Tuesday's software release is a version of Chrome that had previously been available only as developer preview software for Mac and Linux machines. "It took longer than we expected, but we hope the wait was worth it," product manager Brian Rakowski said in a blog post.
Macs are widely used, if not as common as Windows machines, and there's been some demand in tech circles for the Mac version of Chrome. Linux, while less widely used among ordinary computer users, has importance of its own: it's the foundation for Chrome OS. That's the browser-based operating system Google hopes will be popular on Netbooks starting next year.
According to the Chromium development calendar, the beta versions are scheduled to graduate to the next level of maturity, "stable," on January 12.Chrome for Windows graduated out of beta almost exactly a year ago.
Google doesn't emphasize product version numbers in the project, instead automatically delivering updates behind the scenes to the browser that take effect when it's restarted. But it does use version milestones to keep track of development internally.
The biggest new feature of Chrome 4.0 is support for extensions, which let people customize the browser. In the Mozilla world, they're called add-ons, and they've been a big part of Firefox's success.
Extensions aren't useful, unless people can find them, though. Google on Tuesday also launched a Chrome extensions gallery page.
There are more than 300 extensions available for Chrome, extensions programmers Aaron Boodman and Erik Kay said in a blog post.
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