Google recently adopted an accelerated release cycle for its Chrome browser, pushing out a new stable release every six weeks. Google Chrome 7.0.517.41 for Windows, Mac, and Linux introduces the majority of Chrome users to features that have been available to beta and developer's build users for several months, as well as fixing hundreds of bugs that affected the browser's stability.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

The list of new features that have been added to Chrome 7 stable is a short one. The HTML5 parser has been updated, and the stable branch finally received the HTML5 file application programming interface. This allows Web-based content to read the content of local files. Chrome 7 can also upload complete directories, and Mac OS X users will now see AppleScript support for interface automation. There are new options for managing cookies, too.

A fairly hefty list of serious security bugs were also fixed in Chrome 7 stable. These include one critical-level bug that would crash the browser when using form autofill. Among the four bugs marked "high," one caused crashes with forms, another allowed for possible URL spoofing on page unloading, the third indicated possible memory corruption with animated GIFs, and the fourth involved stale elements in an element map. The Google Chrome changelog is available from the Chrome blog.