Google has rolled out an alpha preview of the next major revision for its Chrome web browser. Those undaunted by the current alpha status of 2.0 can get an early taste of what’s to come in Chrome.

The 2.0 preview has a number of new features, including an updated version of the WebKit rendering engine which boasts speed improvements as well as some additional CSS support. Other new features include bells and whistles missing from the current shipping version, such as form auto-complete, full page zooming, auto-scrolling, better profile support and very experimental support for Greasemonkey scripts.

The Chrome 2.0 alpha also has some big news for for Mac and Linux users who’d like to try Chrome: Chrome 2.0 uses its own HTTP network library rather than the WinHTTP library on Windows.

The Windows-only HTTP library was one of the main stumbling blocks to cross-platform support and now that it’s gone the Mac and Linux versions should see some significant progress in the near future.

Chrome is unique among the current field of browsers in that there are three ways to run it — the default, which is simply the latest stable release (currently 1.0), the beta channel, which offers monthly updates and could have bugs here and there, and the developer channel, which will give you the latest bleeding edge builds and is almost guaranteed to have bugs. [For the sake of clarity, what's unique about Chrome is that you can run the various builds from within the same container app; whereas, something like Firefox requires separate downloads for each version. Chrome's "channels" model, makes it somewhat easier to experiment with with the non-stable versions of the app.]

The latest Chrome 2.0 preview falls in the developer category and is not recommended for the average user, though if you enable it and it causes problems, it isn’t hard to switch back to the stable version.

If you’d like to enjoy the auto-complete feature or enable your favorite Greasemonkey scripts, make sure you have Chrome installed and then download the Chrome Channel Changer (.exe link); run that app and select the developer channel. Then open Chrome, click the wrench menu and choose “About Google Chrome” where you’ll need to click “Update Now” to install the current channel’s release. After that you’ll need to restart Chrome.

If the 2.0 alpha doesn’t live up to your stability expectations, just reverse the instructions to get the stable version back.

And remember, Chrome is an open project so you can track the progress of Chrome for Mac and Chrome for Linux.

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