Well we all know that, Google is already in development phase of Chrome / Chromium 7. As we wrote in our article, Google Chrome has adapted new release strategy to release new versions of Chrome in every six month. Which blindly tells that, by this year end we may see Chrome 7 and 8!

Before the stable release of Chrome 6, Google had started developing Chrome 7. And the good news is newly adapted webkit Flock web browser has released its latest version on Chromium 7. And now users are able to feel the latest and fastest Chromium version.

Tech Tip: Flock was previously running on Firefox codebase. Recently they shifted to new Chromium codebase. An another Chrome like browser 😉

Google has now officially confirmed that “there’s been a lot of work going on to overhaul Chromium’s graphics system” and that the browser will “begin to take advantage of the GPU to speed up its entire drawing model.”

Below are the top 7 notable changes we have got from Chromium 7,

1. Faster

The current version of Chromium project promises for improved speed. Accessing new tab and other options inside Chromium has been improved.

2. Side Tabs

Google has added vertically organizable tabs on the left side of the screen, which resembles the navigation structure of a website. It’s an interesting concept if you have a widescreen monitor that can accommodate side tabs, but it may be a rather useless feature on smartphones or even netbooks. We personally like Mozilla’s Tab Candy (Panorama) approach to organize tabs much better.

3. Reduced Shortcuts

Google has reduced the much appreciated feature in Chrome 6. Chrome 6 was having many shortcuts like history, downloads, help etc. But these shortcuts were found missing and users has to go back to use Ctrl + H for browsing through history of website opened and Ctrl + J for download history.

4. GPU Acceleration

It is the feature that Microsoft has been promoting for several months for its upcoming IE9 beta and a feature that is about to be activated in Firefox 4 Beta 5 early next month. Browser’s are beginning to take advantage of the multithreading capabilities of graphics processors to speed up their 2D and 3D performance. Google said that the functionality has been integrated in the “tip-of-tree Chromium” lately and the team “figured it was time for a primer”. Google says that it will be using the GPU to “speed up its entire drawing model, including many common 2D operations such as compositing and image scaling”.

Google said that it plans on offloading more and more work onto the GPU to “achieve impressive speedups”. Details are provided in a separate document on Google’s site.

Tech Tip: Many users found that GPU acceleration can already be manually activated in Chrome.

5. Application Tab

Google has added the shortcut to application tabs / extensions to access at the tip of the fingers. Below video explains everything about the apps tab.

Tech link: Download best Google Chrome add-ons / extensions.

6. HTML5

Chrome 7 or Chromium 7 has topped the list in HTML5 test. We found that Chrome 6 had got total of 232 points ( 222 + 10 bonus) out of 337. But the current version of chrome has hit 241 points ( 233 + 8 bonus). Before Chrome 7 we had thought that Firefox 4 beta 4 is inching closer with 212 points (203 + 9 bonus).

7. Labs

The latest Nightly Builds of Chrome (Chromium) have also been equipped with a new “labs” feature that is apparently designed to deliver experimental features. It can be accessed via an about:labs command in the URL bar and shows, in this latest version (Chromium 7.0.509.0 Build 57783).

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But bad news is current version of Chromium is still having lots of problems and crashes now and then. Bug reporting has been improved with lesser fields to fill. Still Chrome / Chromium 7 has showed lot of changes in GPU acceleration and ready to take on Microsoft’s IE 9 and Mozilla’s Firefox 4.

What do you think about Chromium 7? Do you agree with us, Chrome 7 will be the fastest browser when compared to Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox 4? Share what you feel and let others know 😉