I love Google Chrome. So much so that I even use the nightly builds on my MacBook Pro. On my Windows machine, it’s Google Chrome 4.0 beta all the way. It’s extremely fast and efficient. But it’s getting faster. The latest build, Chrome 4.0.223.16 brings a 30% speed boost compared to previous versions. Now again, Chrome is already fast so a 30% boost in this sense is roughly a couple tenths of a second. You’re not going to notice it like you would going from say IE 6 to Chrome 3.0. Regardless, just walk away knowing it’s fast. But speed isn’t everything. If you’re like me, you use several different computers with one or more not actually yours. Syncing bookmarks between these different machines was impossible unless you used Opera 10 which features native support for cross-computer bookmark syncing or a plugin for IE 8 or Firefox. The latest version of Chrome beta is going the way of Opera and has officially added cross-computer bookmark syncing. Saweet!
A small caveat to some will be having to actually have a Google/Gmail account set up as that is how the bookmarks are synced. Much the same as their Google Talk service, Chrome uses XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) to get various computers to share those bookmarks you so desperately love and spent time looking for. As far as the actual syncing goes, any additions/removals are “synced within seconds” according to Google software engineers Idan Avraham and Anton Muhin. If you’re looking to tweak the sync times yourself you’re out of luck. As of now, such a custom option isn’t available. But do you really need it faster than “near instant”. I can’t fathom anyone wanting to slow it down either. So to me, no custom option is ok.
The software engineering duo also comment on the Linux and Mac versions. Specifically, the Mac version is currently chugging along at 4.0.223.11 and is has an official “release title” (not actually released mind you) of “P1 M4″. This cryptic code is just a simple tracker used by the company as to progress and severity/number of bugs remaining. The “P” stands for priority with the 1 obviously meaning high priority. The “M” as you may gather represents “Milestone”. Right now the P1 M4 release has “P1″ bugs in the 20′s region. Mike Pinkerton, a developer working on the project says that it is a primary goal of the team to reduce the number of “P1″ bugs down to a number countable on one hand. That would be fantastic since an official beta couldn’t be that far off after could it? I’m excited. The Google team is excited. Are you?
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