which recently cozied up with Facebook in a business partnership. RockMelt's representatives made the convincing case that there's no reason not to take advantage of today's fast Internet connections and CPUs for this preloading. Apparently Google agrees.

In a quick test using Chrome 13 beta, however, I didn't see faster page loading for the top hit, so apparently Google hasn't rolled out Instant Pages to all its servers yet. The company has addressed claims that the feature could present security issues by loading pages you didn't intend to, saying it "[doesn't] believe there is any additional risk to users."

But support for Google Instant Pages isn't the only new capability to show up in Chrome 13: the much-demanded Print Preview capability has finally arrived, after over a decade of other browsers' including the feature. Chrome 13 uses the browser's built-in PDF viewer to accomplish the task, a clever, Google-like approach of using what you've already got. As a side benefit, the browser can now save any Web page as a PDF via the Print to PDF option.

To try out Chrome 13 for yourself, head to Google's Chrome Beta Download page. Installation is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, though the Mac version doesn't yet have the new print preview capability.

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Source: http://feeds.ziffdavis.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/breakingnews/~3/B0w-8mztEzw/0,2817,2387175,00.asp

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