Chrome 17 Now Available: Get Ready For Prerendered Pages



Google has made the newest version of its popular browser available, offering more secure downloads and faster-loading web pages. Here’s what’s new.

Prerendering pages appears to be a natural progression from autocomplete. According to the Google Chrome blog, “When you start typing in the omnibox and the URL autocompletes to a site you’re very likely to visit, Chrome will prerender the page, so it will appear faster — sometimes, even instantly — as soon as you hit Enter.” We’ll have to see how long that feature lasts before it gets turned off like many people did to autocomplete.

To better secure your system against malicious code, Chrome’s download scanner checks any executable files against a whitelist. If the files don’t check out, the browser will query Google for more information on the website — such as if it has a history of malicious code downloads. [Chrome Blog]