New Features

Improved New Tab Page: The most requested feature from users was the ability to remove thumbnails from the New Tab page. Now you can finally hide that embarrassing gossip blog from the Most Visited section.

Full Screen Mode: If you’ve ever given a presentation or watched a large video using Google Chrome, you might have wished you could use every last pixel on your screen for the content. Now you can hide the title bar and the rest of the browser window by hitting F11 or selecting the option in the Tools menu.

Form Autofill: Filling out your information in forms over and over again can be tedious. Form autofill helps by showing information you’ve previously entered into the same form fields automatically. If at any point you want to clear out your information, that’s easy to do from the Tools menu.

Google has said that it will refer to the latest update as Chrome 2, but that’s mainly a metric to help them keep track of changes internally. In reality Google prefers to roll out new features as and when they can, irrespective of version numbering.

The critical flaw involves a failure to properly validate input from a renderer (tab) process. Successful exploitation of the flaw might allow the injection of hostile code onto vulnerable systems, hence the critical tag.

Both flaws are explained in more depth in an advisory by Google here. It’s the second time in two weeks that Google has updated its browser software in response to a security problem. A previous update – issued on 23 April – addressed an unrelated lower-risk security bug.

Maximum PC explains the differences between the browsers, future and present, so that you can make a more informed decision about the primary tool you use to browse the web. From the rendering engines used to the features that set the different browsers apart, this is a comprehensive, blow-by-blow battle between Safari 3, Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 3, Opera 9.6, Google Chrome, Firefox 3.1, IE 8, Safari 4, and Opera 10.

Google has acknowledged the flaw and is working towards a patch for Chrome versions 1.0.154.43 and earlier when running within Windows XP SP2 systems, according to SecNiche security researcher Aditya K Sood. The flaw was reported on 27 January and has since posted a proof of concept on the Bugtraq vulnerability-disclosure forum.

“Attackers can trick users into performing actions which the users never intended to do and there is no way of tracing such actions later, as the user was genuinely authenticated on the other page,” Sood said within the disclosure.

Google’s security researchers had not found any attacks in the wild that exploited the specific vulnerability, said Google’s spokesperson.

Clickjacking is a relatively new type of browser attack. The attack broadly fits within the category of cross-site scripting forgery, where an attacker uses maliciously crafted HTML or JavaScript code to force a victim’s web browser to send an HTTP request to a website of their choosing.

Internet Explorer 8 (release candidate 1 and beta 2 versions) and Opera 9.63 (the latest version) are not exposed to the flaw. But, like Chrome, Firefox 3.0.5 is exposed.

When you log into Gmail using Internet Explorer, you’ll see a “Get faster Gmail” link in the set of links across the top of the page. If you follow the link in IE7, you’ll find yourself at this page (pictured above), which claims that Gmail runs an average of twice as fast on Firefox 3 or Chrome than it does IE.

Strangely enough, that same link in IE6 takes you to this page, which recommends upgrading to IE7—so you’re in for a bit of a rollercoaster if you follow their suggestions. We practically never open up IE unless we have to around here, so we certainly can’t say from experience that IE runs Gmail that much more slowly, so if you’ve got more experience switching between browsers with Gmail, share your experience in the comments.

It also contains an updated javascript engine, claiming that it operates 1.4 times faster than the beta version, and work has begun on an extensions platform to allow easier integration with the browser by third parties.

http://www.google.com/chrome