Lucky 13 for Chrome

The Chrome browser updates continue to fly out of Google’s development headquarters and recently a development version of Chrome 13 was released. The development versions of Chrome can be pretty unstable and are not meant for day-to-day use but they do give users a sense of what they can look forward to.

So, what can we expect from Chrome 13?

Multiple profiles

A new feature in Chrome is the ability to switch between multiple profiles. For example, you have a business profile and a personal profile: one has all your settings for your business account and another for your personal surfing. This means you don’t have to log out and in again to switch between, for example, Gmail accounts. Each one can run in its own browser window.

Background apps

This is something we’re going to see a lot more of in future as the web becomes a primary channel for distributing applications. Chrome’s background apps allows Chrome-based apps to run in the background, even if the browser window is shut. This means that applications which check, for example, Twitter or Gmail, can still provide notifications of incoming messages. In Chrome 13 the background apps feature is turned on by default but can be turned off to save resources in Options->Under the Hood.

Omnibox improvements

One of the focus areas for Chrome 13 is the Omnibox, the all-in-one URL and search bar in Chrome. Part of the work is focused on improving string-matching, particularly on Mac OS X and Windows 7, which is perceived as being a little too slow. Also included is work on Google Instant to make it possible to limit it to search only. Google Instant is the technology that provides instant search results as users type.

Chrome 13 is still in early development, while Chrome 12 was added to the beta channel earlier this month. Development versions of Chrome can be downloaded from the Chrome development site.

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