Well the much awaited Chrome 6 beta version is out in market. Month before the release of final version of Chrome 6, Google has released the beta version for testing.

The interface has made significant evolutionary steps to a much cleaner design and there are notable performance improvements. Chrome 6 broke cover for the first time on May 16 and it has remained, as far as we know, in the longest developer phase of any Chrome version since version.1 so far.

Well here we got the ultimate features / changes in Chrome 6 after comparing with previous version.

1. Default Browser

Google has changed “Set Google Chrome as my default browser” option. Previously chrome used to ask this option after installation. But now the option is available before downloading!

2. Chrome Startup

Google has made it so easy for users that, they can start using chrome right after the installation. Previous versions of chrome used to take lot of time in importing bookmarks and settings after installation.

3. Select the Search Engine

Previous versions of chrome used to provide Google as a default search engine. The latest version give full access to user in selecting default search engine. Chrome provides 3 options Google, Yahoo and Bing search engines. User can select any one of it.

4. 3-in-1 button

In place of the Go button (which was positioned to the right of the URL bar) you now see the star icon to bookmark a page or edit an existing bookmark. The stop button has been merged with the reload button: As long as a page is loading you will see the option to stop the process. If the load process is complete, the button changed dynamically to a reload option.

5. Home button removed

The home button is deactivated by default in the latest beta version. The home button, which however, you can easily live without, if you configure a custom start page. Simply open a new tab and you are “at home”.

6. List view mode removed

Google has removed list view mode for the most visited sites. Now user can see most visited sites only in thumbnail mode.

7. History and Downloads

Google has added one click access for history and downloads list. Now user won’t take any pain in pressing CTRL+H and CTRL+J options.

8. Smarter URL bar

Chrome 6 now shows content symbols in the URL bar as soon as you begin typing. Chrome tries to figure out what you are looking for and will offer several options – search queries, URLs, search results in your favorites or your browsing history as well as an option to send the query directly to your search engine. Every option is marked with a symbol.

9. Updated zooming option

Chrome 6 has a smoother zoom in and zoom out option. Google has reduced to single property button. The Page menu has been merged into the Tools menu. Now user can zoom in and out the page with just a mouse clicks.

10. Cut, Copy and Paste

Google has tried maximum to reduced effort and time of the user. It has added shortcuts to many options which previously user used to access with keyboard shortcuts. Google has added cut, copy and paste buttons in options menu in chrome 6.

11. Clear Browsing Data

Google 6 has added one click clear browsing data feature. Previous versions of Chrome used to take lot of time in just navigating to this option. User has to go to Chrome options, navigate to “Under the Hood” menu and then click on there was a option to delete browsing data.

In Chrome 6 there is a shortcut added in Tools option under properties, as shown in the image. And the keyboard shortcut “SHIFT+CTRL+Delete” will also does the same thing.

12. Task manager link

Google has also added a link to open task manager rather than clicking SHIFT+ESC keys.

13. Native PDF

Chrome 6 will integrate a native PDF reader, so you do not need to install the Acrobat Reader anymore. Also, you don’t have to worry about security updates anymore, as Google will update the PDF reader, when necessary, automatically.

14. Security Information

Google has spent lot of time in updating features in Chrome 6. Just before the URL, user can see globe symbol which provides the security information about the website they have visited.

This feature provides 3 informations,

1. Identity: specifies who has owned this site. And also briefs whether the site is verified by any other company.
2. Connection: explains about the encryption and compression information.
3. Your last visit to the website.

15. Shorter URL

If you observe in the above image, we have opened Tech18.com and the URL is not containing either HTTP or WWW. This is one the notable feature or change in Chrome 6.

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Chrome 6 has made overall speed improvements and is now close to be breaking the 300 ms barrier in Sunspider on test system. The current beta clocked in at 311.8 ms, but we have seen previous developer versions that posted results as good as 301.2 ms. Chrome 6 currently has a tag of fastest browser even after the IE 9 preview 4 by Microsoft.

As of now we can strongly say Google Chrome 6 is staying on top with all new cool features. While Chrome 5 was mainly a performance update and Chrome 6 will further improve Chrome’s JavaScript performance. Chrome 6 is really about UI changes and a completely revised form auto-fill feature that lets users define what information should be entered in certain fields.

Last but not least, Chrome 6 supports all the extensions which were available to previous versions. So no need to wait for builders to make add-ons ready to latest version as in case of Firefox 😛

Download Chrome 6 Beta Today

Did you like these features and Chrome 6 is really best when compared to Firefox 4 and IE 9? Share what you feel 🙂 Cheers!