Two Google Chrome Updates (1.0.154.48 and 2.0.160.0)

The stable and beta versions saw an update on Tuesday, which fixed a small bug that arose from that User-Agent Hotmail fix we reported ealier this week. The dev channel saw an update today, improving stability and improving the V8 javascript rendering engine. Read on for more

Starting with the stable and beta channels, it seems like the user agent spoofing that was taking place to correct Hotmail issues was causing an issue elsewhere. The problem was arising only in incognito mode when particular sites requested the user agent header. This issue has been fixed, as well as a small security patch.

See the Chromium dev center for full release notes.

As for the users on the bleeding edge (the dev channel), Google pushed an update out today which improved the V8 javascript rendering engine, as well as including some bug fixes. That update to the V8 engine is being called Irregexp, and you can read all about it from the Chromium blog. Here’s a break down of the features courtesy of the Google Chrome Releases blog:

• Fixes a number of tab dragging related crashes.
• Fixes issue where Chrome could not be set as the default browser.
• Add support for UA spoofing, and spoof Safari’s UA string when loading URLs
• Improving UI presentation in Vista and XP
• We now generate a proper file name when dragging an image off the browser on to the desktop
• V8 has been updated to version 0.4.9.3, read more in the V8 changelog.
• Find about the Dev channel and how to subscribe at http://dev.chromium.org/getting-involved/dev-channel.

I’m curious about that third bullet point. Does this mean that Chrome will appear as Safari in web analytics programs when using 2.0.160.0?

From a personal standpoint, the latest update fixed a few page rendering errors I was being forced to use Firefox to remedy. Google Website Optimizer would not load for me in Chrome using 2.0.159.0. That is thankfully been fixed.

Facebook, however, still renders incorrectly as well. I’ll try to get screen shots up and I’d be curious to know if it appears all wonky for you.

Are there any other sites that aren’t Chrome friendly?