Google on Tuesday previewed some features it will be adding to its Chrome browser, including Google Instant in the omnibox, pages that load after typing only one letter, and an overhauled JavaScript engine.
In the last six months, the number of Chrome users has grown from 70 million to 120 million, Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management at Google, said at a press event in San Francisco. He attributed this growth to Chrome's speed, and Google today showed off new features intended to boost that speed even more.
One upcoming addition is Google Instant in the omnibox – the URL space in Chrome that also doubles as a search box. Like Google Instant in search, adding the feature to the omnibox will display results as the user types.
Instant in the Omnibox will also allow for faster navigation to Web sites. Brian Rakowski, Google's director of product management, showed off a feature that will direct users to a site just by typing in the first letter of the URL. If you visit ESPN.com a lot, just typing "E" into the omnibox and Chrome will automatically load ESPN.com. Visit Twitter multiple times a day? Once Google learns your Web site patterns, typing "T" will take you to the site.
Rakowski also showed off an extremely fast PDF loader; pulling up the 1,990-page healthcare reform bill instantly.
Google has also overhauled V8, Chrome's JavaScript engine, so that it runs complex JavaScript programs up to twice as fast as before.
The way Google is doing that is via Crankshaft, a new Java compilation infrastructure for Chrome. Overall, the Crankshaft-equipped Google chrome browser runs the V8 benchmark suite up to twice as as fast as before, Google said in a blog post.
"This is the biggest performance improvement since we launched Chrome in 2008," Kevin Millikin and Florian Schneider, both software engineers for Google, wrote in the post.
Linus Upson, the director of engineering for Google, described Crankshaft as a "rapid compiler technology". "There's a fast compiler to get running quickly, profiling to watch what's hot, and then an optimizing compiler to make the hot spots really, really fast," he said in an interview. "No one's done this before."
A fourth technology, "deoptimization support," allows the optimized code to revert back to the initial compiled code without optimizations, if necessary.
The technology is available on the so-called "bleeding edge repository" of Chrome, and the cutting-edge "canary" build of Chrome. Google Instant in the Omnibox is also available via Google's early-access channels, and will be rolling out to all users soon," Google said.
Also at Tuesday's event, Google unveiled its Chrome Web Store and announced that two, Intel-based Chrome OS notebooks from Samsung and Acer will make their debut in mid-2011. In the meantime, Google will offer a beta Chrome OS device – dubbed Cr-48 – to select testers.
For more details, see the slideshow below.
Additional reporting by Mark Hachman.