Chrome Canary
Want to live on the edge? Then you might like Google’s Chrome Canary.
Google’s Chrome browser is already pretty experimental if you follow the developer releases but now the company has made available a Canary build which gives “early bird” a whole new meaning. The idea behind the Canary version of the Chrome browser is to give users a snapshot of features that are still in heavy development.
Naturally a Canary release of Chrome is not best used as a default browser so Google Canary makes it possible to run a more stable release for regular day-to-day browsing and the experimental version for the times when you have an urge to see what is possible.
For developers that do already have an existing version of Chrome, Canary allows them to run the pre-release browser without overwriting other versions on their machine. Canary keeps all its files in a different location to those from standard releases which means that both a stable and developer version of the browser can be run at the same time. This is quite different to most browser beta versions which may be of different versions but use the same profile files.
For now the Canary release is only available for Windows machines.
With the release of Canary, Google now makes available no fewer than four different versions of its browser. The Canary one is the most experimental one, the developer version is aimed at pre-beta users, the beta version is one that is almost ready to be released, and the full, stable releases are ready for day-to-day use.
According to developers, the Canary release will be updated more frequently than the other versions, including the current developer release. The upside of that is users can get a sneak peak at what is planned for Chrome. The downside is that the chances of regular crashes when using Canary are almost guaranteed.
Google has already said that it is looking to speed up the development of Chrome and one of the ways to do this is to gather greater amounts of statistics and information from users on experimental releases. With more users trying out the bleeding-edge versions of Chrome Google will be able to pinpoint problems early on.
The name Canary is an obvious reference to the concept of using Canaries in coal mines to warn of impending problems.
Google Chrome Canary << comments and views
Loading ...